have, at great expense, visited many of these ruined mounds, and mean, ere long, to publish the results. The world will be surprised, of course, but I am prepared to defend what I shall boldly assert; namely, that the said embankments were never aqueducts at all, but boundary-lines, divisions, landmarks, separating counties and districts. Boundaries, I say, sir, and nothing else! What do you think of that? But, mum! here are some of my learned brethren; I know that some of them suspect that I have something in embryo. Let them think as they will, I shall disclose nothing publicly till all my indicia are complete, and then—I'll astonish them!” As we passed out of the museum to the council-chamber, I observed some buff leather jackets against the wall, and below them a variety of tattered trowsers or pantaloons; the former, I was told, were the usual military dress of the nineteenth century, and the latter articles were invariably worn by all married females having any claim to gentility. These appropriations of apparel were made by the learned doctor, whose lecture we were about to hear, and were justified by certain lines from Hudibras under the buff coats; and, under the inexpressibles, by the following, mutilated from Prior: They lived... a happy life enough; And the wife wore the breeches." FUTURE HISTORICAL ERRORS EXPLODED, &c. The hall or chamber of the Society of Antiquaries in the thirty-ninth century, presented nothing very different from public meeting-rooms of the nineteenth; and the same may be said of the routine forms of reading the minutes of the preceding sitting, &c. &c. I shall therefore pass over all preliminary matters, and come at once to the moment when the lion of the evening, the celebrated Dr. Tuffotropos, got upon his legs, and, after hemming and coughing considerably for himself, and being proportionately cheered by others, spake nearly as follows: "It has, for some centuries, been a cause of great regret among the learned that our more remote ancestors printed so little (indeed almost nothing) of their history in the Latin language, with which, as also the Greek, we have clear evidence they were not unacquainted. I need scarcely remind my erudite hearers, that the clear evidence to which I allude, is the existence of many copies of the best classic authors of Greece and Rome, still preserved in the libraries of the curious, and bearing the names of printers resident in ancient London, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, &c., to which I may add the various fragments of inscriptions on stone which have, from time to time, been dug up in and about the spots where those cities are supposed to have formerly stood. Why their best writers did not endeavour to perpetuate the memory of historical events, and to hand down to posterity the records of their progress in arts and science in a dead, and therefore unchangeable language, will, probably, long remain a disputed queston; but to me, their conduct appears to have been the result of most arrogant self-conceit. They persuaded themselves, generation after generation, that they had arrived at the acme of perfection; and that, after their day, no alteration would take place in a language which they well knew had ever previously been shifting as a quicksand, both in the meaning and orthography of words. And so they went on printing, each after the fashionable idioms of his own little day; and thus the piles of their books, which have miraculously escaped destruction, are utterly useless to all save the very few who have been led, by some peculiar infatuation or singularity of taste, to study deeply; or, rather, perhaps I should say, to grope darkly, in their search for truth amid multitudinous and monstrous fictions, ridiculously vain boastings and innumerable irreconcilable contradictions, all rendered more obscure by the uncertainty of a vernacular tongue, which appears to have alternately adopted and repudiated words, and even whole sentences, from every other then spoken language upon the face of the globe. "Without further preface, I shall now proceed to communicate to this learned body a very few of the results of much study and patient investigation; and the time of which I shall first speak is the first part of the nineteenth century, a period in which a certain hero or giant, called Napoleon, is said to have conquered or overrun all the nations of Europe, till at length he was vanquished, or put down, by a no less extraordinary personage, named Arthur Wellesley, or Wellington. This tale has hitherto been implicitly believed: but I am prepared to shew that, if not entirely a fiction, its sole basis rests upon transactions very different from those of war and bloodshed. "You appear surprised. I marvel not thereat. I was equally so when I first caught a glimmering of the truth in my researches about the site