castle manned with soldiers, or a forest tenanted by deer. [See
Chaucer, House of Time, Book III.; also the account given by Baptista
Porta, of his own Magical Delusions, of which an extract may be seen in
the "Curiosities of Literature" Art., Dreams at the Dawn of Philosophy.]
Besides these illusions, probably produced by more powerful magic
lanterns than are now used, the friar had stumbled upon the wondrous
effects of animal magnetism, which was then unconsciously practised by
the alchemists and cultivators of white or sacred magic. He was an adept
in the craft of fortune-telling; and his intimate acquaintance with all
noted characters in the metropolis, their previous history and present
circumstances, enabled his natural shrewdness to hit the mark, at least
now and then, in his oracular predictions. He had taken, for safety and
for bread, the friar's robes, and had long enjoyed the confidence of
the Duchess of Bedford, the traditional descendant of the serpent-witch,
Melusina. Moreover, and in this the friar especially valued himself,
Bungey had, in the course of his hardy, vagrant early life, studied,
as shepherds and mariners do now, the signs of the weather; and as
weather-glasses were then unknown, nothing could be more convenient
to the royal planners of a summer chase or a hawking company than the
neighbourhood of a skilful predictor of storm and sunshine. In fact,
there was no part in the lore of magic which the popular seers found so
useful and studied so much as that which enabled them to prognosticate
the humours of the sky, at a period when the lives of all men were
principally spent in the open air.

The fame of Friar Bungey had travelled much farther than the repute of
Adam Warner: it was known in the distant provinces: and many a northern
peasant grew pale as he related to his gaping listeners the tales he had
heard of the Duchess Jacquetta's dread magician.

And yet, though the friar was an atrocious knave and a ludicrous
impostor, on the whole he was by no means unpopular, especially in
the metropolis, for he was naturally a jolly, social fellow; he often
ventured boldly forth into the different hostelries and reunions of the
populace, and enjoyed the admiration he there excited, and pocketed the
groats he there collected. He had no pride,--none in the least, this
Friar Bungey!--and was as affable as a magician could be to the
meanest mechanic who crossed his broad horn palm. A vulgar man is never