ILLUSIONS OF ART.

GHOSTS OF THE MIND’S EYE,orPHANTASMA.

GHOSTS OF THE MIND’S EYE,

or

PHANTASMA.

GHOSTS OF THE EYE,orOPTICAL ILLUSION.

GHOSTS OF THE EYE,

or

OPTICAL ILLUSION.

In the first class there is no real or palpable object, or, if there be, it is not what it appears; the illusion is but the reality of romance, depending altogether on excited or disordered conditions of the mind: the source, therefore, either of bright or gloomy phantoms, as the mood may be.

On this scroll I have recorded thosemoods of mind, which, excited by memory or association, or influenced by such casualties as solitude, moonlight darkness, or localities of interest, or the poring over tales of horror at midnight, may be considered thepredisposing causesof illusion. Such are: —

The second class, which are spectres or ghosts of the eye, may be scientifically explained by the laws which govern thematerial world. These are the only substantial ghosts which I can grant to my friend. The objects themselves exist, and are exactly as they appear. The philosopher regards them as interesting exceptions to general rules, frompeculiarcombinations ofnaturalcauses. The unlearned will term them preternaturalphenomena, simply because they are of uncommon occurrence. But which among the works of divine creation is not a phenomenon? We may think we know a law of nature, but can we analyse it? Novelty and magnitude astonish, but that which is familiar excites not our surprise. We gaze with delight on the progress of an eclipse; we watch with wonder the eccentric course of the comet; but we look on the sun in its meridian glory with a cold and apathetic indifference. Yet do they all alike display Divine Omnipotence, and the expansion of a vegetable germ, the bursting of a flower, is as great a miracle as the overwhelming of a deluge, the annihilation of a mighty world.

To discriminate between these classes is not difficult: we may prove their nature by simple experiment.Optical illusionswill bedoubledby a straining or altering of the axes of the eyes; and, by turning round, as they are removed from the axis of vision, they will disappear.

So, indeed, will those of the second class, which arerealobjects converted into phantoms by mental excitement or disorder.

But in the purelymetaphysical ghostor phantom, the change of position or locality will not essentially dispel the illusion, (the spectrum following, as it were, the motion of the eye;) because it exists in the mind itself, either as a faint or transient idea, or a mere outline, fading perhaps in a brighter light, or as the more permanent and confirmed impression of insanity, (unchanged even by “brilliant glare,”) or from the day-dream of the castle-builder, to the deep and dreadful delusion of the maniac.

Among the mute productions of nature, there are eccentricities and rarities, which, in default of analysis or explanation, would not fail of being referred to some supernatural agency: as Leo Afer, according to Burton, accounts for the swarms of locusts once descending at Fez, in Barbary, and at Arles, in France, in 1553. “It could not be from natural causes; they cannot imagine whence they come, but from heaven. Are these and such creatures, corn, wood, stones, worms, wool, blood, &c. lifted up into the middle region by the sunbeams, as Baracellus the physician disputes, and thence let fall with showers, or there engendered? Cornelius Gemma is of that opinion, they are there conceived by celestial influences: others suppose they are immediately from God, or prodigies raised by arts and illusions of spirits which are princes of the ayre.”

Over Languedoc there once burst an awful and supernatural cloud, from which fell immense snow-flakes like glittering stars. There is nothing strange in this, for the shape of the snow-flake is ever that of anasteroïd. But then there came pouring down gigantic hail-stones, with their glassy surface impressed with the figures of helmets, and swords, and scutcheons. This too may be the effect of very sudden and irregular congelation; but this law was not known, and therefore its result was a mystery.

Among the wonders seen by the great traveller, Pietro della Valla, was thebleedingcypress-tree, which shadows the tomb of Cyrus, in Italy. Under the hollow of its boughs, in his day, it was lighted with lamps and was consecrated as an oratory. To this shrine resorted many a devout pilgrim, impressed with a holy belief in themiracle. And what was this but the glutinous crimson fluid, exuding from the diseased alburnum of a tree, which the woodmen indeed termbleeding, but which the ancient Turks affirmed, or believed, to be converted on every Friday into drops of real blood?

The red snow, which is not uncommon in the arctic regions, is thus tinted by very minute cryptogamic plants; and the fairy ring is but a circle of herbage poisoned by a fungus.

In Denbighshire (I may add) the prevalent belief is, that theshiveringof the aspen is fromsympathywith that tree in Palestine, which was hewn into the true cross.

The simple stratification of vapours, especially during sudden transitions of temperature, may produce very interesting optical phenomena; not by refraction or reflection, but merely by partial obscuration of an object. We have examples of these illusive spectra in the gigantic icebergs seen by Captain Scoresby, and other arctic voyagers, which assumed the shape of towers, and spires, and cathedrals, and obelisks, that were constantly displacing each other in whimsical confusion and endless variety, like the figures of a kaleidoscope. Phipps thus describes their majestic beauty: “The ice that had parted from the main body, they had now time to admire, as it no longer obstructed their course; the various shapes in which the broken fragments appeared were indeed very curious and amusing. One remarkable piece described a magnificent arch, so large and completely formed, that a sloop of considerable burden might have sailed through it without lowering her masts. Another represented a church, with windows, pillars, and domes.”

