EESOURCES OF THE ANCIENT MAGIC. 5 



a part of their religious impostures. When, in 

 some of the infamous mysteries of ancient Rome, 

 the unfortunate victims were carried off by the 

 gods, there is reason to believe that they were 

 hurried away by the power of machinery ; and 

 when Apollonius, conducted by the Indian sages 

 to the temple of their god, felt the earth rising 

 and falling beneath his feet, like the agitated sea, 

 he was no doubt placed upon a moving floor 

 capable of imitating the heavings of the waves. 

 The rapid descent of those who consulted the 

 oracle in the cave of Trophonius, the moving 

 tripods which Apollonius saw in the Indian tem- 

 ples, the walking statues at Antium, and in the 

 temple of Hierapolis, and the wooden pigeon of 

 Archytas, are specimens of the mechanical re- 

 sources of the ancient magic. 



But of all the sciences Optics is the most fertile 

 in marvellous expedients. The power of bringing 

 the remotest objects within the very grasp of the 

 observer, and of swelling into gigantic magnitude 

 the almost invisible bodies of the material world, 

 never fails to inspire with astonishment even those 

 who understand the means by which these pro- 

 digies 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 recog- 



