404 ADDITIONAL PHENOMENA OF NATURAL MAGIC. 



self-lighted aspect to distinguish their spectral character 

 vividly from the living actors with whom they mingle, 

 and doubtless Shakespeare's own ideal was something of 

 this kind, though the resources of the time did not afford 

 very satisfactory means of realising it. The innocuous 

 allotropic phosphorus now in use, with perhaps some other 

 chemical appliances, might afford means of overcoming 

 this difficulty. 



The automatic Leotard is another of those admirably- 

 achieved Polytechnic illusions which may be said to 

 surpass in some respects even the living prototype. This 

 figure is admirably formed, and its possible motions, with 

 their swing, are well kept within the range of easy 

 physical action in the natural joints. To the close 

 observer it becomes at once apparent, from the want of 

 bend in the elbow-joints and the complete circles per- 

 formed by the shoulders of the figure, that the hands and 

 inflexible arms are permanently fixed to the cross-bar of 

 the trapeze, which is made to revolve in any direction by 

 means of rods and wheels connected with its ends and 

 set in motion from above, the rods being concealed by 

 what appear to be the cords by which the whole is 

 suspended, which also have a manifest inflexibility and 

 an otherwise unnecessary thickness. These peculiarities, 

 however, are far from detracting from the merit of this 

 admirable Polytechnic invention. Professor Pepper 

 manfully disavows the power to work impossibilities. 

 He only aims at accomplishing apparent impossibilities 

 by the most skilful and graceful application of possible 

 means, and assuredly these are of them. To what 

 infamous purposes, by contrast, the ancient statecrafts and 

 priestcrafts would have turned these meritorious and 

 honourable ingenuities, had they known them, many a 

 passage in the preceding Letters of Sir David Brewster 

 will abundantly suggest. 



