er variety of this process is found in the _Onuchomanteia_, or
nail-divinition, also spoken of by Delrio. "In this species," says he,
"male children, before they have lost their purity, smear their nails with
oil and lamp-black, and then, holding up the nail against the sun,
repeating some charm, see in it what they desire. This mischief," he goes
on to say, "has gone even farther in our own time. I myself knew one
Quevedo, a veteran Spanish soldier, but more distinguished in war and arms
than in piety, who, being in Brussels at the time when the Duke of Medina
Caeli set sail from Gallicia for Belgium, clearly showed in more than one
of his nails the fleet leaving the port of Corunna, and soon after
dreadfully tossed by a tempest. Thus this man, who could also cure the
wounds of others by his words alone, rendered his own spiritual state
incurable by any one."

The like use of the crystal ball and spherical phial, containing water,
suggests a version of the epigrams of Claudian--"De crystallo in quo aqua
inclusa"--which has not been afforded by any of the commentators. Globules
of water are sometimes found inclosed in crystals, as well as in amber. On
one of those singular gems Claudian has composed a series of epigrams,
which ascribe properties to the stone, and make allusion to uses of it
hardly reconcileable with the idea of its being a merely puerile
curiosity. The earlier epigrams of the series are neat and playful, but
insignificant:--

"The icy gem its aqueous birth attests,
Part turned to stone, while part in fluid rests;
Winter's numbed hand achieved the cunning feat,
The perfecter for being incomplete.

"Nymphs who your sister nymphs in glassy thrall
Hold here imprisoned in the crystal ball;
Waters that were and are, declare the cause
That your bright forms at once congeals and thaws.

"Scorn not the crystal ball, a worth it owns,
Greater than graven Erythrean stones;
Rude though it seems, a formless mass of ice,
'Tis justly counted 'mongst our gems of price."

And so on through several others, until he comes to that one which seems
to indicate something beyond a merely figurative use of the word "nymphs;"
though, after all, it is possible that the word was originally written
with an _l_, instead of _n_, which would make all the difference between
"nymphs" and "waters":--

"While the soft boy the slippery crystal turns,
To touch the waters in their icy urns,
Safe in its