174 LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



work upon the fears of one Cornu, an old banker 

 at Lyons, who had amassed immense wealth by 

 usury and extortion. Having obtained an inter- 

 view with the miser, he introduced the subjects 

 of demons and spectres, and the torments of pur- 

 gatory; and, during an interval of silence, the 

 voice of the miser's deceased father was heard 

 complaining of his dreadful situation in purgatory, 

 and calling upon his son to rescue him from his 

 sufferings by enabling Louis Brabant to redeem 

 the Christians that were enslaved by the Turks. 

 The awe-struck miser was also threatened with 

 eternal damnation if he did not thus expiate his 

 own sins ; but such was the grasp that the banker 

 took of his gold, that the ventriloquist was obliged 

 to pay him another visit. On this occasion, not 

 only his father but all his deceased relatives ap- 

 pealed to him in behalf of his own soul and theirs ; 

 and such was the loudness of their complaints, 

 that the spirit of the banker was subdued, and he 

 gave the ventriloquist ten thousand crowns to 

 liberate the Christian captives. When the miser 

 was afterwards undeceived, he is said to have 

 been so mortified that he died of vexation. 



The ventriloquists of the nineteenth century 

 made great additions to their art, and the per- 

 formances of M. Fitz-James and M. Alexandre, 

 which must have been seen by many of our coun- 

 trymen, were far superior to those of their pre- 

 decessors. Besides the art of speaking by the 

 muscles of the throat and the abdomen, without 

 moving those of the face, these artists had not 

 only studied with great diligence and success the 

 modifications which sounds of all kinds undergo 

 from distance, obstructions, and other causes, but 

 had acquired the art of imitating them in the 