We may scarcely wonder at the mystifications of nature, when she assumes these gorgeous eccentricities, as have been witnessed also in the barren steppes of the Caraccas, on the Orinoko, where the palm-groves appear to be cut asunder; in the Llanos, where chains of hills appear suspended in the air, and rivers and lakes to flow on arid sand; in the lake of the Gazelles, seen by the Arabs and the African traveller; and the lakes seen by Captain Munday, during his tour in India.

The very clearness of the atmosphere, like that which floats around the Rhine, renders distance especially distinct; but mountainous regions, from the attraction of electric clouds, afford the highest examples of atmospheric beauty and effect. London and other cities, however crowded with lofty buildings, are not deficient in these aërial illusions. Even from the bridge of Blackfriars I have seen a cumulo stratus cloud so strangely intersect the steeples and the giant chimneys of London, as distinctly to represent a sea-port, with its vessels and distant mountains.

We have among us several minor illusions, which are only less imposing because more familiar; and though often occurring, few are recorded with scientific accuracy. The phosphorescence of the marshes, the ignis fatuus, Will o’Wisp, Jack o’ the Lanthorn, or Friar Rush, and the corpse-candles, are mere luminous exhalations, strained into the marvellous by the vulgar, and thus set down as heralds of mortality. The dancing-light of luminous flies has been termed thegreen light of death; and, if you wish for more, Astrophel, read the “Armorican Magazine” of John Wesley, or the quaint volume of Burton, and thereabouts where he writes in this fashion: “The thickness of the aire may cause such effects, or any object not well discerned in the dark, fear and phantasie will suspect to be a ghost or devil. Glowwormes, firedrakes, meteors, ignis fatuus, which Plinius calls Castor and Pollux, with many such that appear in moorish grounds, about church-yards, moist valleys, or where battles have been fought, the causes of which read in Goclenius, Velcurius, Finkius, &c.”

The Parhelia, or mock suns, are produced by the reflection of the sun’s light on a frozen cloud. How readily these phenomena are magnified you may learn from ancient and modern records. In 1223 four suns were seen of crimson, inclosed in a wide circle of crystal colour. This is natural: but then comes the miracle. In the same year two giant dragons were seen in the air, flapping their monstrous wings and engaging in single combat, until they both fell into the sea and were drowned! Then, in 1104, there were seen four white circles rolled around the sun: and in 1688, two suns and a reversed rainbow appeared at Bishop’s Lavington, in Wiltshire: and in February, 1647, there is an account and sketch of three suns, and an inverted rainbow, which Baxter terms “Binorum Pareliorum Φαινομενον.” And because there were two lunar and one solar eclipses in 1652, it was called, as Lily records, “Annus tenebrum,” or “the dark year.”

The Corona, or halo around the sun, moon, and stars, is easily illustrated by the zone formed by placing, during a frost, a lighted candle in a cloud of steam or vapour.

The Aurora Borealis isarctic electricity, and is beautifully imitated by the passage of an electric flash through an exhausted glass cylinder.

The rainbow is a combination ofnatural prismsbreaking the light into colours; and it may be seen in the cloud, or in the spray of the ocean, or in the beautiful cascades of Schaffhausen, Niagara, or Terni, or indeed in any foaming spray on which themeridiansunbeams fall, or even in the dewy grass, lying, as it were, on the ground.

When the sun shines on a cloud, there is always a bow produced visible to all who are placed at the proper angle. The lunar rainbow is achromatic, or destitute of colour, because reflected light is not easily refracted into colour. In a brilliant sunset the floods of light around him often indicate the gradation of prismatic colouring.

Cast.In some waterfalls I have seen the Iris form a complete circle; as in the Velino at Terni, and in others, especially in Ionia and Italy. A perfect illusion is produced, for the bow seems to approach the spectator and then recede, as if Juno were sending her messenger on some special mission. There are many minds which would yield with delight to this conviction, and such probably was the illusion of Benvenuto Cellini—was it not? “This resplendent light is to be seen over my shadow till two o’clock in the afternoon, and it appears to the greatest advantage when the grass is moist with dew. It is likewise visible in the evening at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of when I was at Paris, because the air is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I could distinguish it there much plainer than in Italy, where the moists are much more frequent, &c.” A consciousness of superior talent, and probably the homage which was paid him even by the members of the holy conclave, were the springs of this flattering vision.

Ida.The beauty of these must light up even the fancy of a child, yet a holier feeling will ever inspire a Christian philosopher, when the bow is seen in the cloud, for it was the sign of the covenant. There is, indeed, something in the glories of the firmament which never fails to elevate my own thoughts, and I can readily sympathise with the Spanish religionists of the fifteenth century, and with the North Americans, who gaze upon the beautiful constellation of the “Southern Cross,” insulated as it is from all other stars in its own dark space; in solemn belief that it is the great symbolical banner held out by the Deity in approval of their faith.

Ev.The “Fata Morgana,” in the straits of Reggio, presents a perfect scene of enchantment; when the shouts of “Morgana, Morgana,” echo from rock and mountain, as the wondering people flock in crowds to the shore. During this splendid illusion, gigantic columns, and cloud-capt towers, and gorgeous palaces, and solemn temples, are floating on the verge of the horizon, and sometimes beneath this picture of a city, on the very bosom of the water, afainterspectrum may be seen, which is a reflected image of the other. These spectra are usuallycolourless, but if certain watery vapours are floating in the air, they are beautifully fringed with the three primitive colours of the prism. Such also is the illusion of the Calenture, orsylvan scenesof the ocean.

