The third and proper type of possession by devils presented more complicated features. The patient’s state was not uniform. Often, or for the most part, his appearance and behaviour were natural; then paroxysms would supervene, in which he appeared fierce, malignant, demoniacal, in which he believed himself to be possessed, and acted up to the character, and in which powers, seemingly superhuman, such as reading the thoughts of others, were manifested by the possessed. The explanation of these features is happily given by Dr. Fischer of Basle, author of an excellent work on Somnambulism. He resolves them, with evident justice, into recurrent fits of trance—the patient, when entranced, being at the same time deranged; and he exemplifies his hypothesis by the case of a German lady who had fits of trance, in which she fancied herself a French emigrée: it would have been as easy for her, had it been the mode, to have fancied herself, and to have played the part of being, possessed by the fiend. The case is this: Gmelin, in the first volume of his _Contributions to Anthropology_, narrates that, in the year 1789, a German lady, under his observation, had daily paroxysms, in which she believed herself to be, and acted the part of, a French Emigrant. She had been in distress of mind through the absence of a person she was attached to, and he was somehow implicated in the scenes of the French Revolution. After an attack of fever and delirium, the complaint regulated itself, and took the form of a daily fit of trance-waking. When the time for the fit approached, she stopped in her conversation, and ceased to answer when spoken to; she then remained a few minutes sitting perfectly still, her eyes fixed on the carpet before her. Then, in evident uneasiness, she began to move her head backwards and forwards, to sigh and to pass her fingers across her eyebrows. This lasted a minute; then she raised her eyes, looked once or twice round with timidity and embarrassment, then began to talk in French, when she would describe all the particulars of her escape from France, and, assuming the manner of a French woman, talk purer and better accented French than she had been known to be capable of talking before, correct her friends when they spoke incorrectly, but delicately, and with a comment on the German rudeness of laughing at the bad pronunciation of strangers: and if led herself to speak or read German, she used a French accent, and spoke it ill; and the like. We have by this time had intercourse enough with spirits and demons to prepare us for the final subject of witchcraft.