Baron Humboldt, Mr. Huddart, Professor Vince, Captain Scoresby and others, will entertain you with these natural eccentricities, if you read the learned letter of Sir David Brewster, on “Natural Magic;” and he will teach you how easy is the solution of all these marvels, on the principles of atmospheric reflection. Yet how many are there who are not contented with the light of our philosophy, though it may fall like a sunbeam on the mind. Like the recorder of the “Unheard-of Curiosities,” they, at one time, confess the _optical illusion_, as when the Romans “saw their navy in the clouds;” at another, as when Constantine professed to see the “Crosse shining most gloriously in the aire,” marked with the motto, “In hoc signo vinces,”—philosophy was silent, and they believed it _might_ be divine. But a mind in its _state of nature_ cannot know all this. If a savage looked on the two white horses cut on the chalk hills of Berkshire and of Wiltshire, on the white cross of the Saxons on the Bledlow Ridge in Buckinghamshire, and on the white-leaf cross near Princes Risboro’,—would he not deem them deities, or the work of a magician or a devil? When the sailors of Lord Nelson saw the bloated corpse of the murdered Prince Caraccioli floating erect in the water directly towards their ship, can we wonder they should deem it a _supernatural_ visitation? When Franklin set his bells a ringing, by drawing down the electric fluid from the thunder-cloud, and when Columbus foretold to the hour the sun’s eclipse;—can we wonder that the transatlantic Indians listened, as to one endued with preternatural knowledge, or that the other might be thought superhuman? And when the king of Siam was assured that water could be congealed into ice, on which the sounding skate could glide,—can we wonder that he smiled in absolute disbelief of such a change, and called the tale a lie. Thus, when the peasants of Cardigan, who were not versed in Pontine architecture, looked on the bridge which the monks of _Yspitty C’en Vaen_ had thrown across the torrent of the _Monach_, they could not believe it a work of human, but of _infernal_, hands, and called it the “Devil’s Bridge.” On my ascent of the Vann mountain in Brecon, there often came a mass of limestone rolling down the precipice. “Ah sure,” said the old shepherd, who was watching his fold on the mountain-side, “the fairies are at their gambols, master, for they sometimes do play at bowls with these chalk stones.” Such was his explanation; but, on my gaining another ridge of the Brecon Beacon, I startled a whole herd of these fairies, who scudded off as fast as their legs could carry them, having first changed themselves into a flock of sheep.