Cast.Let us seek these wonders of the waters, Astrophel; perchance we might, in some enchanted hour, see even beneath yon Severn flood the grotto of Sabrina, with its green and silver weeds, its purple shells and arborescent corallines; and, if we dive into the depths of the sea, might we not light on the palace of Amphitrite, and, while the Nereids and Tritons were mourning over the desolation of a shipwreck, hear the echo of some Ariel’s song “full fathom five,” undulating through the water; or realise the overwhelming of Maha-Velipoor, in the curse of Kehama:

“Their golden summits in the noontide ray,Shone o’er the dark green deep, that roll’d between;For domes, and pinnacles, and spires were seenPeering above the sea.”

“Their golden summits in the noontide ray,Shone o’er the dark green deep, that roll’d between;For domes, and pinnacles, and spires were seenPeering above the sea.”

“Their golden summits in the noontide ray,Shone o’er the dark green deep, that roll’d between;For domes, and pinnacles, and spires were seenPeering above the sea.”

“Their golden summits in the noontide ray,

Shone o’er the dark green deep, that roll’d between;

For domes, and pinnacles, and spires were seen

Peering above the sea.”

Or the legend ofThierna Na Oge, in Lough Neagh, in Ireland; for Moore has sung —

“On Lough Neagh’s banks, when the fisherman strays,He sees the round towers of other days;”

“On Lough Neagh’s banks, when the fisherman strays,He sees the round towers of other days;”

“On Lough Neagh’s banks, when the fisherman strays,He sees the round towers of other days;”

“On Lough Neagh’s banks, when the fisherman strays,

He sees the round towers of other days;”

and why may notwe?

Who that has wandered among the dark mountains of Brecon, remembers not the blue pool of Lynsavaddon, and has not listened to the tales of the mountaineers, of the city over which to this day its waves are rolling? and in the beautiful vale of Eidournion, in Merioneth—but listen to a fragment of a romance of this valley, which from memory I quote: —

There was a proud and wealthy prince in Gwyneth, when the beautiful isle was under the rule of the Cymri. At his palace gate a voice was once heard echoing among the mountains these words: ‘Edivar a ddau’—Repentance will come. The prince demanded ‘When?’ and in the rolling thunder the voice was again heard, ‘At the third generation.’

Nothing daunted, the wicked lord lived on, committing plunder and all evil excesses, and laughing to scorn the holy hymns in the churches. A son and heir was born to him, and there was a gorgeous assemblage in the hall of beautiful ladies and high-born nobles, to celebrate the festival of his birth.

It was midnight, when in the ear of an old harper, a shrill voice whispered, ‘Edivar, Edivar;’ and a little bird hovered over him, and flew out of the palace in the pale moonshine: and the harper and the little bird went together into the mountains. The bird flitted before him in the centre of the moon’s disc, and warbled its mournful cry of ‘Edivar’ so plaintively, that the old man thought of the shriek of his little child Gwenhwyvar, as she sunk beneath the waters of Glaslyn.

On the top of the mountain he sank down with weariness, and the little bird was not with him; all was silent, save the cataract and the sheep-bells on the mountain side. In alarm at the wild solitude around him, he turned towards the castle, but its lordly towers had vanished, and in the place of its woods and turrets there was a waste of rolling waters—with his lone harp floating on their surface.

Ev.I am unwilling to check your flight, fair Castaly, but my illustrations are not yet exhausted.

The “Spectre of the Brocken” is a mere shadow of the spectator on a gigantic scale. This phantom, the “Schattenmann,” according to vulgar tradition, haunts the lofty range of the Hartz mountains, in Hanover. It is usually observed when the sun’s rays are thrown horizontally on thin fleecy clouds, or vapour of highly reflective power, assuming the shape of a gigantic shade on the cloud.

The romantic region of the Hartz was the grand temple of Saxon idolatry, the very hot-bed of terrible shadows; the first of May especially being the grand annual rendezvous of unearthly forms. Even now, it is affirmed, Woden, known in Brunswick as the Hunter of Hackelburgh, (whose sepulchre, an immense rough stone, is shown to the traveller,) is still influential in the Oden Wald and among the ruins of Rodenstein: even as in our own Lancashire, a dark gigantic horseman rushes on a giant steed in stormy nights, over “Horrock Moor;” indeed, a spot or tomb is still shown where he used to disappear.

Thus are the “Spectres of the Brocken” invested with supernatural dignity, in the minds of credulity and ignorance. And no wonder, for, although the discoverer of this gigantic illusion, Mr. Jordan, might convince the Germans of the nature of this shadow, how could the credulous believe, when they beheld asecond figure, a faint refracted spectrum of the shadow, that it was any other than the shadow king of the Brocken himself, frowning defiance on intruders.

And this reminds me of the confession of Gaffarel, in his “Unheard of Curiosities” of the seventeenth century; in his quaint chapter on the “readynge of the cloudes and whatever else is seene in the air, and of hieroglyphicks in the cloudes.”

