ld have to do with the magical
operation of the mirror. In the Gesta Romanorum there is a story of a
knight who went to Palestine, and who while there was shown by an
Eastern magician in a mirror what was going on at home. In the Arabian
Nights the story of Prince Ahmed has a variant, an ivory tube through
which could be discovered the far-distant--a sort of anticipation of Sam
Weller's 'double million magnifying gas microscope of hextra power.'

In the story of Prince Zeyn Alasnam, the enchanted mirror was able to
reflect character, and was called the Touchstone of Virtue. Here again
we have Hamlet's idea of holding the mirror up to Nature. The young
King, Zeyn Alasnam, had eight beautiful statues of priceless value, and
he wanted a ninth to make up his set. The difficulty was to find one
beautiful enough; but the Prince of Spirits promised to supply one as
soon as Zeyn should bring him a maiden at least fifteen years old, and
of perfect beauty; only the maiden must not be vain of her charms, and
she must never have told an untruth. Zeyn employed his magic mirror, and
for a long time without success, as it always became blurred when he
looked into it in the presence of a girl. At last he found one whose
image was faithfully and brilliantly reflected--whose modesty and
truthfulness were attested by the mirror. He took her with reluctance to
the Prince of Spirits, because he had fallen in love with her himself;
but his faithfulness to the contract was duly rewarded. On returning
home, he found that the ninth statue, placed on its pedestal by the
Prince of Spirits according to promise, was no cold marble, but the
peerless and virtuous maiden whom he had discovered by means of his
mirror.

Paracelsus, in one of his treatises on Magic, gives the following
account of the uses to which 'the witches and evil spirits' sometimes
put the mirror.

'They take a mirror set in a wooden frame and put it into a tub of
water, so that it will swim on the top with its face directed towards
the sky. On the top of the mirror, and encircling the glass, they lay a
cloth saturated with blood, and thus they expose it to the influence of
the moon; and this evil influence is thrown towards the moon, and
radiating again from the moon, it may bring evil to those who love to
look at the moon. The rays of the moon, passing through the ring upon
the mirror, become poisoned, and poison the mirror; the mirror throws
back the poisoned ether into the a