to cattle, as preventive of disease. It is but natural to learn that these stones were religiously preserved by superstitious folk. At one time they were common in Ireland, the Earl of Tyrone being the possessor of a remarkably fine one.

In Andrews' Continuation of Henry's History we read that the conjurations of Dr Dee having induced his familiar spirit to visit a kind of talisman, Kelly, who was a brother adventurer, "was appointed to watch and describe his gestures." The particular stone employed by these impostors was originally in the Strawberry Hill collection; it looked like a polished piece of cannel coal; and to it is Butler's reference

"Kelly did all his feats upon

The Devil's looking-glass, a stone.*"

According to Lilly's description, these beryls or crystals were of the size of an orange, set in silver, surmounted with a cross, and engraved all around with the names of the angels Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel The frontispiece to Aubrey's Miscellanies has the engraving of one. This mode of inquiry, Grose proceeds to say, was practised by Dr Dee, the celebrated mathematician; his speculator was named Kelly; and from him and other practisers of the art we have a long musterroll of the infernal host, with details of their different natures, tempers, and appearances; Reginald Scot supplying a list of some of the chief of their number.

Butler's portraiture of a fortune-teller is executed with character. istic pleasantry

"Quoth Ralph, not far from hence doth dwell

A cunning Man, hight Sidrophel,

That deals in Destiny's dark Counsels
And sage Opinions of the Moon sells ;
To whom all people, far and near,
On deep Importances repair;
When Brass and Pewter hap to stray,
And Linen slinks out of the way:
When Geese and Pullen are seduc'd,
And Sows of sucking Pigs are chows'd;
When Cattle feel Indisposition,
And need th' opinion of Physician;
When Murrain reigns in Hogs or Sheep,
And Chickens languish of the Pip;
When Yeast and outward means do fail
And have no pow'r to work on Ale;
When Butter does refuse to come,
And Love proves cross and humoursome;
To him with Questions, and with Urine
They for discov'ry flock, or curing."

Allusions to this character are not uncommon in our old plays. Thus in the comedy of Albumazar (1634) we have

"An Indian conjurer's rattle, wherewith he calls up spirits," occurs

the Museum Tradescantianum (1660).

"He tels of lost plate, horses, and straye cattell
Directly, as he had stolne them all himselfe;"

and in Ram Alley (1636)—

"Fortune-teller! A petty rogue

That never saw five shillings in a heape,
Will take upon him to divine men's fate,
Yet never knows himselfe shall dy a beggar,
Or be hanged up for pilfering table-cloaths,
Shirts, and smocks, hanged out to dry on hedges.”

a

In the Character of a Quack-Astrologer (1673) our wise man, gypsey of the upper form," is epigrammatically denounced as "a threepenny prophet that undertakes the telling of other folks' fortunes merely to supply the pinching necessities of his own." His first step is said to be theft; "and, to help people to what they have lost, he picks their pockets afresh. Not a ring or spoon is nim'd away but pays him twelve-pence toll, and the ale-drapers' often-straying tankard yields him a constant revenue. For that purpose he maintains as strict a correspondence with gilts and lifters as a mountebank with applauding midwives and recommending nurses; and if at any time, to keep up his credit with the rabble, he discovers anything, 'tis done by the same occult hermetic learning heretofore profest by the renowned Moll Cut-purse.❞

As indicated by preceding quotations, these sorcerers or magicians did not employ their art invariably to execute mischief, but, on the contrary, directed it to the cure of diseases inflicted by Witches, the liscovery of thieves, the recovery of stolen goods, the prediction of uture events, and the declaration of the state of absent friends; vherefore they were frequently called White Witches.

In Ireland, according to Vallancey, they were called Tamans. le tells of a farmer's wife in the county of Waterford who, having ost a parcel of linen, went on a journey occupying three days to a aman in Tipperary. After consulting his black book, he assured her he would recover her property. The robbery was proclaimed at the apel, together with the offer of a reward, and the linen was restored. It was not the money, but the Taman that recovered it," is the nphatic addition of Vallancey.

