House of Lord Edward Fitzgerald.
—The Note on his mother, in Vol. iii., p. 492., reminds me of making the following one on himself, which may be worth a place in your columns. When lately passing through the village of Harold's Cross, near Dublin, a friend pointed out to me a high antiquated-looking house in the village, which he said had been occupied by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and in which he had planned many of his designs. The house appears to be in good preservation, and is still occupied.
R. H.
Fairy Dances.
—It might perhaps throw some light on this fanciful subject, were we to view it in connexion with the operation of the phenomenon termed the "odylic light," emitted from magnetic substances. The Baron von Riechenbach, in his Researches on Magnetism, &c., explains the cause of somewhat similar extraordinary appearances in the following manner:—
"High on the Brocken there are rocky summits which are strongly magnetic, and cause the needle to deviate: these rocks contain disseminated magnetic iron ore; ... the necessary consequence is that they send up odylic flames.... Who could blame persons imbued with the superstitious feelings of their age, if they saw, under these circumstances, the devil dancing with his whole train of ghosts, demons, and witches? The revels of the Walpurgisnacht must now, alas! vanish, and give place to the sobrieties of science—science, which with her touch dissipates one by one all the beautiful but dim forms evoked by phantasy."
Should such a thing as the odylic light satisfactorily explain the phenomenon of ghosts, fairies, &c., we should happily be relieved from the awkward necessity of continuing to treat their existence as "old wives' fables," or the production of a disordered imagination.
J. H. KERSHAW.
Æsop.
—It may be said, at first sight, "Why, every body knows all about him." I answer, Perhaps about as much as modern painters and artists know about Bacchus, whom they always represent as a gross, vulgar, fat person: all the ancient poets, however (and surely they ought to know best), depict him an exquisitely beautiful youth. A similar vulgar error exists with regard to Æsop, who in the Encyclopædia Britannica is pronounced a strikingly deformed personage. The exact opposite seems to have been the truth. Philostratus has left a description of a picture of Æsop, who was represented with a chorus of animals about him: he was painted smiling, and looking thoughtfully on the ground, but not a word is said of any deformity. Again, the Athenians erected a statue to his honour, "and," says Bentley, "a statue of him, if he were deformed, would only have been a monument of his ugliness: it would have been an indignity, rather than an honour to his memory, to have perpetuated his deformity."