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of the French Translator.
vii

tributing them to natural causes. But the second, on the contrary, firmly believes in spirits; and his Theory on Phantasmatology[1] furnishes us with an undoubted proof of this assertion. This work, the fruit of an ardent and exalted imagination, is in some degree a manual to the doctrines of the modern Seers, known in Germany under the denomination of Stillingianer. They take their name from Stilling, under which head Jung has written memoirs of his life, which forms a series of different works. This sect, which is actually in existence, is grafted on the Swedenborgians and Martinisme, and has a great number of adherents, especially in Switzerland. We also see in the number of the (English) Monthly Review for December 1811, that Mrs. Grant has given a pretty circumstantial detail of the apparitions and spirits to which the Scottish mountaineers attach implicit faith.

In making choice of the stories for my translations from the German, which I now offer to the public, I have neglected nothing to merit the approbation of those who take pleasure in this species of reading: and if this selection has the good fortune to meet with any success, it shall be followed by another; in which I shall equally endeavour to excite the curiosity of the lovers of romance; while to those who are

  1. Theorie der Geister-Kunde. Nuremberg, 1808, in 8vo.—This work has been censured by several Protestant consistories.