The Philosophy of Mystery · 11 of 35
Analysis and Classification of Spectral Illusion
“The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
And these are of them.”
Macbeth.
Ev. You are a most industrious gleaner among the sheaves of history, Astrophel. But why, in all these seeming prophecies, seek to thwart the harmonious course of nature? Leave superstition to the heathen and the savage: be assured, in the words of Principal Robertson, that a vain desire of prying into futurity is the error of the infancy of a people, and a proof of its weakness.
From this weakness proceeded the faith of the Americans in dreams, their observation of omens, their attention to the chirping of birds and the cries of animals, all which they supposed to be indications of future events. And if any one of these prognostics was deemed unfavourable, they instantly abandoned the pursuit of those measures on which they were most eagerly bent.
I wonder you brought not some classic proofs of this credulity, for such were all-prevalent in Judæa and the Eternal City.
Thus, on February the thirteenth, the Romans were conquered by the Gauls: henceforward important acts were never undertaken on its anniversary: nor on August the tenth by the Jews, because their first temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and the other by Titus, long afterwards, on that day of the month.
I am not, however, without some curious stories of very modern date; one anecdote may be recognised on the Stock Exchange. A wealthy Hebrew, who was wont to fling his gold even into the lap of kings, was once standing on a certain stone, at the Post Office, when he received a letter, on which he speculated, and lost 20,000 l. On this he cautioned his friends never to stand on that stone, lest a similar ill-fortune should attend them.
The mind of this man was a storehouse of superstition—an omen was his leading star. A drove of pigs would check the completion of a mighty bargain, and a flock of sheep would prompt him to sign his name to a million.
The three brothers of his great house were once on their way to Lord Liverpool, in order to the completion of a loan to the Treasury; when, lo! an army of swine met them on their way. There was no more progress to Downing Street that day; but they retired to Stamford Hill, and the Lord Treasurer waited twenty-four hours for the Hebrews’ gold.
With Brinsley Sheridan, Friday was a sort of holiday; neither journeys were undertaken, nor new plays allowed to be produced, on that day.
I presume you were ashamed to adduce ornithoscopy, or the divination by birds, as an illustration. Do you forget the mystic influence of three crows on man’s destiny? But I will tell you an oriental fable; how an accomplished Jew, named Mosollam, puzzled an augur, by shooting a beautiful bird, from which the augur was about to prophecy on the fate of an expedition. “Why,” said Mosollam, “did not the bird foreknow the fate which awaited it? why did it not fly away—or why come at all?”
Astr. I believe the augur did or might answer, that “a prophet may be ordained to tell the fate of nations, but not his own.”
Ev. Another vague supposition, Astrophel: there is much virtue in these may be’s.
I have listened to your legends, and you will now listen to me, while I presume to illustrate my own proofs, searching for my causes in the beautiful eccentricities of nature alone; and a scholar like yourself, Astrophel, with whom I have so often chopped Oxford logic, will grant it is a precept in philosophy not to seek for more causes, than the explanation of the fact requires.
On this scroll I have sketched an arrangement of phantoms or ghosts, in two grand classes.
GHOSTS OF THE MIND’S EYE,
or
Phantasma.
Illusive per ception, or ocular spectra.
Conversion of natural objects into phantoms.
Illusive con ception, or spectral illusion.
Creation of phantoms.
Ghosts of the Eye,
or
Optical Illusion.
Atmospheric.
Refraction.
Reflection.
Gases.
Lenses and mirrors.
Disease of the eye.
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 those moods 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 the predisposing causes of illusion. Such are: —
Temperament
Credulity,
Enthusiasm,
Superstition,
Timidity,
Imagination,
Poetic frenzy.
Excitement
Sympathy,
Exalted joy,
Deep grief,
Love,
Hatred,
Protracted anxiety,
Delirium of fever,
Delirium of alcohol,
Delirium of narcotics,
Exhaustion,
Disease of the brain.
The second class, which are spectres or ghosts of the eye, may be scientifically explained by the laws which govern the material 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, from peculiar combinations of natural causes. The unlearned will term them preternatural phenomena, 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 illusions will be doubled by 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 are real objects converted into phantoms by mental excitement or disorder.
But in the purely metaphysical ghost or 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 an asteroïd. 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 the bleeding cypress-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 the miracle. And what was this but the glutinous crimson fluid, exuding from the diseased alburnum of a tree, which the woodmen indeed term bleeding, 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 the shivering of the aspen is from sympathy with 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 the green 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 is arctic electricity, and is beautifully imitated by the passage of an electric flash through an exhausted glass cylinder.
The rainbow is a combination of natural prisms breaking 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 the meridian sunbeams 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, a fainter spectrum may be seen, which is a reflected image of the other. These spectra are usually colourless, 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, or sylvan scenes of 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 seen
Peering above the sea.”
Or the legend of Thierna 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;”
and why may not we?
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 a second 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 this shadow emerged 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 laugh at 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 when more 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 may see 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 the optical 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 it might be divine.
But a mind in its state of nature cannot 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 a supernatural visitation?
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 of Yspitty C’en Vaen had thrown across the torrent of the Monach, they could not believe it a work of human, but of infernal, 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 the colours, 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 those monomaniacs who refuse to drink water which reflects their faces, believing that they are swallowing 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.