O Dove, “my guide, philosopher and friend!” that thou hadst lived to see what I have seen, the portrait of the Ghost of a Flea, engraved by Varley, from the original by Blake! The engraver was present when the likeness was taken, and relates the circumstances thus in his Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy. “This spirit visited his imagination in such a figure as he never anticipated in an insect. As I was anxious to make the most correct investigation in my power of the truth of these visions, on hearing of this spiritual apparition of a Flea, I asked him if he could draw for me the resemblance of what he saw. He instantly said, ‘I see him now before me.’ I therefore gave him paper and a pencil, with which he drew the portrait of which a fac-simile is given in this number. I felt convinced by his mode of proceeding, that he had a real image before him; for he left off, and began on another part of the paper to make a separate drawing of the mouth of the Flea, which the spirit having opened, he was prevented from proceeding with the first sketch till he had closed it. During the time occupied in compleating the drawing, the Flea told him that all fleas were inhabited by the souls of such men as were by nature blood-thirsty to excess, and were therefore providentially confined to the size and form of insects; otherwise, were he himself, for instance, the size of a horse, he would depopulate a great portion of the country. He added that if in attempting to leap from one island to another he should fall into the sea, he could swim, and should not be lost.” The Ghost of the Flea spoke truly when he said what a formidable beast he should be, if with such power of leg and of proboscis, and such an appetite for blood he were as large as a horse. And if all things came by chance, it would necessarily follow from the laws of chance that such monsters there would be; but because all things are wisely and mercifully ordered, it is, that these varieties of form and power which would be hideous, and beyond measure destructive upon a larger scale, are left in the lower stages of being, the existence of such deformity and such means of destruction there, and their non-existence as the scale of life ascends, alike tending to prove the wisdom and the benevolence of the Almighty Creator. CHAPTER CCXV. FACTS AND FANCIES CONNECTING THE DOCTOR'S THEORY WITH THE VEGETABLE WORLD. We will not be too peremptory herein: and build standing structures of bold assertions on so uncertain a foundation; rather with the Rechabites we will live in tents of conjecture, which on better reason we may easily alter and remove. FULLER.