From Stow we learn that in 1560 a skinner of Southwark was set in e pillory, with a paper over his head, proclaiming the nature of his fence-"For sundry practices of great falsehood, and much untruth; d all set forth under the colour of soothsaying;" and the death of e Earl of Angus, in 1588, was universally attributed to sorcery and cantation. After the physicians had pronounced him to be under * ínfluence of Witchcraft, a wizard, we read, offered to cure him of he wrong he had received;" but the stoutly pious Earl preferred to declaring that life was not so dear to him that, "for the conuance of some years, he would be beholden to any of the Devil's truments."

In Lodge's Wit's Misery (1596) we read—

"There are many in London now adaies that are besotted with this Sinne, one of whom I saw on a white horse in Fleet Street, a Tanner Knave I never lookt on, who with one Figure (cast out of a Scholler's Studie for a necessary Servant at Bocordo) promised to find any Man's Oxen were they lost, restore any man's goods if they were stolne, and win any Man love, where or howsoever he settled it, but his jugling knacks were quickly discovered."

Among the Sarum Articles of Inquiry in 1614 occurs-" Item, whether you have any conjurors, charmers, calcours, witches, or fortune-tellers; who they are; and who do resort unto them for counsel ?"

Referring to common jugglers going up and down to play their tricks at fairs and markets, Ady in his Candle in the Dark (1659) writes of one especially eminent in his craft who went about in the time of James, whose self-appointed designation was "the_Kings Majesties Most Excellent Hocus Pocus." At the playing of every trick, his exclamation used to be Hocus pocus, tontus, talontus, vade celeriter jubeo,-" a dark composure of words to blinde the eyes of the beholders."

"Hocus-pocus" did not escape Butler

and Tillotson in a discourse on Transubstantiation inclined to believe that the favourite juggling formula was simply a corruption of Hoc est corpus in "ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome." Vallancey, however, treating of the communication in olden time between Ireland and the East, derives it from the Irish coic, an omen or mystery, and bais, the palm of the hand; whence is formed coiche bais, legerdemain, for which the Persian equivalent is choko-baz, vulgarised into the English form of hocus-pocus. Hiccius doctius was apparently another form of the same word, current in Ireland among sleight-of-hand men of a later date; the origin of which is traced to the veneration with which the priests were formerly regarded, inso much that their presence at assemblies was announced with the words Hic est doctus! Hic est doctus !-corrupted into Hiccius doctius.

In a review of the parish of Kirkmichael in Banffshire, contained in the Statistical Account of Scotland (1794), Witchcraft and magic are reckoned "among the branches into which the moss-grown trunk Superstition divides itself," and which, though decayed and withered by time, are represented to retain "some faint traces of their ancient verdure." As of old, witches are supposed to ride on broomsticks through the air; and the 12th of May is observed as one of their festivals.

n the morning of that day they are frequently seen dancing on the surface of the water of Avon, brushing the dews of the lawn, and milki Cows in their fold. Any uncommon sickness is generally attributed to their demoniacal practices. They make fields barren or fertile, raise or still which

winds, give or take away milk at pleasure. The force of their Incantations is not to be resisted, and extends even to the Moon in the midst of their aerial career. It is the good fortune, however, of this Country to be provided with an Anti-conjurer that defeats both them and their sable patron in their com. bined efforts. His fame is widely diffused, and wherever he goes, crescit eundo. If the spouse is jealous of her Husband, the Anti-conjurer is consulted to restore the affections of his bewitched heart. If a near connexion lies confined to the bed of sickness, it is in vain to expect relief without the balsamick medicine of the Anti-conjurer. If a person happens to be deprived of his senses, the deranged cells of the brains must be adjusted by the magic charms of the Anti-conjurer. If a farmer loses his Cattle, the houses must be purified with water sprinkled by him. In searching for the latent mischief, this gentleman never fails to find little parcels of heterogeneous ingredients lurking in the Walls, consisting of the legs of Mice and the wings of Bats; all the work of the Witches. Few things seem too arduous for his abilities; and though, like Paracelsus, he has not as yet boasted of having discovered the Philosopher's Stone, yet, by the power of his occult Science, he still attracts a little of their gold from the pockets where it lodges; and in this way makes a shift to acquire subsistence for himself and family."