Among other miraculous illusions, as recorded by Cardanus, “An angel once wafted on the cloudes above Millane, and great was the consternation at its appearance, until Pellicanus, a philosopher, made it plainly appear, that this angel was nothing else but the reflection of an image of stone, that was on the top of the church of Saint Godart, which was represented in the thick cloudes as in a looking-glasse.”

While I was in South Wales, in 1836, I conversed with a labourer in the Cyfarthfa works at Merthyr Tydvil, an illiterate seer, who saw, three times appearing before him, an unsubstantial tram-road; and on it a train drawn by a horse, and in this, the dead body of a man. Twice thisshadowemerged from the earth, and on the third ascent he looked on it, and recognized the well-known face of a comrade. The man was horror struck, but his friend lived to laughat him.

When my friend, Mr. David Taylor, ascended the mountain that rises over Chamouni, on the opposite side of the valley to Mont Blanc, his magnified shadow was distinctly seen by him on the vapoury cloud that floated between these giant rocks.

In February 1837, two gentlemen, on whom I confidently trust, were standing on Calton Hill while a murky cloud hung over Edinburgh. Above this veil Arthur’s Seat peeped out like a rocky island beneath two white arches, like the lunar bows; and on the cloud itself, each gentleman saw the shadow of his companion magnified to gigantic proportions.

The aeronaut, among other glories of his ascent, may by chance be gratified by the shadow of his balloon on the face of a cumulus cloud; thus did the Duke of Brunswick, who ascended with Mrs. Graham, in August 1836. And this is the analogous recital of Prince Puckler Muskau, in his “Tutti Frutti.”

“We dipped insensibly into the sea of clouds which enveloped us like a thick veil, and through which the sun appeared like the moon in Ossian. This illumination produced a singular effect, and continued for some time, till the clouds separated, and we remained swimming about beneath the once more clear azure heavens. Shortly after we beheld, to our great astonishment, a species of ‘Fata Morgana,’ seated upon an immense mountain of clouds the colossal picture of the balloon and ourselves surrounded by myriads of variegated rainbow tints. A full half hour the spectral reflected picture hovered constantly by our side. Each slender thread of the network appeared distended to the size of a ship’s cable, and we ourselves two tremendous giants enthroned on the clouds.”

The phantom, which rode side by side with Turpin, might be a mere reflected shadow in the mist; indeed, Burton writes that “Vitellio hath such another instance of a familiar acquaintance of his, that after the want of three or four nights’ sleep, as he was riding by a river-side, saw another riding with him, and using all such gestures as he did, but whenmore light appeared, it vanished.”

The principles of refraction are the sources of many an illusion, which is startling even to those who are aware of them. The sea, the vessels floating on its surface, the rocks and buildings on its shores, often appear elevated far beyond their usual position: things are thus presented to the eye which, in the direct course of the rays, would be completely out of sight; and the praises bestowed on the Irish telescope may not have been a bull, although we are assured that we maysee through it round the corner.

Baron Humboldt, Mr. Huddart, Professor Vince, Captain Scoresby and others, will entertain you with these natural eccentricities, if you read the learned letter of Sir David Brewster, on “Natural Magic;” and he will teach you how easy is the solution of all these marvels, on the principles of atmospheric reflection. Yet how many are there who are not contented with the light of our philosophy, though it may fall like a sunbeam on the mind. Like the recorder of the “Unheard-of Curiosities,” they, at one time, confess theoptical illusion, as when the Romans “saw their navy in the clouds;” at another, as when Constantine professed to see the “Crosse shining most gloriously in the aire,” marked with the motto, “In hoc signo vinces,”—philosophy was silent, and they believed itmightbe divine.

But a mind in itsstate of naturecannot know all this. If a savage looked on the two white horses cut on the chalk hills of Berkshire and of Wiltshire, on the white cross of the Saxons on the Bledlow Ridge in Buckinghamshire, and on the white-leaf cross near Princes Risboro’,—would he not deem them deities, or the work of a magician or a devil?

When the sailors of Lord Nelson saw the bloated corpse of the murdered Prince Caraccioli floating erect in the water directly towards their ship, can we wonder they should deem it asupernaturalvisitation?

When Franklin set his bells a ringing, by drawing down the electric fluid from the thunder-cloud, and when Columbus foretold to the hour the sun’s eclipse;—can we wonder that the transatlantic Indians listened, as to one endued with preternatural knowledge, or that the other might be thought superhuman? And when the king of Siam was assured that water could be congealed into ice, on which the sounding skate could glide,—can we wonder that he smiled in absolute disbelief of such a change, and called the tale a lie.

Thus, when the peasants of Cardigan, who were not versed in Pontine architecture, looked on the bridge which the monks ofYspitty C’en Vaenhad thrown across the torrent of theMonach, they could not believe it a work of human, but ofinfernal, hands, and called it the “Devil’s Bridge.”

On my ascent of the Vann mountain in Brecon, there often came a mass of limestone rolling down the precipice. “Ah sure,” said the old shepherd, who was watching his fold on the mountain-side, “the fairies are at their gambols, master, for they sometimes do play at bowls with these chalk stones.” Such was his explanation; but, on my gaining another ridge of the Brecon Beacon, I startled a whole herd of these fairies, who scudded off as fast as their legs could carry them, having first changed themselves into a flock of sheep.

