ABSTRACT
YOU agree with me, my friend, in lamenting the evils which the superstitious folly of mankind has in so many instances brought upon them. Yet you seem to doubt whether the extraordinary calamities which I have related, as having befallen the family of Falconberg, are to be imputed solely to that cause. You say, Sir Mordaunt’s insanity, and not his prejudices, was the chief source of those calamities. But is there not every reason to believe that his derangement of mind was occasioned by his bigotry, and that the men to whom he gave up the little understanding he ever possessed, found, that by influencing and irritating a disposition naturally selfish, violent, and suspicious, they should have the power to detach him from all those affections which humanize the heart, and obtain such a command over him as would throw his large property into their hands? How well they succeeded my narrative has declared. You are, however, a little disposed, I see, to cavil at the probability of my story. My good friend, is there any thing impossible in it? Unless there be, suspend awhile your desire to criticise its probabilities; and recollect how many strange things both you and I (whose ages together make not half a century) have seen, which had we read of, or been told of them, a few years ago, we should have considered as the visions of a disordered imagination.1
