Part 22

And this reminds me of the confession of Gaffarel, in his “Unheard of Curiosities” of the seventeenth century; in his quaint chapter on the “readynge of the cloudes and whatever else is seene in the air, and of hieroglyphicks in the cloudes.”

Among other miraculous illusions, as recorded by Cardanus, “An angel once wafted on the cloudes above Millane, and great was the consternation at its appearance, until Pellicanus, a philosopher, made it plainly appear, that this angel was nothing else but the reflection of an image of stone, that was on the top of the church of Saint Godart, which was represented in the thick cloudes as in a looking-glasse.”

While I was in South Wales, in 1836, I conversed with a labourer in the Cyfarthfa works at Merthyr Tydvil, an illiterate seer, who saw, three times appearing before him, an unsubstantial tram-road; and on it a train drawn by a horse, and in this, the dead body of a man. Twice this shadow emerged from the earth, and on the third ascent he looked on it, and recognized the well-known face of a comrade. The man was horror struck, but his friend lived to laugh at him.

When my friend, Mr. David Taylor, ascended the mountain that rises over Chamouni, on the opposite side of the valley to Mont Blanc, his magnified shadow was distinctly seen by him on the vapoury cloud that floated between these giant rocks.

In February 1837, two gentlemen, on whom I confidently trust, were standing on Calton Hill while a murky cloud hung over Edinburgh. Above this veil Arthur’s Seat peeped out like a rocky island beneath two white arches, like the lunar bows; and on the cloud itself, each gentleman saw the shadow of his companion magnified to gigantic proportions.

The aeronaut, among other glories of his ascent, may by chance be gratified by the shadow of his balloon on the face of a cumulus cloud; thus did the Duke of Brunswick, who ascended with Mrs. Graham, in August 1836. And this is the analogous recital of Prince Puckler Muskau, in his “Tutti Frutti.”

“We dipped insensibly into the sea of clouds which enveloped us like a thick veil, and through which the sun appeared like the moon in Ossian. This illumination produced a singular effect, and continued for some time, till the clouds separated, and we remained swimming about beneath the once more clear azure heavens. Shortly after we beheld, to our great astonishment, a species of ‘Fata Morgana,’ seated upon an immense mountain of clouds the colossal picture of the balloon and ourselves surrounded by myriads of variegated rainbow tints. A full half hour the spectral reflected picture hovered constantly by our side. Each slender thread of the network appeared distended to the size of a ship’s cable, and we ourselves two tremendous giants enthroned on the clouds.”

The phantom, which rode side by side with Turpin, might be a mere reflected shadow in the mist; indeed, Burton writes that “Vitellio hath such another instance of a familiar acquaintance of his, that after the want of three or four nights’ sleep, as he was riding by a river-side, saw another riding with him, and using all such gestures as he did, but when more light appeared, it vanished.”

The principles of refraction are the sources of many an illusion, which is startling even to those who are aware of them. The sea, the vessels floating on its surface, the rocks and buildings on its shores, often appear elevated far beyond their usual position: things are thus presented to the eye which, in the direct course of the rays, would be completely out of sight; and the praises bestowed on the Irish telescope may not have been a bull, although we are assured that we may see through it round the corner.

Baron Humboldt, Mr. Huddart, Professor Vince, Captain Scoresby and others, will entertain you with these natural eccentricities, if you read the learned letter of Sir David Brewster, on “Natural Magic;” and he will teach you how easy is the solution of all these marvels, on the principles of atmospheric reflection. Yet how many are there who are not contented with the light of our philosophy, though it may fall like a sunbeam on the mind. Like the recorder of the “Unheard-of Curiosities,” they, at one time, confess the optical illusion, as when the Romans “saw their navy in the clouds;” at another, as when Constantine professed to see the “Crosse shining most gloriously in the aire,” marked with the motto, “In hoc signo vinces,”—philosophy was silent, and they believed it might be divine.

But a mind in its state of nature cannot know all this. If a savage looked on the two white horses cut on the chalk hills of Berkshire and of Wiltshire, on the white cross of the Saxons on the Bledlow Ridge in Buckinghamshire, and on the white-leaf cross near Princes Risboro’,—would he not deem them deities, or the work of a magician or a devil?

When the sailors of Lord Nelson saw the bloated corpse of the murdered Prince Caraccioli floating erect in the water directly towards their ship, can we wonder they should deem it a supernatural visitation?

When Franklin set his bells a ringing, by drawing down the electric fluid from the thunder-cloud, and when Columbus foretold to the hour the sun’s eclipse;—can we wonder that the transatlantic Indians listened, as to one endued with preternatural knowledge, or that the other might be thought superhuman? And when the king of Siam was assured that water could be congealed into ice, on which the sounding skate could glide,—can we wonder that he smiled in absolute disbelief of such a change, and called the tale a lie.

