On the outskirts of the ever-widening circle lighted up by science there is always a border-land wherein superstition holds sway. ‘The arts and sciences may drive away the vulgar hobgoblin of darker days; but they bring with them new sources of illusion. The ghosts of old could only gibber; the spirits of our day can read and write, and play on divers musical instruments, and quote Shakespeare and Milton. It is not, therefore, altogether surprising to learn that they can take photographs also. You go to have your photograph taken, we will suppose, desiring only to see your own features depicted in the carte; and lo! the spirits have been at work, and a photographic phantom makes its appearance beside you. It is true this phantom is of a hazy and dubious aspect: the ‘dull mechanic ghost’ is indistinct, and may be taken for anyone. Still, it is not difficult for the eye of fancy to trace in it the lineaments of some departed friend, who, it is to be assumed, has come to be photographed along with you. In fact, photography, according to the spiritualist, resembles what Byron called—

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The lightning of the mind,
Which out of things familiar, undesigned,
When least we deem of such, calls up to view
The spectres whom no exorcism can bind.

The phenomena of spiritual photography were first observed some years since, and a set of carte photographs were sent from America to Dr. Walker, of Edinburgh, in which photographic phantoms were very obviously, however indistinctly, discernible. More recently an English photographer noticed a yet stranger circumstance, though he was too sensible to seek for a supernatural interpretation of it. When he to............