An onyx ring is made the cause of a series of wonderful transmigrations in an old-fashioned tale written about 1840 by John Sterling, of whom Thomas Carlyle has left us a most interesting biography.[537] In this story, the hero, a young barrister discouraged in his profession and disappointed in love, finds himself one night in an exceptionally depressed frame of mind. Opening, at chance, an old necromantic work, he is fascinated, perhaps hypnotized, by the vaguely mystic sentences, and is scarcely astonished to perceive, standing before him in his deserted room, what appears to be the figure of an aged man, who in the most-approved magician fashion offers him an onyx ring, engraved with the head of Apollonius of Tyana, and of such virtue that if he puts it on the forefinger of his right hand, he will be able to transfer himself into the body of any existing personage. His identification with the new personality will indeed be so complete, that his old existence will be entirely forgotten. This is to last for a week, at the expiration of which his memory will suddenly be revived for a short time, and he will have the choice to remain as he is, to change his fleshly tabernacle again, or to return to his own body. In the last-named case, however, his special power will be taken from him, and he must continue in his own form. The offer is accepted and a series of transmigrations begins, in the course of which the hero becomes in turn a baronet, a farmer, a traveler, a divine, a poet, a political reformer and an old basket-maker. In this last _avatar_ he is involuntarily forced to return to his own body, for the basket-maker dies before the week is up. The various characters through whose lives he passes belong to his immediate neighborhood, and the slight plot of the story can thus be carried forward without interruption. When at last the barrister comes to himself, he has just recovered from a long period of unconsciousness, and there is a little intentional uncertainty whether the vision and its consequences really took place, or were only the products of a fevered mind. Among the old basket-maker’s effects is found an onyx ring enclosed in an old box and engraved with a man’s head.