17 % 2 LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



spirits ; and though the persons of his fictitious 

 dialogue are not visible to the eye, yet they are 

 unequivocally present to the imagination of his 

 auditors, as if they had been shadowed forth in 

 the silence of a spectral form. In order to con- 

 vey some idea of the influence of this illusion, I 

 shall mention a few well-authenticated cases of 

 successful ventriloquism. 



M. St. Gille, a grocer of St. Germain- en-Lay e, 

 whose performances have been recorded by the 

 Abbe de la Chapelle, had occasion to shelter him- 

 self from a storm in a neighbouring convent, 

 where the monks were in deep mourning for a 

 much-esteemed member of their community who 

 had been recently buried. While lamenting over 

 the tomb of their deceased brother the slight 

 honours which had been paid to his memory, a 

 voice was suddenly heard to issue from the roof 

 of the choir bewailing the condition of the 

 deceased in purgatory, and reproving the brother- 

 hood for their want of zeal. The tidings of this 

 supernatural event brought the whole brother- 

 hood to the church. The voice from above 

 repeated its lamentations and reproaches, and 

 the whole convent fell upon their faces, and 

 vowed to make a reparation of their error. They 

 accordingly chanted in full choir a De Profundis, 

 during the intervals of which the spirit of the 

 departed monk expressed his satisfaction at their 

 pious exercises. The prior afterwards inveighed 

 against modern scepticism on the subject of appa- 

 ritions, and M. St. Gille had great difficulty in 

 convincing the fraternity that the whole was a 

 deception. 



On another occasion, a commission of the Royal 



