The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-10-16
Deteriorated Ghosts.

The ghosts of a century, or even half
century ago-the "ghosts of the old
school" as they have been called--used
to feel solemn privilege to be ghosts.
They acknowledged something grand,
something of obligation, in their state.
They seem to say, MyStere obhge, as
the nobility used to say, NobleSSe Obtige.
1t was not everybody who could be a
ghost, and those who could were bound
TO keep up the influence snd dignity of
the order. In those days ghosts fed
their souls on solitude, and were visible
chiefly to the solitary. They flashed
upon the inward eye which was the
curse of solitude. Or if now and then,
like the celebrated ghost of Mr.. Wyn-
yard, who appeared to both Sir John
Shebroke and Gen. Wynyard on the
island of Cape Breton on the 18th OF
October, 1875, it proved itself to be no
illusion by being seen by two persons
at the same time, it would yet stalk
noiselessly through the room, like the
ghost Of the royal Dane across the plat
FORM, and vanish without a sound.
Ghostliness used to be diStingue sort
of quality. One felt kind Of renown
to have ghost in the family. To be
an apparition was to be something lofty
and awful, and though perhaps too
dread function to stimulate ordinary
ambition, still one honorable after its
fashion, and tending to keep a noisy,
and familiar, and vulgar-mind genera
ton under something like awe for the
world of the supernatural. But such
has been the progress of DEM
ocratic ideas that all this seems to
have changed. Modern ghosts are
" hail-felIow well-met" not only with
human beings but with each other.
They have not only given up the grand
style, they have mostly given up soli-
tude, and can do much more with lot
of people round table than thev can
with a solitary watcher by moonlight.
They revisit not "the glimpses of the
moon, but the flicker of the gas-lamp.
They delight in playing accordeons, in
shouting through trumpets, in knock
ing hard on the roofs of cabs and rail-
way carriages, in wheeling about din
ing tables, in getting themselves pho
tOgraphed, and in manufacturing ineX-
pensive pearls and rubies. The only
thing in the least poetical they seem to
affect much is the production of flowers.
If the modern authorities may be
trusted, they really do deal in flowers
10 an extent very creditable to their
taste; but this is an exception to their
ordinary demeanor, which is, for the
most part, not fowery at all, but eX-
ceedingly prosy, and Of a kind almost
expressly intended, it would seem, to
rub off the awe which the supernatural
world use to inspire. In one word, if
our modern ghosts are trustworthy, the
world of spirits is now, like cur own,
in the hands of " the residuum." The
angels, demons, saints aud penitents
manifest themselves no longer. We
have in their places ghosts of vulgar
rhetOricians, who make speeches on
matters they do not understand, of
buccaneers or pugilists, who show great
muscular qualities, with only tempo
rary muscles, and shout audibly with
provisional lungs, and of underlined
shopb0ys or young women, not too
ghostly to firt and romp, who treacle
their speech with vulgar and somewhat
greasy expressions of universal love.
The change is great, but we cannot say
it is enc calculated to increase the rev.
erence Of men for the world that is IN
seen and eternal.-LOndOn Saturday
RP3,iP2U