of renewing the
contact of the conducting wires; and _only then_.

Around the magnet, Faraday
Is sure that Volta's lightnings play;
But _how_ to draw them from the wire?
He took a lesson from the heart:
'Tis when we meet, 'tis when we part,
Breaks forth the electric fire.

M.

LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.

1.--THE DIVINING ROD.

_February_, 1847.

DEAR ARCHY,--As a resource against the long ennui of the solitary
evenings of commencing winter, I determined to betake me to the
neglected lore of the marvellous, the mystical, the supernatural. I
remembered the deep awe with which I had listened many a year ago to
tales of seers, and ghosts, and vampires, and all the dark brood of
night; and I thought it would be infinitely agreeable to thrill again
with mysterious terrors, to start in my chair at the closing of a
distant door, to raise my eyes with uneasy apprehension towards the
mirror opposite, and to feel my skin creep with the sensible "afflatus"
of an invisible presence. I entered, accordingly, upon what I thought a
very promising course of appalling reading; but, alack and well-a-day! a
change has come over me since the good old times, when Fancy, with Fear
and Superstition behind her, would creep on tiptoe to catch a shuddering
glimpse of Cobbold Fay, or Incubus. Vain were all my efforts to revive
the pleasant horrors of earlier years. It was as if I had planned going
to the play to enjoy again the full gusto of scenic illusion, and
through some unaccountable absence of mind, was attending a morning
rehearsal only; when, instead of what I had expected, great coats, hats,
umbrellas, and ordinary men and women, masks, tinsel, trap-doors,
pulleys, and a world of intricate machinery, lit by a partial gleam of
sunshine, had met my view. The spell I had anticipated was not there.
But yet the daylight scene was worth a few minutes' study. My
imagination was not to be gratified; but still it might be entertaining
to see how the tricks are done, the effects produced, the illusion
realised. I found myself insensibly growing philosophical; what amused
me became matter of speculation--speculation turned into serious
inquiry--the object of which shaped itself into "the amount of truth
contained in popular superstitions." For what has been believed for ages
must have something real at bottom. There can be no prevalent del