able to assume, and even to enable others to assume, the forms of various objects, and to conceal their real aspects under the most attractive appearances.” John of Salisbury, who seems to have drawn his information from sources now lost, says that Mercury, the most expert of magicians, had the art of fascinating the eyes of men to such a degree as to render people invisible, or make them appear in forms quite different to what they really bore. We also learn from an eye-witness that Simon, the magician, possessed the secret of making another person resemble him so perfectly that every eye was deceived. Pomponius Mela affirms that the druidesses of the island of Sena could transform themselves into any animal they chose, and Proteus has become a proverb by his numerous metamorphoses. Then, to turn to another age and another hemisphere, we find Joseph Acosta, who resided a long time in Peru, assuring us that there existed at that period magicians who had the power of assuming any form they chose. He relates that the predecessor of Montezuma, having sent to arrest a certain chief, the latter successively transformed himself into an eagle, a tiger, and an immense serpent; and so eluded the envoys, till, having consented to obey the king’s mandate, he was carried to court and instantly executed. The same perplexing exploits are confidently attributed to the magicians of the West Indies; and there were two men eminent among the natives, the one called Gomez and the other Gonzalez, who possessed this art in an eminent degree; but both fell victims to the practice of it, being shot during the period of their apparent transformations. It is also recorded that Nanuk, the founder of the Sikhs—who are not properly a nation, but a religious sect—was violently opposed by the Hindoo zealots; and at one period of his career, when he visited Vatala, the Yogiswaras—who were recluses, that, by means of corporeal mortifications, were supposed to have acquired command over the powers of nature—were so enraged against him, that they strove to terrify him by their enchantments, assuming the shapes of tigers and serpents. But they could not succeed, for Nanuk appears to have been a real philosopher, who taught a pure theism, and inculcated universal peace and toleration. His tenets, like the tenets of the founders of all religions, have been since corrupted by his followers. We can scarcely avoid concluding that the power by which these feats were performed is of the same nature as that by which a magnetiser persuades his patient that the water he drinks is beer, or the beer wine; and the analogy between it and that by which I have supposed a spirit to present himself, with such accompaniments as he desires, to the eye of a spectator, is evident. In those instances where female figures are seen with children in their arm, the appearance of the child we must suppose to be produced in this manner.