are, mutiny and sedition; not endeavor- edge was the property of only one caste, ing to suppress the same; not giving in- it was by no means difficult io employ it formation of the same to the command- in the subjugation of the great mass of ing officer; misbehavior before the ene- society. An acquaintance with the momy; shamefully abandoning or giving up tions of the heavenly bodies, and the vaa post; compelling the commanding offi- riations in the state of the atmosphere, cer so to do; leaving one's post before enabled its possessor to predict astronomirelieved; being found sleeping on one's cal and meteorological phenomena, with post; holding correspondence. with any a frequency and an accuracy which could rebel or enemy; entering into terms with not fail to invest him with a divine charthe same, without the license of his majes- acter. The power of bringing down fire ty or of the commanding officer; strik- from the heavens, even at times when the ing or using violence towards a superior electric influence was itself in a state of officer, being in the execution of his duty; repose, could be regarded only as a gift disobeying any lawful command of a su- from Heaven. The power of rendering perior officer; and deserting. The laws the human body insensible to fire was an of the U. States for the punishment of irresistible instrument of imposture; and mutiny in the army and navy, and on board in the combinations of chemistry, and the merchant ships, are very similar to those influence of drugs and soporific embroof England.

cations on the human frame, the ancient MYRIOGRAMME. (See Gramme.) magicians found their most available reMYSTICETUS. (See Whale.)

sources. The secret use which was thus made of scientific discoveries and of re

markable inventions, has, no doubt, preN.

vented many of them from reaching the present times; but though we are very

ill informed respecting the progress of the Naso. (See Ovid.)

ancients in various departments of the NATURAL Magic. [The following ob- physical sciences, yet we have sufficient servations on this subject are from the evidence that almost every branch of preface to doctor Brewster's treatise on knowledge had contributed its wonders Natural Magic.) The subject of natural to the magician's budget; and we may magic is one of great extent as well as of even obtain some insight into the sciendeep interest. In its widest range, it em- tific acquirements of former ages by a braces the history of the governments and diligent study of their fables and their the superstitions of ancient times; of the miracles. The science of acoustics furmeans by which they maintained their nished the ancient sorcerers with some of influence over the human mind; of the their best deceptions. The imitation of assistance which they derived from the thunder in their subterranean temples arts and the sciences, and from a knowl- could not fail to indicate the presence of edge of the powers and phenomena of a supernatural agent. The golden virnature. When the tyrants of antiquity gins, whose ravishing voices resounded were unable or unwilling to found their through the temple of Delphos; the stone sovereignty on the affections and interests from the river Pactolus, whose trumpet of their people, they sought to entrench notes scared the robber from the treasure themselves in the strong-holds of super- which it guarded; the speaking head, natural influence, and to rule with the which uttered its oracular responses at delegated authority of Heaven. The Lesbos ; and the vocal statue of Memprince, the priest, and the sage, were non, which began at the break of day to leagued in a dark conspiracy to deceive accost the rising sun,—were all deceptions and enslave their species; and man, who derived from science, and from a diligent refused his submission to a being like observation of the phenomena of nature. himself, became the obedient slave of a The principles of hydrostatics were spiritual despotism, and willingly bound equally available in the work of decephimself in chains when they seemed to tion. The marvellous fountain which have been forged by the gods. This sys- Pliny describes in the island of Andros, tem of imposture was greatly favored by as discharging wine for seven days, and the ignorance of these early ages. The water during the rest of the year; the human mind is at all times fond of the spring of oil which broke out in Rome marvellous; and the credulity of the indi- to welcome the return of Augustus from vidual may be often measured by his own the Sicilian war; the three empty urns attachment to the truth. When knowl- which filled themselves with wine at the annual feast of Bacchus in the city of which hallowed their ancient temples, we Elis; the glass tomb of Belus, which recognise all the transformations of the was full of oil, and which, when once modern phantasmagoria. It would be an emptied by Xerxes, could not again be interesting pursuit to embody the inforfilled; the weeping statues, and the per- mation which history supplies respecting petual lamps of the ancients,—were all the the fables and incantations of the ancient obvious effects of the equilibrium and superstitions, and to show how far they pressure of fluids. Although we have no can be explained by the scientific knowldirect evidence that the philosophers of edge which then prevailed. This task antiquity were skilled in mechanics, yet has, to a certain extent, been performed there are indications of their linowledge, by M. Eusebe Salverte, in a work on the by no means equivocal, in the erectiou of occult sciences, which has recently apthe Egyptian obelisks, and in the trans- peared; but, notwithstanding the ingenuity portation of huge masses of stone, and and learning which it displays, the inditheir subsequent elevation to great heights vidual facts are too scanty to support the in their temples. The powers which they speculations of the author, and the deemployed, and the mechanism by which scriptions are too meagre to satisfy the they operated, have been studiously con- curiosity of the reader.* cealed; but their existence may be in- NEFF, Felix ; a young Protestant clerferred from results otherwise inexplica- gyman, who devoted his life to the preachble; and the inference derives additional ing of the divine word to the scattered confirmation from the mechanical ar- inhabitants of the dreary regions called rangements which seem to have formed the High Alps of France. He received a part of their religious impostures. When, a tolerable education from the pastor of in some of the infamous mysteries of an- the village, near Geneva, in which he was cient Rome, the unfortunate victims were born. He learned the trade of a nursery carried off by the gods, there is reason to gardener; but his passion for romantic adbelieve that they were hurried away by venture made him enter as a private solthe power of machinery; and when Apol- dier in the service of Geneva, in 1815. lonius, conducted by the Indian sages to At sixteen, he published a valuable little the temple of their god, felt the earth ris- treatise on the culture of trees. Within ing and falling beneath his feet like the two years after he became a sn'dier, he agitated sea, he was, no doubt, placed up- was made a sergeant of artillery, in conon a moving floor capable of imitating sequence of his theoretical and practieal the heavings of the waves. The rapid knowledge of mathematics. He at length descent of those who consulted the ora- quitted the army to devote himself to thecle in the cave of Trophonius; the mov- ological studies. He first assumed the ing tripods which Apollonius saw in the functions of a pastor-catechist, and was Indian temples; the walking statues at ultimately called to the duties which Antium, and in the temple of Hierapolis; he was so anxious to undertake, by one and the wooden pigeon of Archytas,-are of those Independent congregations of specimens of the mechanical resources England whose ministers are received in of the ancient magic. But of all the sci- the Protestant churches of France. He ences, optics is the most fertile in marvel- was ordained in London, in 1823, and, lous expedients. The power of bringing within six months after, was appointed the remotest objects within the very grasp pastor of the department of the High of the observer, and of swelling into gi- Alps. In order to visit his various flocks, gantic magnitude the almost invisible the pastor had to travel from his fixed bodies of the material world, never fails residence, twelve miles in a western dito inspire with astonishment even those rection, sixty in an eastern, twenty in a who understand the means by which southern, and thirty-three in a northern ; these prodigies are accomplished. The and Neff persevered, in all seasons, in ancients, indeed, were not acquainted passing on foot from one district to anwith those combinations of lenses and other, climbing mountains covered with mirrors which constitute the telescope snow, forcing a way through the valleys, and the microscope; but they must have been familiar with the property of lenses * We must caution the young reader against and mirrors to form erect and inverted some of the views given in M. Salverte's work. images of objects. There is reason to

In his anxiety to account for every thing miracuthink that they employed them to effect lous by natural causes

, he has ascribed to the

same origin some of those events, in sacred histothe apparition of their gods; and in some ry, which Christians cannot but regard as the reof the descriptions of the optical displays sult of divine agency.

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