eft, the bodily state of the person; in the right, his real or destined
self, how often unknown to himself, almost always obscured or perverted
by his present ignorance or mistake. She had also the gift of second
sight. She saw the coffins of those about to die. She saw in mirrors,
cups of water; in soap-bubbles, the coming future.

We are here reminded of many beautiful superstitions and legends; of the
secret pool in which the daring may, at mid-moon of night, read the
future; of the magic globe, on whose pure surface Britomart sees her
future love, whom she must seek, arrayed in knightly armor, through a
difficult and hostile world.

A looking-glass, right wondrously aguized,
Whose virtues through the wyde world soon were solemnized.
It vertue had to show in perfect sight,
Whatever thing was in the world contayned,
Betwixt the lowest earth and hevens hight;
So that it to the looker appertayned,
Whatever foe had wrought, or friend had fayned,
Herein discovered was, ne ought mote pas,
Ne ought in secret from the same remayned;
Forthy it round and hollow shaped was,
Like to the world itselfe, and seemed a World of Glas.

_Faerie Queene, Book III_.

Such mirrors had Cornelius Agrippa and other wizards. The soap-bubble is
such a globe; only one had need of second sight or double sight to see
the pictures on so transitory a mirror. Perhaps it is some vague
expectation of such wonders, that makes us so fond of blowing them in
childish years. But, perhaps, it is rather as a prelude to the
occupation of our lives, blowing bubbles where all things may be seen,
that, "to the looker appertain," if we can keep them long enough or look
quick enough.

In short, were this biography of no other value, it would be most
interesting as showing how the floating belief of nations, always no
doubt shadowing forth in its imperfect fashion the poetic facts with
their scientific exposition, is found to grow up anew in a simple, but
high-wrought nature.

The fashioning spirit, working upwards from the clod to man, proffers as
its last, highest essay, the brain of man. In the lowest zoophyte it
aimed at this; some faint rudiments may there be discerned: but only in
man has it perfected that immense galvanic battery that can be loaded
from above, below, and around;--that engine, not only of perception, but
of conception and consecutive thought,--whose right hand is memory,
whose life