of ancient London, for the purpose of completing my map thereof, which I had the bonour of presenting to this society, and of which I am happy to see a copy against our wall, as I shall have occasion to refer thereto, for the purpose of elucidating this and other matters. "Well, gentlemen, I was surprised; but I kept my suspicions to myself. One does not like to part with the favourite legends of one's . childhood. For the first time in my life the dawning light of truth was disagreeable : but I remembered my duty as an antiquary, and persevered, step by step, in my inquiries, till at last I found it impossible longer to doubt that the giant, or hero, Napoleon, was no other than the evil spirit, or the spirit of evil, called Apollyon ('Arλλuwv), or the Destroyer, and that his adversary, or vanquisher, Arthur Wellesley, was a celebrated preacher. "In my forthcoming work upon modern errors concerning the ancients, I purpose to give, at full length, the processes of my various inductions upon this and other subjects; and, therefore, shall now confine myself to a few observations and quotations, which I venture humbly to believe must carry conviction home to the minds of this enlightened and judicious meeting. "In the first place, it will be asked how the letter N became attached to Apollyon, or 'Aohu? The reply is simply this: The old English article A always required the letter N to be prefixed to any word commencing with a vowel. Thus they would say and write a Wellington, an Apollyon, or Napoleon. The change in the rest of the letters is accounted for at once by remarking that the name Απολλυων, is of ἀπολέω, which in plain English letters gives at once the word apoleo; to which add at the end the lettern, to make it a substantive, according to the genius of their language, and we have the very word Apoleon, or a Napoleon; i. e. a Destroyer.-Ahem ! "And now, my learned brethren, let us look to the state of the times, and the traditional history of the said giant, or destroyer. In the first place, pray observe and keep in mind that, about the termination of the eighteenth century, there occurred, in the kingdom of Gaul, or France, a revolution, during which not only was the then king dethroned and, as the chronicles say, beheaded, but also an open warfare was declared against religion, and priests of all descriptions were driven from the land. Of what took place in that country, immediately after, we have monstrously incredible accounts. For instance, that the rulers proclaimed liberty and equality to all, and yet that all the prisons of the country were overflowing with persons confined on suspicion of some trivial difference of opinions, and so many thousands were brought to the scaffold, that, for lack of executioners, they were compelled to erect machines for the work of decapi tation! Again, it is gravely asserted that the people, after they had shaken off what they termed the trammels of religion, would, ever and anon, seize upon any indifferent woman in the street, and carry her into their temples, where they would place her upon a throne, and worship her as the Goddess of Reason! "Now, if we could believe such statements as these to be facts, we must imagine that the whole nation was stricken with insanity, a thing not to be conceived; therefore we are compelled to suppose them allegorical, denoting a state of anarchy, cruelty, and infidelity-a time of the march of destructive principles — a period in which established laws and institutions, both divine and human, were trod under foot or thrown down. In brief, the evil spirit, the spirit of destruction, was at work; and, shortly after, we find IT (typified as the giant Napoleon) stated to be the ruler and leader of the French people. "Here, then, from amid the fuliginous, chaotic mass of records, fable, [The speaker had, once or twice before, been favoured by approving nods and smiles; but here a simultaneous cheer from all parts of the room elevated him into a delightful feeling of self-complacency; and, after bowing and smiling, he confidently proceeded.] "And now, my learned brethren, having once caught a ray of truth, behold how, in an instant, it will disperse the mists of error! What now becomes of the fabled conquests of the giant, or hero, Napoleon? What shall we say of his reported triumphant marches into or through Spain, Italy, Helvetia, Germany, Poland, Russia, and Holland, and his intended invasion of England? Simply this, that the destructive spirit (¿ ́Aλ) spread far and wide, and succeeded in subjugating divers nations upon the continent, and might eventually have overrun Britain, but for the strenuous exertions of Arthur Wellesley, the great preacher, who was a mighty conservative, or upholder and defender of his church and king, and his country's institutions. The legends of our childhood tell of the said Arthur overthrowing