instances so well authenticated as those concerning the discovery of
water. With regard to these last a considerable amount of haziness still
exists, and, without venturing to pronounce them all fictions or
productions of the imagination, it may be possible to find an
explanation in a theory of hydroscopy. It is held that there are some
few persons who are hydroscopes by nature--that is to say, are endowed
with peculiar sensations which tell them the moment they are near water,
whether it be evident or hidden, a concealed watercourse or a
subterranean spring. If the existence of such a faculty, however
exceptional, be clearly established, it will afford an explanation of
certain successes with the divining-rod.

CHAPTER III.

THE MAGIC MIRROR.

There is an old superstition, current, probably, in most parts of the
country, that the breaking of a mirror will be followed by bad
luck--usually a death in the family. This is, doubtless, the survival of
a still older superstition--the belief in certain magic qualities of the
mirror, which enabled it in certain circumstances to reflect the distant
and to forecast the future. Nor was this superstition so childish as
were some other popular delusions of old, for it had a certain
philosophic basis. It is the peculiar property of the mirror to
represent truth; to reproduce faithfully that which is; to show us
ourselves as others see us. This is the idea expressed by Hamlet: 'To
hold the mirror up to Nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her
own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.'

The mirror has been, from time immemorial, a favourite form of charm for
the exorcism of devils, and, indeed, to this day some of the African
tribes believe that the best defence they have against their extremely
ugly devil is a mirror. If they keep one at hand, the devil must see
himself in it before he can touch them, and be so terrified at his own
ugliness that he will turn tail and flee.

We may take this symbolically--that a man shrinks from his worst self
when it is revealed to him; but the untutored mind is prone to mistake
symbol for fact. In this way, while the ancient philosophers may have
used the mirror as a symbol of the higher nature of man, so polished and
clarified that it showed him his lower nature in all its deformity, the
crowd came to regard the crystal as an actual instrument of divination.

Some of the oldest romances in the wor