There were, upon the borders, many consecrated wells, for resorting to which the people’s credulity is severely censured, by a worthy physician of the seventeenth century; who himself believed in a shower of living herrings having fallen near Dumfries.  “Many run superstitiously to other wells, and there obtain, as they imagine, health and advantage; and there they offer bread and cheese, or money, by throwing them into the well.”  In another part of the MS. occurs the following passage.  “In the bounds of the lands of Eccles, belonging to a lyneage of the name of Maitland, there is a loch called the Dowloch, of old resorted to with much superstition, as medicinal both for men and beasts, and that with such ceremonies, as are shrewdly suspected to have been begun with witchcraft, and increased afterward by magical directions:  For, burying of a cloth, or somewhat that did relate to the bodies of men and women, and a shackle, or teather, belonging to cow or horse; and these being cast into the loch, if they did float, it was taken for a good omen of recovery, and a part of the water carried to the patient, though to remote places, without saluting or speaking to any they met by the way; but, if they did sink, the recovery of the party was hopeless.  This custom was of late much curbed and restrained; but since the discovery of many medicinal fountains near to the place, the vulgar, holding that it may be as medicinal as these are, at this time begin to re-assume their former practice.”—­Account of Presbytery of Penpont, in Macfarlane’s MSS.

The idea, that the spirits of the deceased return to haunt the place, where on earth they have suffered or have rejoiced, is, as Dr. Johnson has observed, common to the popular creed of all nations The just and noble sentiment, implanted in our bosoms by the Deity, teaches us, that we shall not slumber for ever, as the beasts that perish.—­Human vanity, or credulity, chequers, with its own inferior and base colours, the noble prospect, which is alike held out to us by philosophy and by religion.  We feel, according to the ardent expression of the poet, that we shall not wholly die; but from hence we vainly and weakly argue, that the same scenes, the same passions, shall delight and actuate the disembodied spirit, which affected it while in its tenement of clay.  Hence the popular belief, that the soul haunts the spot where the murdered body is interred; that its appearances are directed to bring down vengeance on its murderers; or that, having left its terrestrial form in a distant clime, it glides before its former friends, a pale spectre, to warn them of its decease.  Such tales, the foundation of which is an argument from our present feelings to those of the spiritual world, form the broad and universal basis of the popular superstition regarding departed spirits; against which reason has striven in vain, and universal experience has offered a disregarded testimony.  These legends are peculiarly