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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: of the painful horrors which an actual belief in such prodigies
inflicts. Such a belief nowadays belongs only to fools and
children. It is not necessary that your ears should tingle and
your complexion change, like that of Theodore at the approach of
the spectral huntsman. All that is indispensable for the
enjoyment of the milder feeling of supernatural awe is, that you
should be susceptible of the slight shuddering which creeps over
you when you hear a tale of terror--that well-vouched tale which
the narrator, having first expressed his general disbelief of all
such legendary lore, selects and produces, as having something in
it which he has been always obliged to give up as inexplicable.
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