The celebrated Dr Priestley, and many others, undertook to investigate the circumstances, but were unable to make any satisfactory discovery, and it remains inexplicable. A reviewer of Wesley's life observes, that few will regard the circumstances as anything more than creatures of imagination, the offspring of credulity and superstition; but I should strongly suspect that some one of the family was the prime mover in the business, as was funny Joe in the Royal Palace of King Charles the First. SUPERSTITION. Historical records furnish innumerable instances of superstition, fraught with circumstances of inexpressible horror. It is an infirmity inherent in our nature, and extremely difficult to eradicate; no lesson on moral evil, or lecture on physical destiny, can sever the spell or dissolve the dark enchantment. So peculiarly fascinating is the love of the marvellous, that when ignorance and bigotry cooperate, the pure fountain of truth is polluted, and the most preposterous tales of antiquity are held in veneration by every fiery zealot. From this cause, millions of innocent lives have been sacrificed. The intellects of thousands have been shackled, and their energies perverted by irrational fears, and by degrading conceptions of the nature of Deity, and of the purposes and modes of religious worship and obedience. It was in the darkest days of superstition, that the rack was in exercise to chain down the understanding, to sink it into the most abject and sordid condition, punishing imaginary crimes, and repressing truth and philosophical research. The science of medicine had to encounter the scourge of superstition at an early period; the epithet of magician was applied to the physician, who appeared to be endowed with superior genius and knowledge. The inquisition was constantly prepared to take holy cognizance of those who distinguished themselves by extraordinary cures, and hundreds of miserable wretches were dragged to the stake for this cause alone. Galileo, in the 17th century, was condemned by the inquisition to a rigorous punishment, for his noble and useful discoveries in astronomy and geometry; and about the same period, Dr Bartolo suffered a similar fate at Rome, because he unexpectedly cured a nobleman of the gout.