is denial; he suspects the
thing is not true because it is so generally told! "It leads one to
suspect," says he, "as animals are said to have been driven away from so
many places by these talismans, whether they were ever driven from any
one place." Gaffarel, suppressing by his good temper his indignant
feelings at such reasoning, turns the paradox on its maker:--"As if,
because of the great number of battles that Hannibal is reported to have
fought with the Romans, we might not, by the same reason, doubt whether
he fought any one with them." The reader must be aware that the strength
of the argument lies entirely with the firm believer in talismans.
Gaffarel, indeed, who passed his days in collecting "Curiosites
inouies," is a most authentic historian of unparalleled events, even in
his own times! Such as that heavy rain in Poitou, which showered down
"petites bestioles," little creatures like bishops with their mitres,
and monks with their capuchins over their heads; it is true, afterwards
they all turned into butterflies!

The museums, the cabinets, and the inventions of our early virtuosi were
the baby-houses of philosophers. Baptista Porta, Bishop Wilkins, and old
Ashmole, were they now living, had been enrolled among the quiet members
of "The Society of Arts," instead of flying in the air, collecting "a
wing of the phoenix, as tradition goes;" or catching the disjointed
syllables of an old doting astrologer. But these early dilettanti had
not derived the same pleasure from the useful inventions of the
aforesaid "Society of Arts" as they received from what Cornelius
Agrippa, in a fit of spleen, calls "things vain and superfluous,
invented to no other end but for pomp and idle pleasure." Baptista Porta
was more skilful in the mysteries of art and nature than any man in his
day. Having founded the Academy _degli Oziosi_, he held an inferior
association in his own house, called _di Secreti_, where none was
admitted but those elect who had communicated some _secret_; for, in the
early period of modern art and science, the slightest novelty became a
secret, not to be confided to the uninitiated. Porta was unquestionably
a fine genius, as his works still show; but it was his misfortune that
he attributed his own penetrating sagacity to his skill in the art of
divination. He considered himself a prognosticator; and, what was more
unfortunate, some eminent persons really thought he was. Predictions and
secrets are harmles