GHOSTS OR APPARITIONS.

"I know thee well; I heare the watchfull Dogs
With hollow howling tell of thy approach;
The Lights burne dim, affrighted with thy presence;
And this distemper'd and tempestuous Night
Tells me the Ayre is troubled with some Devill."

Merry Devil of Edmonton: 1631.

"Ghosts never walk till after Midnight, if

I may believe my Grannam."

Beaumont and Fletcher: Lover's Progress.

GHOSTS are defined are to return to earth upon

deceased, who either are commissioned to return to earth upon special errands, such as the discovery of a murder, the restitution of roperty unrighteously withheld from the orphan or the widow, or, aving in their lifetime been guilty of acts of injustice, cannot rest intil those are rectified. Sometimes it is for the purpose of informing eirs in what secret place, or private drawer in an old trunk, the titleeeds of estates had been hidden, or where money or plate had been uried in troublous times. Again, the ghosts of murdered persons, hose bodies have been secretly buried, are restless until their bones ave been taken up and deposited in consecrated ground with the due tes of Christian burial; this idea being the survival of the old eathen superstition that Charon was not allowed to ferry over the hosts of the unburied, but that they wandered up and down the banks the river Styx for a period of a hundred years, at the expiration of hich they were admitted to a passage.

Ghosts further appear in pursuance of arrangements made with rticular friends during life, that those who first died should reveal

themselves to the survivors; and Glanvil tells of one who had lived but a disorderly kind of life, that his shade was condemned to wander up and down the earth, in the company of evil spirits, till the Day of Judgment.

In most narratives of these apparitions, they are thought to be mere aerial beings without substance, and, in virtue of their incorporeality, able to pass through walls and other solid objects at pleasure. A typical instance of this quality is supplied by Glanvil in the case of one David Hunter, neatherd to the Bishop of Down and Connor, who was long haunted by the shade of an old woman, whom a secret impulse constrained him to follow whenever she appeared; which he says he did for a considerable period, even if he were in bed with his wife; the result being that his wife, unable to detain him in his bed, accompanied him on his expeditions up to break of day, although she could herself see nothing. But his little dog was so familiar with the apparition that he followed it as closely as his master; who deposed that, if a tree stood in its way, the ghost invariably went through it. This seeming immateriality notwithstanding, however, this particular ghost was not without substance altogether, for, having discharged her errand, she desired Hunter to lift her from the ground; in doing which, he says, "she felt just like a bag of feathers." We also sometimes read, proceeds Grose, of ghosts striking violent blows, and, in the event of encountering opposition, of overturning everything with the fury of a whirlwind; Glanvil narrating the case of a Dutch lieutenant who had the faculty of seeing ghosts, and who, being prevented making way for one he mentioned to some friends as coming towards them, was, with his companions, violently thrown down and sorely bruised; and the additional information being given that a ghost's hand is "as cold as a clod."

Midnight, we learn from Grose, is the usual time for the appearance of ghosts. They rarely are visible before dark, though some audacious spirits have been said to appear even by daylight; but of this departure from the ordinary course there are few examples, and those mostly are of "ghosts who have been laid perhaps in the Red Sea, and whose times of confinement were expired. These, like felons confined to the lighters, are said to return more troublesome and daring than before." As Shakespeare has signified in Hamlet, no ghosts can appear on Christmas Eve. Their attire generally is what they wore while living, though they sometimes are clothed all in white; this latter raiment indicating “churchyard ghosts, who have no particular business, but seem to appear pro bono publico, or to scare drunken rustics from tumbling over their graves." Grose confesses his inability to learn that ghosts carry tapers in their hands, as they are occasionally depicted, though they contrive to illuminate the room in which they appear, destitute though it be of fire or candle. English ghosts, it appears, do not indulge in the practice of dragging chains; chains and black vestments being chiefly the accoutrements of foreign spectres, and seen in countries subject to arbitrary government. "Dead or alive, English spirits are free." One instance, however, of an English ghost being dressed in black is admitted to exist in the celebrated ballad of William and Margaret