language to express their visions, would probably be
found equally clairvoyant.

A favorite subject of mediaeval art is the life of the Christian ascetic in
the Desert. In these representations a human skull may generally be seen
placed before the eyes of the devotee. Such an object would fix the gaze
and induce the ecstasy as well as any other. The charm of this species of
contemplation must have been intense, since in search of its exaltations
and illuminations the very convents were deserted; and during the fourth
and fifth centuries the deserts of Idumea, of Egypt, and of Pontus,
swarmed with anchorites, who seemed to live only for the sake of escaping
from life, and in their fasts and mortifications rivalled, if they did not
for a time even surpass, the Fakirs of the East. To such an extent was
this religious enthusiasm carried, that in Egypt the number of the monks
was thought to equal that of the rest of the male population. Strange
consideration, if it be the fact, that a few passes of a mesmeric operator
should produce the same effects which these multitudes procured through
toils so painful and sacrifices to themselves and to society so costly.

The Egyptian method of inducing clairvoyance in boys, by causing them to
gaze on a pool of ink in the palm of the hand, has already been identified
with the practice of Dr. Dee, whose blank spherical mirror is now said to
be in the possession and use of a distinguished modern mesmeriser.
Divination by the crystal is a well-known mediaeval practice; and from the
accounts of it which Delrio and others have handed down it appears to have
resembled, in some remarkable particulars, the method now in use among the
soothsayers of Cairo. It does not appear to make any difference whether
the polished object be black or white, a mirror, a solid ball, or a
transparent globe containing water: the same extraordinary series of
appearances is alleged to follow an earnest inspection of it. Before
proceeding to Delrio's singular corroboration of this use of the crystal,
it will be well to state what is known of divination by the phial and by
the mirror. Divination by the phial is technically known as
_gasteromancy_. "In this kind of divination," says Peucer, "the response
is given by pictures, not by sounds. They procured glass vessels of a
globular shape, filled with fair water, and set round them lighted tapers;
and after invoking the demon with a muttered incantation, and proposing