There was once a caravan journeying from Nubia to Cairo, which met the Savans attending on the expedition of Napoleon into Egypt, among whom was Rigo, the painter. Struck with the deep character of expression in the face of one of the Nubians, Rigo induced him, with gold, to sit for his portrait. The African sat calmly perusing its progress until the laying on of thecolours, when, with a cry of terror, he rushed from the house, and, to his awe-struck companions, affirmed that his head and half his body had been cut off by an enchanter. And this impression was not solitary, for an assemblage of the Nubians were equally terror-struck, and (somewhat like thosemonomaniacswho refuse to drink water which reflects their faces, believing that they areswallowing their friends,) could never be dispossessed of the notion that the picture was formed of the loppings and toppings of the human frame.

We believe these influences the more, because we see that, even to some few men wiser than they, a leaning to superstition will warp a simple fact into a wonder; and that mere sensitiveness of mind may work as great a fear.

Suetonius tells us that Caligula and Augustus were the most abject cowards in a thunder-storm; and the bishop of Langres D’Escaro fell in a fainting-fit whenever an eclipse took place,—a weakness which at length proved his death.

There was an old house in Angoulême, the “Chateau du Diable,” on the spot where the sable fiend was wont to repair to enjoy his moonlight walk. The house was never finished, for the devil, jealous of this usurpation, like Michael Scott’s spirit, destroyed every night the walls which had been erected during the day. At length the men abandoned their work in despair. On the twenty-fifth night in May (1840), the ruined windows seemed on an instant in brilliant illumination, which struck the inhabitants of the little village of “Petit-Rochford” with wonder and dismay. Some dauntless heroes, however, sallied forth with weapons to storm the enchanted castle. In an upper room, lighted by eight blood-red wax candles, they discovered a man of a strange and melancholy aspect, tracing cabalistic figures on the sanded floor. He was conveyed to the maire, and was proved to be a poor sawyer, named Favreau, who, bound by a superstitious oath, self-administered, had thus created a sensation of terror throughout a whole community.

In the records of the Harleian Miscellany, the curious reader may discover one which might impress his mind with some terrific ideas of the natural history of the south of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is styled, “The True and Wonderful.” The portion of the MSS. to which I allude is the “Legend of the Serpent of St. Leonard’s Forest.” This terrific legend of my own native town was a favourite of my boyish days; it has moulted some feather of its once awful interest, and is now but the shadow of a memory; and those who were once converts to its reality, now laugh the legend to scorn.

ILLUSIONS OF ART.

“If in NaplesI should report this now, would they believe me?”Tempest.

“If in NaplesI should report this now, would they believe me?”Tempest.

“If in NaplesI should report this now, would they believe me?”Tempest.

“If in NaplesI should report this now, would they believe me?”Tempest.

“If in Naples

I should report this now, would they believe me?”

Tempest.

Ev.The science of chemistry has unfolded most of the secrets ofmaterialmiracles, as Psychology those of the intellect and senses.

Not that I would attempt thus toexplainyour wonders of Palingenesy, Astrophel; I will rather favour you with another batch, for I was once fond of unkennelling these sly foxes.

It is solemnly attested by the noble secretary of a Duke of Guise, that, in company with many scientific men, he saw the face of a person in his blood, which had been given by a bishop, for experiment, to La Pierre, the chemist, of Le Temple, near Paris.

There is an old book of one Dr. Garmann, “De Miraculis Mortuorum,” and thushewrites:—“When human salt, extracted and depurated from the skull of a man, was placed in a water dish, there appeared next morning in the mass, figures of men fixed to a cross;” and “when human skulls, on which mosses had vegetated, were pounded, the family of the apothecary who pounded them were alarmed in the night by strange and terrific noises from the chamber.”

The body of the Cid, Ruy Diaz, as we read in Heywood’s “Hierarchie,” sat in state at the altar of the cathedral at Toledo for ten years. A Jew one day attempted, in derision, to pull him by the beard; but on the first touch, the Cid started up, and in high resentment scared the Israelite away by the unsheathing of his mighty sword. And Master Planche has brought you legends from the church of Maria Taferl, in Lower Austria, and other noted spots on the Danube.

When Bernini’s bust of Charles I. was being conveyed in a barge on the Thames, from a strange bird there descended a drop of blood on the bust,which could never be effaced.

This is nothing but a fact in naturemystified, and (like the growth of the Christmas flowering thorn of Glastonbury, from thewalking-staffof Joseph of Arimathæa) is too glaring to be misconstrued.

Other of these blood miracles are still more easy of solution. The blood spots from David Rizzio areshownto this day in Holyrood: and it was believed, that after the Irish massacre the blood of the victims then slain on Portnedown Bridge, has indelibly stained its battlements. But these spots are nothing but the brown vegetative stains which geology has discovered on many fossils.

Now listen to Father Gregory of Tours. “A thief was committing sacrilege at the tomb of Saint Helius, when the saint caught him by the skirt, and held him fast.” Probably his garment hitched on a nail. Another old man, while removing a stone from the grave of a saint, was in a moment struck blind, dumb, and deaf. Probably the mephitic gases exhaling from the tomb were the source of all this mystery.

