the lady as far as it went; but being, like
Macbeth—

                    " '———bent to know,
      By the worst means, the worst,'

she required further proof of her relative's
identity.

"There was a pause for a minute or two, and
then the Spirit-seer spoke again:

"' He has got a scroll in his hand, which he
unfolds; there is this inscription on it, in
letters of fire:

                 "'I AM TOM!!!'

We were assured that this sublime revelation
was received with a degree of solemn
awe, which caused our informant to shake
with suppressed throes of well-bred laughter.

"Besides the particular cases of 'Tom' and
"Lord Nelson," others, not a whit less
marvellous, have been described, and with perfect
good faith on the part of the narrators, who
could not be reasoned out of their absurdity,
and who insisted, moreover, that there could
be no deception in the matter, on account of
the means employed, and the evident sincerity
of the employés! These means, they said,
required that the person who looked into the
crystal should be perfectly pure; that is to
say, a child free from sin (and by no means
given to lying, as sometimes happens with the
best of children), and that the form of adjuration
used was, 'In nomine Domini,' &c.;
Latin being, as is well known, the language
which spirits of all denominations, 'red,
black, and grey,' are most accustomed to.
When interrogated after this fashion, the
spirit, if evil, fled away, howling (inaudibly);
if good, it came, when called, unless particularly
engaged in the Sun; for it appears that
it is to that planet almost all spirits go when
their term of purgatory is over."

Thus far we are lighted on our amusing
way by private information; but for more
evidence of the balderdash by which
educated persons are capable of being
deluded, we must revert to the Almanac.
According to this veracious record, the first
spirit who favoured Zadkiel with a visit (it
was on the 29th of January last) was Orion,
of whom such frequent mention is made in
the fathers. He is described as "a TALL man,
with a helmet on, and in armour; a bear on
its hind legs near him! He is fierce-looking,
but has a pleasant smile."

Zadkiel indulges the readers of his Almanac
with woodcuts of the various spirits as they
are said to have appeared in the Crystal.
They were drawn by one of the seers—a
young gentleman having a knack with the
pencil. The bear "on his hind legs" does
not appear; but Orion himself is, in the
guise of a knight, precisely like those
theatrical heroes dear to the eyes of youth,
and sold at a "penny plain, and twopence
coloured." What renders this portrait quite
authentic, is a sentence in a letter which our
friend showed us, from the author of the
Almanac to an old retired officer, in which he
speaks of the young seer and draughtsman,
as a recreant, and denounces him for having
owned that what he had seen in the glass
was—nothing. That the portraits he took,
the visions he declared he saw, the answers
he pretended he heard from the glass, were
simply of his own invention. That in short
he had perpetrated an egregious hoax. After
the date of the letter in which this is
dolorously communicated, the young artist's
drawings are published in the Almanac as
authentic likenesses of what appeared in the
extraordinary glass of spirits.

The substance of Orion's communication is
as follows, commencing with the caution that
what he tells is not to be published "for the
first half of this year," that is to say, till the
Almanac is ready. All his communications
are evidently copyright.

He says that the Crystal in which he
appears was made in the year 657 B.C.; that
any questions may be asked, "except wicked
ones;" that the querist "cannot always be
told;" and that he comes "from the
atmosphere." Being out of breath with talking
—though he says little besides the above—
Orion has recourse to the expedient of "letters
of fire" which, observes Zadkiel, in a note,
"appear written in various ways in the
Crystal; sometimes on flags, which the Spirits
hold up; but sometimes they are in print.
In these letters of fire, Orion thus counsels
the querist: " Be merry. Quarrel not. Keep
your temper, and your children, too. You
are a good man, but try to be better. I am
wanted. Let me go."

Besides Orion, there is a spirit whom we
never had the advantage of hearing of before
—his name is GEGO. He is not quite so
clever as Orion, or the Egyptian magicians.
However we learn from him that in the Pre-
adamite era the world did not go round the
Sun, which is something worth knowing, and
would be satisfactory information for Dr.
Cullen. He also says, that "The Babylon
mentioned in the Revelations did not allude
to Rome but to London."

Without troubling Orion or Gego any
further, we turn to a few deceased celebrities
who were at different times summoned into
the Crystal, and hear what they have to
tell us.

Milton relates that the idea of "Paradise
Lost" was suggested to him in a dream, by
his guardian angel. Homer was born in
Athens, and knows Virgil. Tacitus, who is
eminently modest, prefers Cæsar's account of
the Britons to his own, and says that the
Druids were "stupid fellows in general."
Sir Isaac Newton says, that "Electricity is
partly the cause of the moon's motions," and
that "the nature of light will be discovered,
but not for a long time."

The following specimens of colloquies heard
by large parties of amazed, titled, and