It is probable that the deceptive effect was produced by the magic lantern, and the concave mirror. With respect to the method “to make the appearance of a flode of water to come into a house,” the following recipe has been gravely handed down to us from our ancestors:--steep a thread in the liquor produced from snake’s eggs bruised, and hang it up over a basin of water in the place where the trick is to be performed. Recipes of this kind were perhaps meant to mislead those who wished to penetrate the mystery. In the reign of Charles the Second, jugglers appear to have been in much repute with the great. In the “Diary” of Evelyn, under the date of October 8th, 1672, we find the following notice: “I tooke my leave of my Lady Sunderland; she made me stay dinner at Leicester House, and afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. He melted a beer-glass, and eat it quite up; then, taking a live coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster; the coal was blown on with bellows, till it flamed and sparkled in his mouth, and so remained, till the oyster gasped and was quite boiled; then he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he drank down as it flamed; I saw it flaming in his mouth a good while. He also took up a thick piece of iron, like an ironing heater, and, when fiery-hot, held it between his teeth, then in his hand, and threw it about like a stone; but this, I believe, he cared not to hold very long.” Lady Sunderland seemed fond of such exhibitions, as Mr. Evelyn recounts on another occasion, that “dining with Lady Sunderland, I saw a fellow swallow a knife, and divers great pebble stones, which could make a plain rattling one against another; the knife was in sheath of horn.” Katterfelto, described by Cowper, as “With his hair on end, at his own wonders Wondering for his bread,” was a compound of conjuror and quack-doctor, and seems at one time to have enjoyed a great repute in his way. He practised on the people of London, during the influenza of the year 1782, and added to his nostrums the fascination of hocus-pocus. Among other philosophical apparatus, he employed the services of some extraordinary black cats, with which he astonished the ignorant, and confounded the vulgar. He was not so successful out of London; as he was committed, by the Mayor of Shrewsbury, to the common house of correction, as a vagrant and impostor. But, though European jugglers have manifested great skill in the various branches of their art, they appear to be far exceeded by those of other parts of the world. Clavigero describes many of the performances of Mexican professors; and adds that “the first Spaniards who were witnesses of these and other exhibitions of the Mexicans were so much astonished at their agility, that they suspected some supernatural power assisted them.”