Then, as to the impositions of the priesthood. In Naples was the blood of Saint Januarius concealed in a phial, and on certain solemn days this so called blood really became liquified; but it was effected secretly, by chemical means; and I remember, the archbishop who confessed the secret to the French general Championet, was exiled by the Vatican.

In the reign of Henry VIII. too (I quote from Hume), other bloody secrets of this sort were unfolded. “At Hales, in the county of Gloucester, there had been shown during several ages the blood of Christ brought from Jerusalem; and it is easy to imagine the veneration with which such a relic was regarded. A miraculous circumstance also attended this relic. The sacred blood was not visible to any one in mortal sin, even when set before him; and, till he had performed good works sufficient for his absolution, it would not deign to discover itself to him. At the dissolution of the monastery the whole contrivance was detected. Two of the monks, who were let into the secret, had taken the blood of a duck, which they renewed every week; they put it in a vial, one side of which consisted of thin and transparent crystal, the other of thick and opaque. When any rich pilgrim arrived, they were sure to show him the dark side of the vial till masses and offerings had expiated his offences, and then, finding his money, or patience, or faith, nearly exhausted, they made him happy by turning the vial.”

But there is no end to relics in Italy. Even two hundred years ago, John Evelyn makes out this catalogue of those he saw in St. Mark’s, at Venice.

“Divers heads of saints, inchased in gold; a small ampulla, or glass, with our Saviour’s blood; a great morsel of the real cross; one of the nails; a thorn; a fragment of the column to which our Lord was bound when scourged; a piece of St. Luke’s arm; a rib of St. Stephen; and a finger of Mary Magdalene!”

Among the more innocent illusions of art, I may remind you of concave and cylindrical mirrors and lenses, the magic lanthorn, “les ombres chinoises,”and the phantasmagoria of Cagliastro, by which daggers appear to strike the breast of the spectator, and images of objects in other rooms are thrown on the walls of that in which we are sitting. A mirror, thus accidentally placed, has afforded the evidence of murder within our own time.

The duration of impressions on the eye, is another source of illusion. An image remains on the retina, I believe, about the eighth of a second; as it departs, if another object supplies its place in quick succession, the two images form, as it were, a union, and become blended. A knowledge of this law, in the ages of blind superstition, would have placed an overwhelming weapon in the hands of priestcraft; in our day, it is the source of rational and innocent pleasure, by the invention of optical toys.

The whisking of an ignited stick produces a fiery circle—why? Because fromexcessive rapiditythe rays from one point remain impressed on the retina, until the revolution completes the circle.

TheThaumatrope, or wonder-turner, and the Phantasmascope, are ingenious illustrations of this law of impression; so also is thewhirling machine, which so beautifully evinces the fact of white being compounded of all the prismatic colours, blended in certain proportions. The prismatic Iris is painted on a revolving circle; by excessive rapidity of revolution, the colours are actually blended (as if mixed in a vessel) on the retina, and the surface of the machine is white to the eye.

To these may be added the combustion of phosphorus and other substances, in oxygen: red, green, and blue lights, which change the angel face of beauty into the visage of a demon; and the inhalation of noxious fumes and gases, creating altogether a new train of phantoms in the world of experimental magic, and developing the formerly occult mysteries of the art of incantation.

Chance may also involve a seeming mystery of very awful import. Some years ago the town of Reading was thus bewildered. On the loaves were seen the most mysterious signs. On one, a skeleton’s head and cross-bones; on another, the word “resurgam;” on another, a date of death was marked in deep impressions. The loaves of course were, by some mysterious influence, the vehicles of solemn warning from the Deity.

The baker waschurchwardenof St. Giles’s; his oven needed flooring, and, winking at the sacrilege, he stole the flat inscribed tombstones from the church-yard, and therewith floored his oven. From the inscriptions of these stones the loaves took their mystic impressions.

In the reign of Edward the Martyr, during one of the synods assembled by Dunstan, the floor of the chamber suddenly gave way, involving the death of many of its members. It chanced that Dunstan had on that day warned the king not to attend the synod, and the only beam which did not give way was that on which his own chair was placed. This might be coincidence merely, although I believe it was discovered that it was a concerted trick; but the preservation of the king and the priest were, of course, attributed to special interference of the Deity.

But there is one phenomenon in animal chemistry so rare, and indeed so wonderful, that there are few even among philosophers who can give it credence. This is “spontaneous combustion,” the result of an evolution of phosphorated hydrogen from the blood; the remote cause of which may be traced in some cases to the free use of alcohol. The records of these cases are very circumstantial, especially the two most remarkable—that of the Contessa Cornelia Bandi, of Cerena; and of Don Bertholi, an ecclesiastic of Mount Valerius. But I check my wanderings into this maze of mystery, in pity to your patience, fair ladies; for I perceive Astrophel is again out of our sphere, and, enveloped in the cloud of his own mystic meditations, will not know that this spontaneous combustion is almost as wondrous a tale as his “Lady of the Ashes.”

ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS.

“The isle is full of noises,Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears: and sometimes voices.”Tempest.

“The isle is full of noises,Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears: and sometimes voices.”Tempest.

