"
The Hall of course comes in for its share, the common people having
always a propensity to furnish a great superannuated building of the
kind with supernatural inhabitants. The gloomy galleries of such old
family mansions; the stately chambers, adorned with grotesque carvings
and faded paintings; the sounds that vaguely echo about them; the
moaning of the wind; the cries of rooks and ravens from the trees and
chimney-tops; all produce a state of mind favourable to superstitious
fancies.
In one chamber of the Hall, just opposite a door which opens upon a
dusky passage, there is a full-length portrait of a warrior in armour;
when, on suddenly turning into the passage, I have caught a sight of
the portrait, thrown into strong relief by the dark pannelling against
which it hangs, I have more than once been startled, as though it were
a figure advancing towards me.
To superstitious minds, therefore, predisposed by the strange and
melancholy stories that are connected with family paintings, it needs
but little stretch of fancy, on a moonlight night, or by the
flickering light of a candle, to set the old pictures on the walls in
motion, sweeping in their robes and trains about the galleries.
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