ing any unusual impression whatever.

This extraordinary phenomenon, it is now generally known, has been
completely elucidated through the discoveries of Von Reichenbach, to
which, in a former letter, I had occasion to make allusion.

You are probably aware, that the individuals whose nerves Von
Reichenbach found to be so sensitive to the proximity of crystals,
magnets, &c., would, in the dark, see flames issuing from the same
substances. Then, in the progress of his inquiries, Von Reichenbach
found that chemical decomposition was a rich source of the new power he
had discovered, by its action on the nerves. And being acquainted with
the story of the ghost in Pfeffel's garden at Colmar, it occurred to him
as not unlikely, that Billing had just been in the same condition with
his own sensitive patients, and that graves very likely would present to
all of them a luminous _aura_; and that thus the mystery might find a
very simple explanation.

Accordingly, Miss Reichel, one of his most sensitive subjects, was taken
at night to an extensive burying-ground, near Vienna, where many
interments take place daily, and there were some thousand graves. The
result did not disappoint Von Reichenbach's expectations. Whithersoever
Miss Reichel turned her eyes, she saw masses of flame. This appearance
manifested itself most about recent graves. About very old ones it was
not visible. She described the appearance as resembling less bright
flame than fiery vapour, something between fog and flame. In several
instances, the light extended four feet in height above the ground. When
Miss Reichel placed her hand in it, it seemed to her involved in a cloud
of fire. When she stood in it, it came up to her throat. She expressed
no alarm, being accustomed to the appearance.

The mystery has thus been entirely solved. For it is evident that the
spectral character of the luminous apparition in the two instances I
have narrated had been supplied by the imagination of the seers. So the
superstition has vanished, leaving, as is usual, a very respectable
truth behind it.

It is indeed a little unlucky for this new truth, which reveals either a
new power in nature or an unexpected operation of familiar ones, that
the phenomena which attest it are verifiable by a few only who are
possessed of highly sensitive temperaments. And it is the use of the
world to look upon these few as very suspicious subjects. This is
unjust. Their evidence, the parties ha