these papers, I should have held too incredible to be put
before the world. But when one sheep leaps the ditch, another will follow:
so I gave the following account in the _Athenaeum_ of October 5, 1867:

"The recorded story is that Michael Scott, being bound by contract to
produce perpetual employment for a number of young demons, was worried out
of his life in inventing jobs for them, until at last he set them to make
ropes out of sea sand, which they never could do. We have obtained a very
curious correspondence between the wizard Michael and his demon-slaves; but
we do not feel at liberty to say how it came into our hands. We much regret
that we did not receive it in time for the British Association. It appears
that the story, true as far as it goes, was never finished. The demons
easily conquered the rope difficulty, by the simple process of making the
sand into glass, and spinning the glass into thread, which they twisted.
Michael, thoroughly disconcerted, hit upon the plan of setting some to {40}
square the circle, others to find the perpetual motion, etc. He commanded
each of them to transmigrate from one human body into another, until their
tasks were done. This explains the whole succession of cyclometers, and all
the heroes of the Budget. Some of this correspondence is very recent; it is
much blotted, and we are not quite sure of its meaning: it is full of
figurative allusions to driving something illegible down a steep into the
sea. It looks like a humble petition to be allowed some diversion in the
intervals of transmigration; and the answer is--

Rumpat et serpens iter institutum,[19]

--a line of Horace, which the demons interpret as a direction to come
athwart the proceedings of the Institute by a sly trick. Until we saw this,
we were suspicious of M. Libri,[20] the unvarying blunders of the
correspondence look like knowledge. To be always out of the road requires a
map: genuine ignorance occasionally lapses into truth. We thought it
possible M. Libri might have played the trick to show how easily the French
are deceived; but with our present information, our minds are at rest on
the subject. We see M. Chasles does not like to avow the real source of
information: he will not confess himself a spiritualist."

PHILO OF GADARA.

Philo of Gadara[21] is asserted by Montucla,[22] on the {41} authority of
Eutocius,[23] the commentator on Archimedes, to have squared the circle
within the _ten-thousandth