are classed under four distinctive denominations. Some of them figure in the exercise of repeating the name of Allah, with a few other words interjected, as long as the vocal organs can sustain the task; "accompanying their ejaculations or chants with a motion of the head, or of the whole body, or of the arms. From long habit they are able to continue these exercises for a surprising length of time without intermission." Some of them excel in mountebank feats, of thrusting iron spikes into their bodies, eating glass or burning coals, and live serpents. But the majority seem to employ themselves chiefly in the more ordinary, honest, and useful occupations. On some public occasions the author witnessed the most ambitious exploits of the fine performers. The dancing and whirling exhibition does not appear to have equalled what is described as seen in Constantinople. But that of fire-eating with impunity was a more wonder-making spectacle than any feats of agility could have been.

*

But something much more strange than this is done in Egypt, and probably no where else. Mr. Lane had heard from English residents in Cairo such accounts of a modern Jannes or Jambres that it would have evinced an inexcusable want of curiosity not to seek an interview. There was introduced to him a fine-looking man, affable and unaffected in his conversation, who had no reluctance or fear to put his powers to the test before the most shrewd or suspicious inspector. The preparatory ceremony was to write on a paper in Arabic (which he readily showed to Mr. Lane, who has given a translation) an invocation to two genii, his " familiar spirits," named Turshoon and Turyooshoon.* This was cut in slips, which were successively thrown together with some incense, on the fire in a chafing-dish, while the process of incantation was going on, in an indistinct muttering by the magician-not, to be sure, a very imposing kind

* In a note Mr. Lane says "He professed to me that his wonders were effected by the agency of good spirits; but to others he has said the reverse; that his magic is satanic."

6

of spell, and more adapted to excite suspicion than create credulity. It was necessary there should be an intermediate person between him and the inquisitive observer. And this might be "a boy, not arrived at puberty, a virgin, a black female slave, or a pregnant woman;" a rule of fitness seemingly odd and arbitrary enough. A boy was brought in from the street, by a chance selection, made by Mr. Lane himself, from a number who were returning from a manufactory. He is very particular and positive in asserting that there was not, and could not be, any manner of collusion. A reed-pen and ink were supplied by Mr. Lane himself (as the paper for the charm and the scissors for cutting it had also been) at the request of the magician; who then drew "a magic square" in the palm of the boy's hand, with Arabic numerals marked on its margin, and a blot of ink, less than a sixpence, in the middle. So far in sight of Mr. Lane, who has given the diagram on his page; what might come next was not to be seen by him, but described by the boy. The spot of ink was to become the ground, or scene, or mirror, of the objects required to appear. The room being filled with smoke of the incense, the magician interrupted his muttering to ask the boy whether he saw any thing, and was answered, “no;' but soon after, with signs of fear, the boy said, "I see a man sweeping the ground." He was then directed to call, in succession, for a long series of spectacles, some of them consisting of a variety of objects and movements; and he described them distinctly, in form, colour, number, and change of action, in such prompt, plain manner, as to leave no doubt that they were actually before his eyes. One example may suffice:

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"The boy was directed to say, 'Bring the sultan's tent, and pitch it.' This he did; and in about a minute after, he said, "Some men have brought the tent; a large green tent; they are pitching it; and presently he added, 'They have set it up.' 'Now,' said the magician, order the soldiers to come and pitch their camp around the tent of the sultan.' The boy did so; and immediately said, 'I see a great many soldiers with the tents; they have pitched the tents.' He was then told to order that the soldiers should be drawn up in ranks; and he presently said that he saw them thus arranged."-ib. p. 353.

But if it might be suspected that all this, however inexplicable, was merely a predetermined show of phantasmagoria, an adjusted course of spectral illusion, the magician presently went beyond any conceivable reach of such an artifice.

"He now addressed himself to me; and asked me if I wished the boy to see any person absent or dead. I named Lord Nelson; of whom the boy had evidently never heard; for it was with much difficulty that he pronounced the name, after several trials. The magician desired the boy to say to the sultan, My master salutes thee, and desires thee to bring Lord Nelson; bring him before my eyes that I may see him, speedily.' The boy then said so, and almost immediately added, A messenger is gone, and has returned, and brought a man dressed in a black suit of European clothes. The man has lost his left arm.' He then paused for a moment or two; and, looking more intently, and more closely, into the ink, he said, 'No; he has not lost his left arm, but it is placed to his breast. This correction made his description more striking than it had been without it; since Lord Nelson generally had his empty sleeve attached to the breast of his coat; but it was the right arm that he had lost. Without saying that I suspected the boy had made a mistake, I asked the magician whether the objects appeared in the ink as if actually before the eyes, or as if in a glass which makes the right appear as the left. He answered that they appeared as if in a mirror. This rendered the boy's description faultless."

