and frequently changing in magnitude and form. On some occasions, it is observed to be suddenly extinguished, and then to reappear at a distance from its former position. Those persons who have endeavored to examine it closely have found that it moves away from them with a velocity proportioned to that of their advance a circumstance which has had no small influence on the fears of the ignorant and superstitious. Dr. Denham once saw an ignis fatuus in a boggy place, between two rocky hills, in a dark and calm night. He approached by degrees within two or three yards of it, and thereby had an opportunity of viewing it to the best advantage. It kept skipping about a dead thistle, till a slight motion of the air occasioned, as he supposed, by his near approach caused it to jump to another place; and as he advanced it kept flying before him. He observed it to be a uniform body of light, and concluded it must consist of ignited vapor. These appearances are common on the plains of Boulogne, in Italy, where they sometimes flit before the traveller on the road, saving him the expense of a torch on dark nights. Sometimes they spread very wide, and then contract themselves; and sometimes they float like waves, and appear to drop sparks of fire. They shine more strongly in rainy than in dry weather.

An appearance of the same kind is sometimes met with at sea, during gales of wind, and, of course, has become connected with many superstitious notions of sailors, who call it a corpusant. There are sometimes two together, and these are named Castor and Pollux. The following is a description of one, given by the voyager Dampier: "After four o'clock the

thunder and the rain abated, and then we saw a corpusant, at our maintopmast head. This sight rejoiced our men exceedingly, for the height of the storm is commonly over when the corpusant is seen aloft; but when they are seen lying on the deck, it is generally accounted a bad sign. A corpusant is a certain small, glittering light; when it appears, as this did, on the very top of a mainmast, or at a yardarm, it is like a star; but when it appears on the deck, it resembles a great glowworm. I have been told that when the Spanish or Portuguese see them they go to prayers, and bless themselves for the happy sight. I have heard some ignorant seamen discoursing how they have seen them creep, or, as they say, travel about, in the scuppers, telling many dismal stories that happened at such times; but I did never see any one stir out of the place where it was first fixed, except on deck, where every sea washeth it about. Neither did I ever see any but when we had rain as well as wind, and, therefore, do believe it is some jelly."

The origin and nature of the lights above described have not yet been satisfactorily explained. More accurate observations than have been made are required to furnish the basis of a correct theory respecting them.

SAILORS' OMENS.

SAILORS, usually the boldest men alive, are yet not unfrequently the very abject slaves of superstitious fear. Nothing is more common than to hear them

talk of noises, flashes, shadows, echoes, and other visible appearances, nightly seen and heard upon the waters. Andrews, in his Anecdotes, says, "Superstition and profaneness, those extremes of human conduct, are too often found united in the sailor; and the man who dreads the stormy effects of drowning a cat, of whistling a contra dance while he leans over the gunwale, will, too often, wantonly defy his Creator by the most daring execrations and licentious behavior." Dr. Pegge says that "sailors have a strange opinion of the devil's power and agency in stirring up winds, which notion seems to have been handed down from Zoroaster, who imagined that there was an evil spirit, called Vato, that could excite violent storms of wind." To lose a cat overboard, or to drown one, or to lose a bucket or a mop, is, at the present day, a very unlucky omen with common sailors.

LOVE CHARMS.

THEOCRITUS and Virgil both introduce women into their pastorals, using charms and incantations to recover the affections of their sweethearts. Shakspeare represents Othello as accused of winning Desdemona "by conjuration and mighty magic.”

"Thou hast practised on her with foul charms;
Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals
That waken motion.

She is abused, stolen from me, and corrupted,

By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks."

In Gay's Shepherd's Week, these are represented as country practices:

"Straight to the 'pothecary's shop I went,
And in love powders all my money spent.
Behap what will, next Sunday after prayers,
When to the alehouse Lubberkin repairs,
These golden flies into his mug I'll throw,

And soon the swain with fervent love shall glow."

In Love Melancholy, by Dr. Ferrand, it is said, "We have sometimes among us our silly wenches, some that, out of a foolish curiosity they have, must needs be putting in practice some of those feats that they have received by tradition from their mother perhaps, or nurse; and so, not thinking forsooth to do any harm, as they hope to paganize it to their own damnation. For it is most certain that botanomancy, which is done by the noise, or crackling, that box or bay leaves make when they are crushed between one's hands, or cast into the fire, was of old in use among the pagans, who were wont to bruise poppy flowers Detwixt their hands, by this means thinking to know their loves." Speaking of the ancient love charms, characters, amulets, or such like periapses, Dr. F. says, "They are such as no Christian physician ought to use, notwithstanding that the common people do to this day too superstitiously believe and put in practice many of these paganish devices."

Miss Blandy, who was executed many years ago for poisoning her father, persisted in affirming that she thought the powder given her by her villanous lover, Cranston, to administer to him, was a "love powder," which was to conciliate her father's affection to her lover. She met her death with this assevera

tion; and her dying request, to be buried close to her father, seems a corroborating proof, that though she was certainly the cause of his premature death, yet she was not, in the blackest sense of the word, his wilful murderer.

We quote the following lines from Herrick's Hesperides:

WHENEVER a real ghost appears, by which we mean some man or woman dressed up to frighten another, if the supernatural character of the apparition has been for a moment believed, the effects on the spectator have always been injurious-sometimes producing convulsions, idiocy, madness, or even instantaneous death. The celebrated Allston, the painter, when in England, related the following incident to his friend Coleridge, the poet: "It was, I think," said he, "in the University of Cambridge, near Boston, that a certain youth took it into his wise head to convert a Tom Paine-ish companion of his by appearing as a ghost before him. He accordingly dressed himself up in the usual way, having previously extracted the ball from the pistol which always lay near the head of his friend's bed. Upon