to us in its familiar, moderate, and
healthy exercise, brought first under our
notice when some deranged adjustment of the
mind has suffered it to grow into excess — to
be, if we may call it so, a mental tumour.

We may now come to a new class of
mysteries — which are receiving for the first time,
in our own day, a rational solution.

The blind poet, Pfeffel, had engaged, as
amanuensis, a young Protestant clergyman,
named Billing. When the blind poet walked
abroad, Billing also acted as his guide. One
day, as they were walking in the garden, which
was situated at a distance from the town,
Pfeffel observed a trembling of his guide's
arm whenever they passed over a certain
spot. He asked the cause of this, and
extracted from his companion the unwilling
confession, that over that spot he was attacked
by certain uncontrollable sensations, which
he always felt where human bodies had been
buried. At night, he added, over such spots
he saw uncanny things. " This is great folly,"
Pfeffel thought, " and I will cure him of it."
The poet went, therefore, that very night into
the garden. When they approached the
place of dread, Billing perceived a feeble
light, which hovered over it. When they
came nearer, he saw the delicate appearance
of a fiery, ghost-like form. He described it
as the figure of a female with one arm across
her body, and the other hanging down,
hovering upright and motionless over the
spot, her feet being a few hand- breadths above
the soil. The young man would not approach
the vision, but the poet beat about it with his
stick, walked through it, and seemed to the
eyes of Billing like a man who beats about a
light flame, which always returns to its old
shape. For months, experiments were
continued, company was brought to the spot, the
spectre remained visible always in the dark,
but to the young man only, who adhered
firmly to his statement, and to his conviction
that a body lay beneath. Pfeffel at last had
the place dug up, and, at a considerable depth,
covered with lime, there was a skeleton
discovered. The bones and the lime were
dispersed, the hole was filled up, Billing was
again brought to the spot by night, but never
again saw the spectre.

This ghost story, being well attested, created
a great sensation. In the curious book,
by Baron Reichenbach, translated by Dr.
Gregoiy, it is quoted as an example of a large
class of ghost stories which admit of explanation
upon principles developed by his own
experiments.

The experiments of Baron Reichenbach do
not, indeed, establish a new science, though it
is quite certain that they go far to point out a
new line of investigation, which promises to
yield valuable results. So much of them as
concerns our subject may be very briefly stated.
It would appear that certain persons, with
disordered nervous systems, liable to catalepsy,
or .to such affections, and also some healthy
persons who are of a peculiar nervous
temperament, are more sensitive to magnetism
than their neighbours. They are peculiarly
acted upon by the magnet, and are, moreover,
very much under the influence of the great
magnetic currents of the earth. Such people
sleep tranquilly when they are reposing with
their bodies in the earth's magnetic line, and
are restless, in some cases seriously affected,
if they lie across that line, on beds with the
head and foot turned east and west, matters
of complete indifference to the healthy animal.
These " sensitives " are not only affected by
the magnet, but they are able to detect, by
their sharpened sense, what we may reasonably
suppose to exist, a faint magnetic light:
they see it streaming from the poles of a
magnet shown to them, in a room absolutely
dark; and if the sensibility be great, and the
darkness perfect, they see it streaming also from
the points of fingers, and bathing in a faint
halo the whole magnet or the whole hand.
Furthermore, it would appear that the affection
by the magnet of these sensitives does not
depend upon that quality by which iron
filings are attracted; that, perfectly
independent of the attractive force, there streams
from magnets, from the poles of crystals, from
the sun and moon, another influence to which
the discoverer assigns the name of Odyle. The
manifestation of Odyle is accompanied by a
light too faint for healthy vision, but perceptible
at night by "sensitives." Odyle is
generated among other things by heat, and by
chemical action. It is generated, therefore,
in the decomposition of the human body.  I
may now quote from Reichenbach, who,
having given a scientific explanation upon his
own principles, of the phenomena perceived
by Billing, thus continues:—

"The desire to inflict a mortal wound on
the monster, Superstition, which, from a
similar origin, a few centuries ago, inflicted
on European society so vast an amount of
misery, and by whose influence not hundreds,
but thousands, of innocent persons died in
tortures, on the rack and at the stake;—this
desire made me wish to make the experiment,
if possible, of bringing a highly sensitive
person, by night, to a churchyard. I thought
it possible that they might see, over graves
where mouldering bodies lay, something like
that which Billing had seen. Mademoiselle
Reichel had the courage, unusual in her sex,
to agree to my request. She allowed me, on
two very dark nights, to take her from the
Castle of Reisenberg, where she was residing
with my family, to the cemetery of the
neighbouring village of Grünzing.

"The result justified my expectation in the
fullest measure. She saw, very soon, a light,
and perceived, on one of the grave mounds,
along its whole extent, a delicate, fiery, as it
were a breathing name. The same thing was
seen on another grave, in a less degree. But
she met neither witches nor ghosts. She
described the flame as playing over the graves