GENERAL OBJECT OF THE WORK. 93 



bodies of the material world, never fails to inspire with 

 astonishment even those who understand the means by 

 which these prodigies are accomplished. The ancients, 

 indeed, were not acquainted with those combinations of 

 lenses and mirrors which constitute the telescope and the 

 microscope, but they must have been familiar with the 

 property of lenses and mirrors to form erect and inverted 

 images of objects. There is reason to think that they 

 employed them to effect the apparition of their gods ; and 

 in some of the descriptions of the optical displays which 

 hallowed their ancient temples, we recognize all the 

 transformations of the modern phantasmagoria. 



It would be an interesting pursuit to embody the 

 information which history supplies respecting the fables 

 and incantations of the ancient superstitions, and to show 

 how far they can be explained by the scientific knowledge 

 which then prevailed. This task has, to a certain extent, 

 been performed by M. Eusebe Salverte, in a work on the 

 occult sciences, which has recently appeared; but not- 

 withstanding the ingenuity and learning which it dis- 

 plays, the individual facts are too scanty to support the 

 speculations of the author, and the descriptions are too 

 meagre to satisfy the curiosity of the reader.* 



In the following letters I propose to take a wider 

 range, and to enter into more minute and popular details. 

 The principal phenomena of nature, and the leading com- 

 binations of art, which bear the impress of a supernatural 

 character, will pass under our review, and our attention 

 will be particularly called to those singular illusions of 

 sense, by which the most perfect organs either cease to 



* "We must caution the young reader against some of the views 

 given in M. Salverte's work. In his anxiety to account for every 

 thing miraculous by natural causes, he has ascribed to the same 

 origin some of those events in sacred history which Christians cannot 

 but regard as the result of diyine agency. 