the said Napoleon, in a severe conflict at a place called Waterloo but where Waterloo was has long been an unsettled question among antiquaries. The ruins of the old bridge bearing that name would long since have set that matter at rest, had it not been for the idle fancy that Napoleon was a man, and had never been in England. I have, however, in my hand some fragments of a work, printed in London in 1812 (three years before the fabled fight of Waterloo), which clearly proves that Napoleon had, before that period, been in and about the neighbourhood of the metropolis, and in other, now unknown, parts of the British dominions, playing such mischievous, superhuman pranks, as would serve alone to prove, if any further proof were needed, that he was any thing but a man. "These fragments, from which I shall now, and may presently again, have occasion to read a few passages, are part of a collection of prize poems, by the first authors of the time, written to be spoken upon the stage at the opening of a newly erected theatre. It is important to keep this destination of the poems in our view, since no writer, however given to the fabulous, would dare to affirm, before a crowded audience, any matter as a fact, unless it were generally accredited. I will now read, or rather translate, a line or two from the first, and therefore, no doubt, the most approved address: "Base Bonaparte —— "Napoleon was also called Bonaparte no doubt, for the same reason that the Greeks named the Furies Eduvidas; i. e. because he had no good part about him. But to the quotation : "Base Bonaparte, filled with deadly ire, Sets one by one our playhouses on fire. Some years ago, he pounced with deadly glee on The Opera-house, then burnt down the Pantheon. Nay, still unsated, in a coat of flames, Next, at Millbank, he crossed the river Thames; Thy hatch, O Halfpenny! passed in a trice Boiled some black pitch, and burnt down Astley's twice. Then, buzzing on through ether with a vile hum' "There, my learned brethren !surely I need read no more! Here we have him represented as crossing the river in a coat of flames, and buzzing or flying through ether with a humming noise,-metaphorical in some degree, of course, but perfectly consistent with the character and conduct of the destructive spirit; whilst nothing can be more ridiculous than attributing such flights to a giant or a hero. So we may consider the identity and presence of Napoleon, or the destroyer, in England, as settled. And now for his antagonist. "That the names of Wesley and Wellesley were indiscriminately used by members of the same family,* I shall furnish abundant proof in my forthcoming work upon modern errors concerning the ancients. Let it suffice now to say that it was used by the followers of Arthur Wellesley, as may be seen by divers antique stone tablets in our museum, whereon are engraven words signifying Wesleyan chapel,' 'Wesleyan school,' &c. These, I confess, did not attract my attention closely until, having discovered that the adversary of Wesley, or Wellesley, was an unembodied spirit of evil, I felt assured that he must have fought with See Southey's Life of Wesley. 28 A Case of Clairvoyance. other weapons than those borne by "It happened in this wise. I was - 'Meux's new brewhouse shews the light, Where patent shot they sell.' "Rowland Hill's chapel! Can any the truth of my theory. It is a great thing to be satisfied. One then proceeds rapidly, gathering proof upon proof from trifles, otherwise apparently light as air; yet, when combined, forming a structure, against which the breath of vulgar prejudice is as the idle wind. I persevered, gentlemen. The particulars of my various journeys will appear in my forthcoming work; therefore I shall not trespass longer on your time than is necessary to state that, among the mouldy records of Oxford, I discovered the name of Wellington as the head of the university there established, and both him and Hill upon the list of doctors. Here error is impossible, as we have the unchangeable Latin, doctor, a teacher or preacher. Ahem! (Great applause.) "I am almost ashamed of detaining you longer, but I must mention one further evidence. By patient calculation, I found that the 18th of June, 1815, was Sunday, or preaching day, the Christian Sabbath, ever kept most strictly by the better portion of the ancient British. Now, supposing Wellesley and Napoleon to have been giants, is it probable that the former, being a stanch Conservative, would, in defiance of religion and morality, consent to fight a pitched battle with the latter, on such a day, in the centre of the British metropolis? The idea is preposterous. No; on that day he preached a most convincing sermon, by which the destroyer was utterly put to shame. Somewhere near the ruins of Waterloo Bridge it was, no doubt; but the precise spot I have not yet decided upon, though