BOOKS OF SECRETS. 3' 



Naturalis. Caspar Schott advanced a step farther, when he called his 

 books "Magia Universalis" and "Physica Curiosa" ; in these he gets rid to 

 a great extent of the " secret " element, and deals with physical phenomena 

 pure and simple. The subject, thereafter, developed along two lines, one 

 the scientific, the other the secret or occult, ending practically in leger- 

 demain and conjuring. An instance of transition of another sort was 

 displayed in the case of the graduation thesis of Martius, De Magia 

 Naturali, printed in 1700, which passed through a number of editions and 

 took the form more or less of a conjuring book. Then it worked gradually 

 into a book of experimental Physics, after which a volume containing an 

 account of all the newest discoveries appeared annually for nineteen 

 years. 



Legerdemain, like other displays of manual dexterity, merits respect. 

 Its secret is the cultivation assiduously of certain endowments, physical 

 and mental. Conjuring, involving as it does certain appliances unknown 

 to the spectator, is one of the oldest of arts, for it is said that in the 

 Egyptian temples traces of the arrangements required to produce mysterious 

 effects are still to be found. 



Modern conjuring literature, so far as it is known to me, began about 

 1630, or perhaps a little earlier, and has continued at intervals to the 

 present time. The earlier books, as was said above, bore the name of 

 Thomas HilV later ones in the eighteenth century that of H. Dean. There 

 was another crop early last century, and John Anderson, the famous 

 "Wizard of the North," published a handbook of Magic about 1850. 

 Quite recently came a set of books called "The Secret out" Series, 

 reviving thereby the old name, and at the present moment hand-books of 

 Parlour Magic can be readily procured, which profess to instruct the 

 aspirant in all the secrets of prestidigitation. 



(l) Perhaps as one of the earliest specimens ought to be reckoned the translation 

 which Thomas Hill published in 1567, under the name of "Natural and Artificial 

 Conclusions," of the fatuous tricks compiled, it is s;iid, by sundry scholars of the 

 University of Padua, much to their discredit. 



