e, standing over their corpses! On the same
principle, my old philosopher Gaffarel conjectures on the raining of
frogs; but these frogs, we must conceive, can only be the ghosts of
frogs; and Gaffarel himself has modestly opened this fact by a
"peradventure." A more satisfactory origin of ghosts modern philosophy
has not afforded.

And who does not believe in the existence of ghosts? for, as Dr. More
forcibly says--"That there should be so universal a _fame_ and _fear_ of
that which never was, nor is, nor can be ever in the world, is to me the
greatest miracle of all. If there had not been, at some time or other,
true miracles, it had not been so easy to impose on the people by false.
The alchemist would never go about to sophisticate metals to pass them
off for true gold and silver, unless that such a thing was acknowledged
as true gold and silver in the world."

The pharmacopoeia of those times combined more of morals with medicine
than our own. They discovered that the agate rendered a man eloquent and
even witty; a laurel leaf placed on the centre of the skull fortified
the memory; the brains of fowls and birds of swift wing wonderfully
helped the imagination. All such specifics have now disappeared, and
have greatly reduced the chances of an invalid recovering that which
perhaps he never possessed. Lentils and rape-seed were a certain cure
for the small-pox, and very obviously--their grains resembling the spots
of this disease. They discovered that those who lived on "fair" plants
became fair, those on fruitful ones were never barren: on the principle
that Hercules acquired his mighty strength by feeding on the marrow of
lions. But their talismans, provided they were genuine, seem to have
been wonderfully operative; and had we the same confidence, and melted
down the guineas we give physicians, engraving on them talismanic
figures, I would answer for the good effects of the experiment. Naude,
indeed, has utterly ridiculed the occult virtues of talismans, in his
defence of Virgil, accused of being a magician: the poet, it seems, cast
into a well a talisman of a horse-leech, graven on a plate of gold, to
drive away the great number of horse-leeches which infested Naples.
Naude positively denies that talismans ever possessed any such occult
virtues: Gaffarel regrets that so judicious a man as Naude should have
gone this length, giving the lie to so many authentic authors; and
Naude's paradox is indeed as strange as h