ces,
instead of being, as was originally conjectured, the result of
black-magic, were, in reality, the effect of hydraulic, pneumatic, and
mechanical contrivances. Even the most marvellous feats of the Egyptian
sorcerers have been latterly explained by the revelations of natural
philosophy, and a multitude of these explanations may be found by the
reader in the learned work "Des Sciences Occultes," &c. written by M.
Eusebe Salverte, and published in Paris as recently as 1843. In that
remarkable volume, M. Salverte proves that natural phenomena are more
startling than necromantic tricks, and that, in the words of Roger
Bacon, "_non igitur oportet nos magicis illusionibus uti, cum potestas
philosophica doceat operari quod sufficit._" That Tiberius was capable
of atrocities yet more terrific, and that murders of the most inhuman
kind were the consequence of almost every one of his diabolical whims,
those acquainted with the picturesque narrative of Suetonius already
know. They will remember not only how he caused his nephew Germanicus to
be poisoned by the governor of Syria, but how he ordered a fisherman to
be torn in pieces by the claws of a crab, simply because he met him, in
one of his suspicious moods, when strolling in a sequestered garden of
Capreae.--_Sue. Tib._ c. lx.

[12] Suetonius assures us (cap. lxviii.), that the muscular strength of
Tiberius Claudius Nero was, in the prime of his manhood, almost as
supernatural as his crimes; that he could with his outstretched finger
bore a hole through a sound apple (_integrum malum digito terebraret_),
and wound the head of a child or even a youth with a fillip, (_caput
pueri, vel etiam adolescentis, talitro vulneraret._) His excesses must,
however, have enervated his frame long before his death by suffocation.

[13] His garb, writes Josephus, "was so resplendent as to spread a
horror over those that looked intently upon Him."--_Lib._ xix. c. 8.

[14] "An owl," says Josephus (xix. 8); "an angel of the Lord," angelos
Kyriou, say the scriptures, (Acts. xii. 23,)--in either case a spectral
illusion.

[15] It is impossible for anyone devoted to the study of "Paradise
Lost," of "Comus," even of "Sampson Agonistes," and especially of "Il
Pensoroso" and "L'Allegro," to doubt that their writer was carried away
at times by the _oestrum_, or _divine afflatus_, although Dr Johnson
discredits "these bursts of light, and involutions of darkness, these
transient and involuntary ex