when they inquired at the house respecting it, they were surprised to learn that not only had the people there displayed no light, but they had not even seen one, nor could they perceive any signs of it on the sands. On reaching Barmouth the circumstance was mentioned, and the fact corroborated by some of the people there, who had also plainly and distinctly seen the light. It was settled, therefore, by some of the old fishermen, that this was a “death token;" and, sure enough, the man who kept the ferry at that time was drowned, at high water, a few nights afterward, on the very spot where the light was seen. He was landing from the boat, when he fell into the water, and so perished.

The same winter the Barmouth people, as well as the inhabitants of the opposite banks, were struck by the appearance of a number of small lights which were seen dancing in the air at a place called Borthwyn, about half a mile from the town. A great number of people came out to see these lights, and after a while they all but one disappeared, and this one proceeded slowly towards the water's edge to a little bay, where some boats were moored. The men in a sloop, which was anchored near the spot, saw the light advancing; they saw it also hover for a few seconds over one particular boat, and then totally disappear. Two or three days afterward the man to whom that particular boat belonged was drowned in the river, while he was sailing about Barmouth harbour in that very boat.

On a lofty mountain rising over Marbach, in Austria, stands the church of Maria-Taferl, and miracles on miracles are related of this sacred spot since the time when the "Vesperbild," an image of the Virgin, was fixed on its oak. Even angels have visited the shrine. In the 17th century these

Remember, it is a matter of history that phantasms were seen by numbers in Whitehall during the Commonwealth; and the wondrous narrative of The Just Devil of Woodstock, which was written in 1649, by Master Widows, the learned clerk of Woodstock, "who each day put in writing what he heard from the mouths of the commissioners, and such things as they told to have befallen them the night before, therein keeping to their own words." The coney-stealers were so alarmed that they left their ferrets beyond Rosamond's Well. And this he saith also, that "at Saint James's the Devil so joaled the centinals against the sides of the Queen's Chappell doors that some of them fell sick upon it, and others, not taking warning by it, killed one outright; and all other such dreadful things those that inhabited the royal houses have been affrighted with."

I remember not the source from which I gleaned some mysteries of "The Lyffe of Virgilius," a professor of the occult sciences, alluded to, I believe, in Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and identified with the Mantuan poet-a magus, who “dyd many marvayles in hys lyfe tyme by whychcrafte and nygramancye thorowgh the helpe of the devyls of hell." One of these marvels I well recollect. This Virgil was cut up, salted and pickled, at his own request, in a barrel; and when the emperor discovered him, he slew Virgilius's man, and "then sawe the emperoure and all his folke a nakyd chylde, three tymes rennynge aboute the barell, sayinge the wordes, Cursed be the tyme that ye cam ever here;' and with those wordes vanyshed the chylde away."

Then, in the associations of lucky days and influential colours, is there not often a striking truth? Sir Kenelm Digby, writes Master Aubrey, among

But coincidence, and the natural leani mind to superstition, will unfold all your m and these your illustrations (I cannot te arguments) are even weaker than the form member that the mind of some beings is i ble as the yielding wax, and especially the constant influence of other minds, wi continual dropping will wear away a sto tends to bewilder, and at length to convince as to the special trifles to which you all though it is certain a sparrow falls not to the without a Providence, and the hairs of our are all numbered, I cannot believe that the tor will thus alter a gigantic law for an atom

ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION
SPECTRAL ILLUSION.

"The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
And these are of them."-Macbeth.

Ev. You are a most industrious gleaner am the sheaves of history, Astrophel. But why, in these seeming prophecies, seek to thwart the monious course of nature? Leave superstition the heathen and the savage: be assured, in words of Principal Robertson, that a vain desire prying into futurity is the error of the infancy o people, and a proof of its weakness.

From this weakness proceeded the faith of th Americans in dreams, their observation of omens. their attention to the chirping of birds and the cries of animals, all which they supposed to be indications of future events. And if any one of these prognostics was deemed unfavourable, they instantly abandoned the pursuit of those measures on which they were most eagerly bent.