The author mentions in a note that the term here translated black is equally applied by the Egyptians to dark blue.

Mr. Lane next called for a native Egyptian of his acquaintance, then and during many years before residing in England, wearing the European dress, and who had, at the time of Mr. Lane's going to Egypt, been long confined to his bed by illness.

tr

I thought that his name, one not very uncommon in Egypt, might make the boy describe him incorrectly; though another boy, on the former visit of the magician, had described this same person as wearing an European dress, like that in which I last saw him. In the present case the boy said, 'Here is a man brought on a kind of bier, wrapped up in a sheet. This description would suit, supposing the person to be still confined to his bed, or if dead. The boy described his face as covered; and was told to order that it should be uncovered. This he did; and then said, 'His face is pale; and he has mustaches, but no beard;' which was correct."

Several other persons were named, but the boy's

VOL. I.

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descriptions became "imperfect, though not altogether incorrect; as if his sight were becoming gradually dim." Another boy was tried, but could see nothing; the magician said he was too old.

Mr. Lane confesses that he was somewhat disappointed, because the performances fell short of what had been witnessed, in many instances, by some of his friends and countrymen, of unquestionable authority as deponents. We wish that, to accumulate the largest amount of evidence and illustration, he had recorded the detail of a number of those instances, with the same particularity as the following:

"On one of these occasions, an Englishman present ridiculed the pǝrformance, and said that nothing would satisfy him but a correct description of the appearance of his own father, of whom he was sure that no one of the company had any knowledge. The boy, accordingly, having called by name the person alluded to, described a man in a Frank dress of warse, with his hand placed to his head, wearing spectacles, and with one foot on the ground, and the other raised behind him, as if he were stepping down from a seat. The description was exactly true in every respect; the peculiar position of the hand was occasioned by an almost constant head-ache; and that of the foot or leg by a stiff knee, caused by a fall from a horse, in hunting. I am assured that on this occasion the boy accurately described each person and thing called for. On another occasion Shakspeare was described with the most minute correctness, both as to person and dress; and I might add several other cases in which the magician has excited astonishment in the sober minds of Englishmen of my acquaintance."-p. 356.

Now these statements being assumed as accurately true to matter of fact-and the testimony appears to be such as to preclude all doubt-what are we to think of the art or power which so prodigiously surpasses all known resources of mechanical ingenuity and physical science? Mr. Lane declines to adventure an opinion, resigning the affair to impenetrable mystery. But there will be no lack of confidence to pronounce, and the authority so pronouncing will assume the name and tone of philosophy, that there was nothing more in the whole matter than artful contrivance; that there was no intervention of an intelligent agency extraneous to that of the immediate ostensible agent. But can this assumption be

made on any other ground than a prior general assumption that there is no such preternatural intervention in the system of the world? But how to know that there is not? The negative decision, pronounced in confident ignorance, is a conceited impertinence, which ought to be rebuked by that philosophy whose oracles it is affecting to utter. For what any man knows, or can know, there may be such intervention. That it is not incompatible with the constitution of the world, is an unquestionable fact with the unsophisticated believers in the sacred records. And not a few occurrences in later history have totally defied every attempt at explanation in any other way.

And now take the facts before us, as described by Mr. Lane. First, those that may be called the inferior class; -in the day-time, without concert, without machinery, unless the burning and smoke of incense may be named so, and on a ground in all appearance unfit, to the last degree, for the spectacles, there were brought, not a vague dazzlement of something like imagery (which, however, it is an extreme supposition that the excited state of the young seer under the influence of perfumes and strange rites might seem to create), but a series of distinct scenes of persons and transactions, each remaining long enough to be plainly described, but succeeded, at the interval of a few moments by another, different and also of precise delineation. It is easy to fling off the difficulty by saying it was all done by some juggling device. This cheap philosophy may be quietly put aside. But let the greatest adept in all that real philosophers know of science and art point out an ascertained principle in nature, by the action of which he deliberately believes that he, or any philosopher, can— nay, rather, by which the philosopher shall practically prove that he can-at his mere will, as unaided by optical apparatus as the Egyptian, command the elements into the sudden formation of such a series of images, rapidly but definitely presented to the eyes, or can impart to the eyes themselves the power of instantaneously shaping them. But the philosopher!--the