226 



LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



mighty magician of the north, who imported into Scan- 

 dinavia the magical arts of the east, possessed a speaking 

 head, said to be that of the sage Minos, which he had 

 enchased in gold, and which uttered responses that had all 

 the authority of a divine revelation. The celebrated 

 mechanic Gerbert, who filled the Papal chair A.D. 1000, 

 under the name of Sylvester II., constructed a speaking 

 head of brass. Albertus Magnus is said to have executed 

 a head in the thirteenth century, which not only moved 

 but spoke. It was made of earthenware, and Thomas 

 Aquinas is said to have been so terrified when he saw it, 

 that he broke it in pieces, upon which the mechanist 

 exclaimed, " There goes the labour of thirty years." 



It has been supposed by some authors, that in the 

 ancient speaking-machines the deception was effected by 

 means of ventriloquism, the voice issuing from the juggler 

 himself ; but it is more probable that the sound was con- 

 veyed by pipes from a person in another apartment to the 

 mouth of the figure. Lucian, indeed, expressly informs 

 us that the impostor Alexander made his figure of JEscu- 

 lapius speak, by transmitting his voice through the gullet 

 of a crane to the mouth of the statue; and that this 

 method was general, appears from a passage in Theo- 

 doretus, who assures us that in the fourth century, when 

 Bishop Theophilus broke to pieces the statues at Alex- 

 andria, he found some which were hollow, and which were 

 so placed against a wall, that the priest could conceal 

 himself behind them, and address the ignorant spectators 

 through their mouths. 



Even in modern times, speaking-machines have been 

 constructed on this principle. The figure is frequently a 

 mere head placed upon a hollow pedestal, which, in order 

 to promote the deception, contains a pair of bellows, a 

 sounding-board, a cylinder and pipes supposed to repre- 

 sent the organs of speech. In other cases these are dis- 



