him on the other side, and gave his left arm a particularly disagreeable
twist, when Baczko pushed him off again. The Negro continued to visit
him constantly during four months, preserving the same appearance, and
remaining tangible; then he came seldomer; and, after finally appearing
as a brown-coloured apparition with an owl's head, he took his leave.

The illusion and its principle having been thus elucidated, it is hardly
worth while to look into its operation in tales of vulgar terror. But it
is highly interesting to trace its effects on minds of a high order,
when its suggestions have been received and interpreted as the visits
and communications of superior beings. You have heard, I dare say, my
dear Archy, of the mysticism of Schwedenborg. Now that they are
explained, the details of his hallucinations are highly gratifying to
one's curiosity.

Schwedenborg, the son of a Swedish clergyman of the name of Schwedberg,
ennobled as Schwedenborg, was, up to the year 1743, which was the
fifty-fourth of his age, an ordinary man of the world, distinguished
only in literature, having written many volumes of philosophy and
science, and being Professor in the Mineralogical school, where he was
much respected. On a sudden, in the year 1743, he believed himself to
have got into a commerce with the world of spirits, which so fully took
possession of his thoughts, that he not only published their
revelations, but was in the habit of detailing, with the greatest
equanimity, his daily chat with them. Thus he says, "I had a
conversation the other day on that very point with the Apostle Paul," or
with Luther, or some other dead person. Schwedenborg continued in what
he believed to be daily communion with spirits till his death, in 1772.
He was, without doubt, in the fullest degree convinced of the reality of
his spiritual commerce. So in a letter to the Wirtemburg prelate,
Oetinger, dated November 11, 1766, he uses the following words:--"If I
have spoken with the Apostles? To this I answer, I conversed with St
Paul during a whole year, particularly on the text, Romans iii. 28. I
have three times conversed with St John, once with Moses, and a hundred
times with Luther, who allowed that it was against the warning of an
angel that he professed '_fidem solam_,' and that he stood alone upon
the separation from the Pope. With angels, finally, have I these
twenty-two years conversed, and converse daily.

"Of the angels," he says, "they h