cease to be a source of terror even to nursery
children. This gentleman, perhaps unwilling to
be considered the professor of an occult art,
fully explained, in a paper read before the
physical section of the British Association at
Leeds, in 1858, his apparatus for exhibiting
optical illusions of spectral phenomena. He
had many years before discovered an arrangement
of unsilvered glass that, by a mere darkened
ground, or dark chamber behind it, answered
the purposes of what is popularly termed a
mirror; and having observed that an opaque
body could be so placed as to represent the
appearance of a transparent one, he found that
the principle of his former discovery was an
important element in producing the illusion.
The apparatus described by Mr. Dircks was on
a small scale fitted only for a private room;
both mechanical skill and scientific ingenuity
have been applied by Professor Pepper in
adapting the principle of the discovery to a
public exhibition. A vertical plate-glass partition
divides the spectators from the stage, which
is darkened, but a subdued light from the front
is so regulated as to pass through the glass
screen or partition, which enables the figure of
the person on the stage to be visible. The
ghost, or apparition, is simply the reflexion in
the same glass partition of a person in a
compartment beneath the stage, placed at an angle
below the line of vision, and so contrived that
the reflected figure is thrown up through an
aperture in the floor left for the purpose, to a
level with the person on the stage. A strong
lime-light produced in a concealed chamber is
cast from behind upon the person whose figure
as well as movements are intended to be
reflected. The intensity of this brilliant illumination
heightens the effect of the reflexion, rendering
the visionary figure complete; but when the
lime-light is shut off, the reflexion becomes so
indistinct as to be invisible to the spectators.
The mind imagines that both images are equally
material so long as the illusion is undisturbed;
the solid and visionary figures may be brought
side by side, one may even pass through or
envelop the other—and the dramatic effect admits
of many variations—but it is a popular error
to suppose that looking-glasses are employed,
the plate-glass being the transparent medium
through which the objects are seen, as well as
the reflecting or mirror surface which produces
the illusion. It is a saying as old as the
days of Solomon, that there is nothing new
under the sun, and the right to a patent for
this process of producing ghosts has been
resisted, on the part of the theatres, on the
ground of want of novelty. To oppose the claim,
and to prove that the magicians of old raised
ghosts by a similar arrangement, the recondite
volumes of Giovanni Baptista Porta, a learned
Neapolitan who died in 1515, and whose work
on natural and artificial magic was translated
and published in England in 1658, together
with those of the German Jesuit Gaspar Schott,
have been dragged from the dusty shelves on
which they had long reposed. As the
controversy is becoming lively, it is not improbable
that exhibitions of rival ghosts may yet disturb
the gravity of our superior courts of law.

KING AND QUEEN.

1.

ARISE, and away with me,
  My lady, my love, my own!
For two spirits have led me to thee,
  By the light of the stars alone.

2.

For the sake of thy dear dark eyes
  I have given my soul to these twain,
Who have sworn to secure me the prize
  That I die if I fail to obtain:

3.

Yet they are not spirits accurst,
  But each is a delicate sprite,
And Sleep is the name of the first,
  And the name of the second is Night.

4.

Away, my Queen! Our horses
  Are waiting for thee and for me,
More fleet than the wind in his courses,
  More strong than the hurricanes be:

5.

They shall bear us, nor ever tire,
  Over hollow, and hill, and stream,
For the name of the one is Desire,
  And the name of the other is Dream.

6.

Away, my Queen! Be mine,
  As I am all thine, dear heart!
From afar I have brought thee sweet wine
  To make merry before we depart,

7.

And a harp that all night to my lay
  Maketh melody loud and low,
For music along the way,
  Since we have yet far to go;

8.

The harp is of delicate fashion;
  The wine is tender and bright;
The name of the wine is Passion,
  The name of the harp is Delight.

9.

On the strand I have anchor'd my boat;
  It is builded to live in all seas;
We have only to set it afloat,
  It will bear us wherever we please;

10.

For so light is the bark that, in sooth,
  'Twill not sink, tho' we load it with treasures,
And the name of the helmsman is Youth,
  And the crew that sail with him are Pleasures,

11.

But linger not now, for 'tis late,
  And we have the world to go thro'
Poor world! 'tis in such a sad state,
  It surely hath need of us two.

12.

Oh, the world, it shall do us sweet duty,
  As royally thro' it we move;
For thou art a Queen, thou art Beau
  And I am a King,—I am Love.