I am much inclined to think that he stood upon the hill described by the poet as .. The height Where patent shot they sell'— the precise locality of which I trust shortly to ascertain. In the meanwhile, I shall be most happy to receive hints from, and answer any questions or objections that may occur to, or be put by, any of my learned brethren. The only one I have yet heard was the inapplicability of the title of dur, or duke, to a preacher. Nothing can be more easy than the reply. He, Wesley, or Wellesley, changed his name, for some unknown cause, to Wellington ded Day Wel-s does not necessarily imply more than that he was a leader, or head of a party, which party chose to call themselves after his patronymic; and therefore the aforesaid title means no more than that he was the dux gregis, the head of the flock of Wellingtonians, or Wesleyans." During the burst of applause that greeted the conclusion of this rigmarole, Ï exclaimed, “This is too much! Let them miscall streets and places, and gas-pipes and railroads, as they please; but to dare thus to make a field-preacher of our field-marshal the duke! I can bear it no longer, and will tell them to their faces" "Hush!" whispered my magnetic daimon. "As we've passed over two thousand years, you may as well see their next meeting." And immediately a mist passed before my eyes, as if for a moment: but, when it disappeared, I found myself re-entering the room, and the members taking their seats. "I brought him the book," whispered a voice at my elbow; and, turning, I recognised the gentleman with the hourglass and scythe, and his single forelock of hair, whom I had encountered soon after commencing my trip. 66 "What, old Chronos!" I exclaimed, can you be one of this assembly? If so, methinks you ought to teach them better." "I one! Oh, no! He, he, ha!" chuckled the old fellow. "You've seen something of what I can do down at the old place. They call me the eater, or destroyer, of every thing; but there are certain names and matters upon which I cannot make any impression, mumble them as I may. All I can do is to hide them under some rubbish for a very short period, and then they are sure to come to light again. That book is one. I never could get rid of it, but have been compelled to bring it all this way." Here the president called the meeting to business. The minutes of the preceding sitting were read, &c.; and then a fine military-looking veteran rose, and, after casting an arch semicontemptuous glance toward the redoubted Doctor Tuffotropos, said: "Mr. President, and Gentlemen,— When I was informed of what passed at your last meeting, I felt that it was my duty to attend here to-day, not for the purpose of controverting the wonderful discoveries of a certain learned doctor, step by step, but to demolish the whole of his theory at once. He says that we are under a mistake concerning the character of an ancient illustrious warrior; but I say that there has been no mistake, there is no mistake, and there shall be no mistake! And, in order that there shall be no mistake, I now place upon your table a Latin copy of the despatches of Arthur, Duke of Wellington, &c. &c., translated from the old English authenticated version of Gurwood." The speaker then sat down, and an awkward, gaping, staring silence, as though all had been paralysed, reigned among the members, till Dr. Tuffotropos ventured, in a tremulous voice, to observe," Re-al-ly, I-I never before heard of such a-a work." "Perhaps not," said the veteran, calmly; "yet every first-rate military library in the world has a copy." "Hurra!" I shouted; "that's as it ought to be! Hurra! Wellington for ever !" "Good by," said my magnetic guide; "I'm off." "Huzza! Wellington for ever!" I shouted again. "Now, do, pray, sir!-do, pray, not make such a noise," said a wellknown voice at my ear: "the doctor said that you was to be kept quiet." It was my faithful servant Peter who had spoken. I was in a strange bed, and no longer a clairvoyant; but, doubtless, a portion of the magnetic influence yet remained in my system, for I felt dreamily that my ideas were wandering; therefore I must take Peter's word for what occurred. It seemed that, after sinking into a state of clairvoyance, I had been carried off and put into bed, under the care of Dr. Zwingenbock and the Baron Schwartzlippe, who gave strict orders that I should be kept quiet, and not disturbed on any account, let me sleep as long as I would. They had then returned to their comrades, and "kept it up " till a late hour. So my body had remained about eighteen hours dormant, while my spirit went on the clairvoyant expedition. Peter had come to look after me; and having learned the doctor's injunction, determined to see it fulfilled to the letter, in spite of the landlord's repeated attempts to the contrary. The latter, however, had now heard my shouting, |