So, indeed, will those of the second class, which are real objects converted into phantoms by mental excitement or disorder.
But in the purely metaphysical ghost or phantom, the change of position or locality will not essentially dispel the illusion, (the spectrum following, as it were, the motion of the eye;) because it exists in the mind itself, either as a faint or transient idea, or a mere outline, fading perhaps in a brighter light, or as the more permanent and confirmed impression of insanity, (unchanged even by “brilliant glare,”) or from the day-dream of the castle-builder, to the deep and dreadful delusion of the maniac.
Among the mute productions of nature, there are eccentricities and rarities, which, in default of analysis or explanation, would not fail of being referred to some supernatural agency: as Leo Afer, according to Burton, accounts for the swarms of locusts once descending at Fez, in Barbary, and at Arles, in France, in 1553. “It could not be from natural causes; they cannot imagine whence they come, but from heaven. Are these and such creatures, corn, wood, stones, worms, wool, blood, &c. lifted up into the middle region by the sunbeams, as Baracellus the physician disputes, and thence let fall with showers, or there engendered? Cornelius Gemma is of that opinion, they are there conceived by celestial influences: others suppose they are immediately from God, or prodigies raised by arts and illusions of spirits which are princes of the ayre.”
Over Languedoc there once burst an awful and supernatural cloud, from which fell immense snow-flakes like glittering stars. There is nothing strange in this, for the shape of the snow-flake is ever that of an asteroïd. But then there came pouring down gigantic hail-stones, with their glassy surface impressed with the figures of helmets, and swords, and scutcheons. This too may be the effect of very sudden and irregular congelation; but this law was not known, and therefore its result was a mystery.
Among the wonders seen by the great traveller, Pietro della Valla, was the bleeding cypress-tree, which shadows the tomb of Cyrus, in Italy. Under the hollow of its boughs, in his day, it was lighted with lamps and was consecrated as an oratory. To this shrine resorted many a devout pilgrim, impressed with a holy belief in the miracle. And what was this but the glutinous crimson fluid, exuding from the diseased alburnum of a tree, which the woodmen indeed term bleeding, but which the ancient Turks affirmed, or believed, to be converted on every Friday into drops of real blood?
The red snow, which is not uncommon in the arctic regions, is thus tinted by very minute cryptogamic plants; and the fairy ring is but a circle of herbage poisoned by a fungus.
In Denbighshire (I may add) the prevalent belief is, that the shivering of the aspen is from sympathy with that tree in Palestine, which was hewn into the true cross.
The simple stratification of vapours, especially during sudden transitions of temperature, may produce very interesting optical phenomena; not by refraction or reflection, but merely by partial obscuration of an object. We have examples of these illusive spectra in the gigantic icebergs seen by Captain Scoresby, and other arctic voyagers, which assumed the shape of towers, and spires, and cathedrals, and obelisks, that were constantly displacing each other in whimsical confusion and endless variety, like the figures of a kaleidoscope. Phipps thus describes their majestic beauty: “The ice that had parted from the main body, they had now time to admire, as it no longer obstructed their course; the various shapes in which the broken fragments appeared were indeed very curious and amusing. One remarkable piece described a magnificent arch, so large and completely formed, that a sloop of considerable burden might have sailed through it without lowering her masts. Another represented a church, with windows, pillars, and domes.”
We may scarcely wonder at the mystifications of nature, when she assumes these gorgeous eccentricities, as have been witnessed also in the barren steppes of the Caraccas, on the Orinoko, where the palm-groves appear to be cut asunder; in the Llanos, where chains of hills appear suspended in the air, and rivers and lakes to flow on arid sand; in the lake of the Gazelles, seen by the Arabs and the African traveller; and the lakes seen by Captain Munday, during his tour in India.
The very clearness of the atmosphere, like that which floats around the Rhine, renders distance especially distinct; but mountainous regions, from the attraction of electric clouds, afford the highest examples of atmospheric beauty and effect. London and other cities, however crowded with lofty buildings, are not deficient in these aërial illusions. Even from the bridge of Blackfriars I have seen a cumulo stratus cloud so strangely intersect the steeples and the giant chimneys of London, as distinctly to represent a sea-port, with its vessels and distant mountains.