“The isle is full of noises,Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears: and sometimes voices.”Tempest.

“The isle is full of noises,Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears: and sometimes voices.”Tempest.

“The isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears: and sometimes voices.”

Tempest.

Ev.So, you see, the effect of novelty is never more powerfully displayed than by unusual impressions on the finer senses; that appearances which the eye perceives, and which the mind cannot explain, become phantoms, involving some special motive of wonder or dismay.

So eccentric impressions on the mechanism of the internalearmay be equally illusive. We have ghosts of the ear as well as of the eye.

As ignorance has often warped the optical phenomena which certain atmospheric changes may produce, so peculiar and unusual sounds may be accounted for on equally erroneous principles, especially if they chance to resemble sounds which are the effects of daily or common causes.

As the Hebrew bards hung their harps by the waters of Babylon, the Irish were wont, during their mourning for the death of a chief, to loosen their harp-strings, and hang them on the trees; and while the wind swept the strings, they ever believed that the harp itself sympathized in their sorrow.

Thus, when the lament, or “ullaloo,” of these wild Milesians boomed along the mountain glens, mingled with the coione, or funeral song, and the poetical cadence blended with the winds, how easy to impart to it a more than human source; and thus the dismal coronach among the Scottish Highlands may be mystified into the “boding scream of the Banshee.”

It is a classical question whether the rebel giant, Typhœus, was crushed by Jupiter beneath the island of Inarime, or Mount Ætna; but it might readily be believed by the Sicilian, who had read this mythological tale, that the volcanic convulsions arose from the vain struggles for freedom of this monster, who sent forth flames from his mouth and eyes.

Within a mountain of Stony Arabia, to the north of Tor, very strange noises are often heard as of the striking of an harmonic hammer, or the sound of a humming-top, which completely infuriate the camels on the mountain when they hear it. The Arabs believe these sounds to proceed from a subterranean convent of monks, the priest of which, to assemble them to prayer, strikes with a hammer on the nakous, a metallic rod suspended in the air. M. Teetzen, who visited the spot, assures us that the cause of all this is the mere rolling of volumes of sand from the summit and sides of the mountain.

In the last century, I remember there was a legend current in the west of England, of the “Bucca,” a demon whose howling was heard amid the blast which swept along the shore. It was a sure foreboding of shipwreck. Theprophecywas often but too fully verified, but the voice of the demon was merely the premonitory gale from one certain quarter, which is always theavant-courierof a tempest.

I remember, when I was a child, the prevalent belief in Horsham, that, at a certain hour of the night, the ghost of Mrs. Hamel was heard groaning in her vault, beneath the great eastern window, and it required some self-possession to walk, at midnight, around this haunted tomb; for few would believe that the noises were nothing more than the wind sweeping along the vaulted aisles of the church.

Those very extraordinary impositions on the sense of hearing at Woodstock, in the truth of which, Astrophel, your faith was so firm, were resorted to to create terror, and effect a political purpose. In “the genuine History of the good Devil of Woodstock,” written in 1649, we are told of the pealing of cannon, the barking of dogs, and neighing of horses, and other mysterious sounds, which certainly created the greatest wonder and anxiety, until “funny Joe Collins” explained and demonstrated all the mechanical process of this imposture. You will find also the account of these gems of marvellous history in Sinclair and Plott, and the chronicles of those days, which eclipse the haunted house of Athenodorus in Pliny.

In the 16th century, Master Samuel Stryck discussed the whole question regarding these haunted houses, and warnings of ghosts, and belief in the reality of apparitions, in his work published at Francofurt, “De Jure Spectrorum,” and thus he runs up the question of damages: “If the house be haunted, the tenant might bring in a set-off against his rent, thus—‘Deduct for spectres in bed and bed-room, and elsewhere, 5l.10s.’ ”

The drama of the Drummer, by Addison, I believe was founded on the mystery of the “Demon of Tedworth,” which beat the drum in the house of Mr. Mompesson. This also was the source of extreme wonder, until the drummer was tried, and convicted, and Mr. Mompesson confessed that the mystery was the effect of contrivance.

The author of the Pandemonium, or Devils’ Cloyster, garnished his book with tales of this nature. In 1667, when he slept in “my Lady chamber,” in the house of a nobleman, he was waited on by a succession of spectral visitors; the explanation of which Ferriar and Hibbert, and others, have wrought for you, if you deign to turn over the leaves of their natural philosophy.

The impostures of the Stockwell miracles of 1772 are recorded, with other curiosities, in the “Every-day Book” of Hone, the skilful and unwearied collector of our ancient mysteries.

The Cock-lane ghost is another instance of illusion in the ears of the credulous. Although Dr. Johnson, the Bishop of Salisbury, and other learned Thebans, sat in solemn judgment to develop its mystery, I believe many were so in love with the marvellous, that they regretted the unravelling of the plot, and still believed; as Commodore Trunnion, in despite of evidence as to the fluttering in his chimney, swore that he knew a devil from a jackdaw, as well as any man in the kingdom.

Astr.I wonder, Evelyn, at your veneration for the classics; for are they not replete with stories, which, if true, (and I believe them so,) will undermine all your philosophy? When Pausanias writes of the ghosts at Marathon, of horses and men who were heard rushing on to battle four hundred years after they were slain; and Plutarch of the spectres and supernatural sounds in the baths at Chæronea, the scene of bloodshed and murder;—what may be their motives, but the record of acknowledged incidents?

