at
the mind may in a state of extreme tension conjure up to itself some
form of moral evil so hideous as metaphysically to sear it: and this,
I believe, happened in the case both of Adrian Temple and of Sir John
Maltravers.

It is difficult to imagine the accessories used to produce the mental
excitation in which alone such a presentment of evil could become
imaginable. Fancy and legend, which have combined to represent as
possible appearances of the supernatural, agree also in considering them
as more likely to occur at certain times and places than at others; and
it is possible that the missing pages of the diary contained an account
of the time, place, and other conditions chosen by Temple for some
deadly experiment. Sir John most probably re-enacted the scene under
precisely similar conditions, and the effect on his overwrought
imagination was so vivid as to upset the balance of his mind. The time
chosen was no doubt the night of the 23d of October, and I cannot help
thinking that the place was one of those evil-looking and ruinous
sea-rooms which had so terrifying an effect on Miss Maltravers. Temple
may have used on that night one of the medieval incantations, or
possibly the more ancient invocation of the Isiac rite with which a
man of his knowledge and proclivities would certainly be familiar. The
accessories of either are sufficiently hideous to weaken the mind by
terror, and so prepare it for a belief in some frightful apparition. But
whatever was done, I feel sure that the music of the _Gagliarda_ formed
part of the ceremonial.

Medieval philosophers and theologians held that evil is in its essence
so horrible that the human mind, if it could realise it, must perish at
its contemplation. Such realisation was by mercy ordinarily withheld,
but its possibility was hinted in the legend of the _Visio malefica_.
The _Visio Beatifica_ was, as is well known, that vision of the Deity
or realisation of the perfect Good which was to form the happiness of
heaven, and the reward of the sanctified in the next world. Tradition
says that this vision was accorded also to some specially elect spirits
even in this life, as to Enoch, Elijah, Stephen, and Jerome. But there
was a converse to the Beatific Vision in the _Visio malefica_, or
presentation of absolute Evil, which was to be the chief torture of the
damned, and which, like the Beatific Vision, had been made visible in
life to certain desperate men. It visited Esau, as