Thus, when the peasants of Cardigan, who were not versed in Pontine architecture, looked on the bridge which the monks of Yspitty C’en Vaen had thrown across the torrent of the Monach, they could not believe it a work of human, but of infernal, hands, and called it the “Devil’s Bridge.”

On my ascent of the Vann mountain in Brecon, there often came a mass of limestone rolling down the precipice. “Ah sure,” said the old shepherd, who was watching his fold on the mountain-side, “the fairies are at their gambols, master, for they sometimes do play at bowls with these chalk stones.” Such was his explanation; but, on my gaining another ridge of the Brecon Beacon, I startled a whole herd of these fairies, who scudded off as fast as their legs could carry them, having first changed themselves into a flock of sheep.

There was once a caravan journeying from Nubia to Cairo, which met the Savans attending on the expedition of Napoleon into Egypt, among whom was Rigo, the painter. Struck with the deep character of expression in the face of one of the Nubians, Rigo induced him, with gold, to sit for his portrait. The African sat calmly perusing its progress until the laying on of the colours, when, with a cry of terror, he rushed from the house, and, to his awe-struck companions, affirmed that his head and half his body had been cut off by an enchanter. And this impression was not solitary, for an assemblage of the Nubians were equally terror-struck, and (somewhat like those monomaniacs who refuse to drink water which reflects their faces, believing that they are swallowing their friends,) could never be dispossessed of the notion that the picture was formed of the loppings and toppings of the human frame.

We believe these influences the more, because we see that, even to some few men wiser than they, a leaning to superstition will warp a simple fact into a wonder; and that mere sensitiveness of mind may work as great a fear.

Suetonius tells us that Caligula and Augustus were the most abject cowards in a thunder-storm; and the bishop of Langres D’Escaro fell in a fainting-fit whenever an eclipse took place,—a weakness which at length proved his death.

There was an old house in Angoulême, the “Chateau du Diable,” on the spot where the sable fiend was wont to repair to enjoy his moonlight walk. The house was never finished, for the devil, jealous of this usurpation, like Michael Scott’s spirit, destroyed every night the walls which had been erected during the day. At length the men abandoned their work in despair. On the twenty-fifth night in May (1840), the ruined windows seemed on an instant in brilliant illumination, which struck the inhabitants of the little village of “Petit-Rochford” with wonder and dismay. Some dauntless heroes, however, sallied forth with weapons to storm the enchanted castle. In an upper room, lighted by eight blood-red wax candles, they discovered a man of a strange and melancholy aspect, tracing cabalistic figures on the sanded floor. He was conveyed to the maire, and was proved to be a poor sawyer, named Favreau, who, bound by a superstitious oath, self-administered, had thus created a sensation of terror throughout a whole community.

In the records of the Harleian Miscellany, the curious reader may discover one which might impress his mind with some terrific ideas of the natural history of the south of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is styled, “The True and Wonderful.” The portion of the MSS. to which I allude is the “Legend of the Serpent of St. Leonard’s Forest.” This terrific legend of my own native town was a favourite of my boyish days; it has moulted some feather of its once awful interest, and is now but the shadow of a memory; and those who were once converts to its reality, now laugh the legend to scorn.

ILLUSIONS OF ART.

“If in Naples I should report this now, would they believe me?” TEMPEST.

EV. The science of chemistry has unfolded most of the secrets of material miracles, as Psychology those of the intellect and senses.

Not that I would attempt thus to explain your wonders of Palingenesy, Astrophel; I will rather favour you with another batch, for I was once fond of unkennelling these sly foxes.

It is solemnly attested by the noble secretary of a Duke of Guise, that, in company with many scientific men, he saw the face of a person in his blood, which had been given by a bishop, for experiment, to La Pierre, the chemist, of Le Temple, near Paris.

There is an old book of one Dr. Garmann, “De Miraculis Mortuorum,” and thus he writes:—“When human salt, extracted and depurated from the skull of a man, was placed in a water dish, there appeared next morning in the mass, figures of men fixed to a cross;” and “when human skulls, on which mosses had vegetated, were pounded, the family of the apothecary who pounded them were alarmed in the night by strange and terrific noises from the chamber.”

The body of the Cid, Ruy Diaz, as we read in Heywood’s “Hierarchie,” sat in state at the altar of the cathedral at Toledo for ten years. A Jew one day attempted, in derision, to pull him by the beard; but on the first touch, the Cid started up, and in high resentment scared the Israelite away by the unsheathing of his mighty sword. And Master Planche has brought you legends from the church of Maria Taferl, in Lower Austria, and other noted spots on the Danube.

When Bernini’s bust of Charles I. was being conveyed in a barge on the Thames, from a strange bird there descended a drop of blood on the bust, which could never be effaced.