dark. My previous mode of mesmerising him had been by pointing at
his eyes, but on this occasion I began by making passes over the top of
his head, and continued them after he was in the sleep. In the course of
five or six minutes after the sleep was induced, he suddenly exclaimed
that he could see into the room above us (the drawing-room). I said, 'Your
eyes are closed; how can you see?' And he replied, 'I don't see with my
eyes; I see from the top of my head. All the top of my head seems open.'
He then described, &c. I found every thing as he had described, &c." Mr.
Topham, it need scarcely be added, does not appear to have been at all
aware of the passage in Spartian, which, indeed, has not been cited or
referred to in any published work for nearly two hundred years back.

A like use of the suspended ring, indicating the early acquaintance of
practitioners in these arts with one of the alleged evidences of the
so-called _odylic_ force, is thus described by Peucer among various modes
of hydromancy: "A bowl was filled with water, and a ring suspended from
the finger was librated in the water; and so, according as the question
was propounded, a declaration or confirmation of its truth, or otherwise,
was obtained. If what was proposed was true, the ring, of its own accord,
without any impulse, struck the sides of the goblet a certain number of
times. They say that Numa Pompilius used to practise this method, and that
he evoked the gods, and consulted them in water, in this way."

_Crystallomancy_ is the art of divining by figures, which appear on the
surface of a crystal ball, in like manner as on the phial filled with
water. Concerning this practice, Delrio has the following remarkable
passage, citing his contemporary, Spengler: "A man well versed in the
Greek and Latin fathers, and happy, if he had not presumed, with unclean
hands, to dabble in the mysteries of our faith (Spenger), has published in
Germany a learned commentary on the nature of demons, which he has
prefixed to Plutarch's Essay, _De Defectu Oraculorum_. From this (says
Delrio) I extract, in his own words, the following narrative. There are
some (he says) who, being consulted on matters unknown, distinctly see
every thing that is inquired after in _crystals_; and a little further on
proceeds to state, that he once had an acquaintance, a man of one of the
best families of Nuremberg, and that this acquaintance of his came to him
on one occasion, bringing wit