Ev.The classics, if they might rise up and listen, would believe me, dear Astrophel, so clear and simple is the source of these illusions.

Of the credulity of the Romans I have spoken; but even in minds not prone to superstition, deep mental impression, or constant dwelling on a subject of interest, will effect this illusion of a sense.

In Holy Island, near the ruins of the convent (in the dungeons of which romance has decided the fate of Constance Beverley), was a small fortress of invalid soldiers. One of them once conducted a visitor to a steep rock, under which, he said, there must be a profound cavern, as the sound of a bell was distinctly heard every night at twelve o’clock, deep in the bowels of the earth. The traveller soon discovered that the mysterious sound hadnever been heardby the oldest inmates,untilthe poem of “Marmion” appeared, in which the condemnation and the death of Constance in the dungeons of the cathedral are so forcibly described. This is, however, ametaphysicalsource of mystery.

In volcanic regions, as in that of the Solfatara, near Naples, these strange and subterranean sounds are not unfrequently heard; and in the rocky and caverned coasts of our own island also, where dwell the unlettered and the superstitious, by whose wild and romantic fancy these noises are readily magnified into the supernatural.

Camden, in his “Britannia,” informs us,—“In a rock in the island of Barry, in Glamorganshire, there is a narrow chink, or cleft, to which if you put your ear you shall perceive all such sorts of noises as you may fancy smiths at work under ground, strokes of hammers, blowing of bellows, grinding of tools.” At Worm’s Head, in the peninsula of Gower in Glamorganshire, these sounds are, even now, often heard; and it requires but a moderate stretch of imagination to create all this cyclopean imagery, when the sea is rolling in cavities under our feet, and the tone of its voice is magnified by confinement and repercussion. From some such source probably sprung the fable of “the Syrens,” two solitary maidens, who, by their dulcet voices, so enchanted the navigators who sailed by their rocks, that they forgot home and the purpose of their voyage, and died of starvation. Ulysses, instructed by his mother Circe, broke the spell, and the ladies threw themselves into the sea with vexation. This fable, like many of the classic mysteries, may be thus topographically explained.

In the grand duchy of Baden, near Friburg, is a very curious example of an Æolian lyre, constructed, as the traditions of the mountains will have it, by the verygenius locihimself.

In a romantic chasm of these mountains, most melodious sounds are sometimes heard from the top of fir-trees overhanging a waterfall. The current of air, ascending and descending through the chasm, receives a counter impulse from an abrupt angle of the rock, and, acting on the tops of the string-like branches of the trees, produces the soft tones of the Æolian harp, the effect of which is much enhanced by the gushing of the waterfall.

There may be in these natural sounds the source of many fables of the ancients: the moaning of the wind among the branches of a pine-grove might be the wailing of a hamadryad.

Among the granite rocks on the Orinoco, Baron Humboldt heard the strangest subterranean sounds; and at the palace of Carnac, some of Napoleon’ssavansheard noises exactly resembling the breaking of a string. It is curious that Pausanias applies exactly this expression to the sounds of the Memnonian granite,—the colossal head of Memnon, which was believed to speak at sunrise. He writes,—“It emits sounds every morning at sunrise, which can be compared only to that of the breaking of the string of a lyre.”

Juvenal has the same notion, but he has multiplied the sounds.

The mystery of Memnon may be readily explained, by the temperature and density of theexternalair differing from thatwithinthe crevices, and the effort of the current to promote an equilibrium; yet these simple sounds were in course of time warped into articulate syllables, and at length obtained the dignity of an oracular voice. And in these illustrations, fair Castaly, you have the clue to all the mysteries of demonia and fairyland.

To these natural illusions, let me add the triumphs of phonic mechanism and the peculiar faculty of the ventriloquist, the secrets of which the science of Sir David Brewster has so clearly developed. The wondrous heads of Memnon, and Orpheus, and Æsculapius, the machines of Albertus Magnus, and Sylvester, are now held but as curious specimens of art, and are indeed eclipsed by the speaking toys of Kratzenstein, and Kempelin, and Willis, and Savart, and the ingenious instruments of Wheatstone.

Of ventriloquism, it is not my purpose to speak; but there is a wonder of our time in the person of young Richmond, which, with many distinguished physiologists, I examined at theconversazioneof Dr. E——, in C—— Street.

When Richmond sat himself toperform, we heard a subdued murmur in his throat for about half-a-minute, when suddenly a sound issued of the most exquisite and perfect melody, closely resembling, but exceeding in delicacy, the finest musical box. The mouth was widely open, and the performance was one of considerable effort. The sounds were a mystery to us at the time, for they were perfectly unique, and are yet not satisfactorily explained. It is decided, however, by some, that the upper opening of the windpipe may be considered as a Jew’s-harp, or Æolina, of very exquisite power,behindthe cavity of the mouth, instead of being placedbetween the teeth.

Astr.And thus concludes our lecture on special mechanics.

Ev.I professed no more, Astrophel. It may be the privilege of thesacred poetto soar beyond the confines of our own planetary system:

Back to IndexNext