spectre of monstrous size on the lofty granite
rocks, or standing, as it were, on a large pedestal
in the clouds, suddenly disappear, for the phantom
is only visible when the sun is at such
an altitude as to throw its rays upon the body
in a horizontal direction. Germany has ever
been the nursing mother of spiritual creations.
Goethe selected the Hartz forest as the scene
to which he represents the spirit Mephistopheles
as having conducted his pupil Faustus, and the
highly imaginative superstition of the Wild
Huntsman originated in aërial illusions,
combined with auricular deceptions, caused by the
variety of sounds which arise in the dark
recesses of its pathless woods and rocky cliffs.
The aerial illusion of the Fata Morgana in the
Straits of Messina is supposed by the natives to
be a spectacle produced by the queen of the
fairies, the Morgáná La Fay, the Fairy Morgana
of popular legends. Images of men and houses
are seen from the coast in the air, in the water,
or on its surface, and similar appearances have
been observed in the narrow sea which separates
the island of Rathlin from the mainland of
Antrim. During the warmer period of the summer,
after the sea and air have been agitated, if a
calm succeeds, the spectator is astonished, as
the dawn breaks, to observe the representations
of scenes suspended in the air, the same object
frequently presenting two appearances, one in
the natural, the other in an inverted position,
and often repeatedly multiplied; but imagination
generally magnifies these dioptric appearances.
The daylight setting in gradually produces
an indistinctness of the vision, which, as
the sun rises, vanishes altogether. The term
mirage, now adapted into our language, was
applied by the French to similar appearances
witnessed by their army in Egypt; and to the
weary traveller, traversing the desert and enduring
the sufferings of thirst, the deceitful
prospect of an aerial abundance of water presented
to his eyes is a distressing delusion. The
phenomena has been accounted for on the
principle of two distinct strata or layers of air,
the density of the lower one being diminished in
the desert by its proximity to the heated sand;
and over the sea, by holding in solution a larger
quantity of aqueous vapour. In this state, as
every variation of density occasions a deviation
in their path, the rays of light do not pass freely
through both media of the atmosphere, they
being of different temperatures, but are broken
by refraction on the verge of the horizon, and
the sky itself joins in completing the illusion,
its own image being sometimes reflected from
the surface of the water. Humboldt describes
the marvellous effects of the mirage in South
America, having seen fishing-boats swimming
in the air over the well-defined line of the sea,
and the inverted images of horses and cows
suspended above. The most remarkable phenomena
of aërial images are those described by Mr.
Scoresby as the enchanted islands of the Arctic
regions, the general telescopic appearance of
which was that of an ancient and extensive city,
with ruins of castles, churches, obelisks, and
monuments. Some of the hills seemed, at least
in the fervid imaginations of the spectators, to
be surmounted by turrets, battlements, spires,
and pinnacles, many of the objects occasionally
fringed with the prismatic colours; but the whole
exhibition was a grand phantasmagoria, for
scarcely could any particular portion be sketched,
before it changed its appearance and assumed a
totally different form.

We leave to physiologists to trace the causes
of spectral apparitions, but there are recorded
instances of their appearance in all ages to men
even of intrepid courage and of high intellectual
superiority. The anticipation of a dubious battle,
the uncertainty of the event, and the conviction
that a disastrous result would involve his own
fate, naturally conjured up to the anxious mind
of Brutus, in his tent, the apparition of his former
friend and patron, "the first bald Cæsar,"
in whose assassination he had been so active an
accessory. The classic spectre that admonished
"the last of the Romans" they would meet
again at Philippi, probably suggested to Byron
the scene in which he beautifully describes the
vision of Manfred:

I see a dusk and awful figure rise,
Like an infernal god from out the earth,
His face wrapt in a mantle, and his form
Robed as with angry clouds.

Doctor John Donne, Dean of Saint Paul's, whose
rough but expressive satirical rhymes even
Pope condescended to retouch, accompanied Sir
Robert Drury, the brother of his wife, to Paris,
leaving that lady in London. Having dined
together, Donne remained alone in the room; in
about an hour afterwards Sir Robert entered
and found his friend so altered in his countenance,
as to excite amazement. To an anxious question
what had befallen him in the interval, the divine
replied: "I have seen a dreadful vision, I have
seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this
room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders,
and a dead child in her arms." "This," said
the baronet, "was merely a dream; forget it,
for you are now awake." Donne answered, "I
cannot be more sure that I now live, than that
I have not slept since I saw you, and am as
sure that at her second appearing she stopped,
looked me in the face, and vanished." The
poet's biographer, old Izaak Walton, informs us
that a messenger was at once despatched to
Drury House, from which Drury-lane derived its
name, who brought information that Mrs. Donne
was very sad and sick in bed, after having given
birth to a dead child on the same day, and at
the same hour, that the spectral impression
occurred.

In his graphic historical description of the
assassination plot against the life of William the
Third, Lord Macaulay introduces as a prominent
character, a Roman Catholic officer of the name of
Thomas Pendergrass, who in a Jacobite
insurrection to restore the exiled Stuarts would probably
have been foremost, but who shrunk with horror
from a wicked and shameful deed. The plot was
frustrated by the disclosures he then made, and