—I hope it will not be thought that I mean to vouch for the truth of the stories after which I am inquiring, if it should turn out that there really are any; and also that I shall not be thought captious if I am not satisfied with the substitutes which are proposed. When your correspondent says that Reichenbach's "system may be advantageously applied to the explanation of corpse-candles, illuminated churchyards, and other articles of Welsh and English superstition," I can only say that, as far as I understand the superstitions referred to, nobody ever thought of connecting them with ghosts. There may be stories of "illuminated churchyards," with ghosts in them, of which I have not heard but no ghosts are mentioned by your correspondent. I am not laying undue stress on a word. If the word ghost means anything, it means a spirit; and I apprehend that the enlightened Baron will not thank any friend who would sink, or explain away, that meaning. So, I presume, his translator Dr. Ashburner understood him, when he triumphantly exclaimed, "The glorious Reichenbach has, in this treatise, done good service against the vile demon of superstition," p. 180. These words would have been too grand for the celebration of such a petty triumph as snuffing out Welsh candles, and explaining one or two small superstitions of the vulgar. I must therefore again, if you will allow me, ask whether anybody knows of such stories as would really meet what appears to be the meaning of the author and translator.
S. R. MAITLAND.
Gloucester.
Autographs of Weever and Fuller (Vol. iv., pp. 474. 507.).
—Upon reading the Query of A. E. C., I remembered to have seen some of Weever's handwriting a year or two since, in the copy of his Funerall Monuments in the library of Queen's College, Cambridge, of which I was then librarian. I have since written to a resident member of the college, who has kindly sent me a careful tracing of the MS. note; it is as follows:
"To the learned and judicious View of
the Maister and Fellowes of
Queenes Colledge in Cambridge
John Weever
Presents these his imperfect labours."