'Tis so on earth; they who have entrance found Like Him in whom we live, Himself unseen, unknown. SPECIMENS OF TRANSLATIONS FROM BUNSEN'S GERMAN CHRISTMAS HYMN. PSALM liii. 7, 8.-"Oh that the salvation were given unto Israel out of Sion: Oh that the Lord would deliver his people out of captivity. Then should Jacob rejoice, and Israel should be glad." EMMANUEL, we sing thy praise, Thou Prince of Life, and Fount of Grace, We 'mid thine host devoutly bring For thee, since when the world was made, Ah! that from Zion's hill the Lord Ah! might we hear the Saviour's voice; Then Israel should indeed rejoice. Now here thou art; thou slumberest, Thou mad'st the world, that art so small; Thou com'st a stranger in the land, So without fear I cling to thee; Thou art our head; I, too, will be I'll chant thine hallelujah song Where time is not, renew the strain. [This Hymn was written by Paul Gerhard, before 1671.] NEW YEAR'S HYMN. "Thou crownest the year with thy goodness, and thy paths drop fatness."-Ps. lxv. 12. Oh, grant me peace and joy this year; A cross and suffering; Let me with patience arm my mind, To whom thy mercies cling. Guard, with a father's love, thine own Take pity on the outcast's groan; Help all afflicted men ; Let blessings each good act attend; Thy Spirit on our princes send, To counsel and restrain, That Wisdom, Justice, so may thrive, And share with them their seat; That Virtue and Content may live Here in a safe retreat; That with us Faith and Love may be; [By Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. 1757.] THE DEATH OF THE FAITHFUL SERVANT.⭑ "Well done, thou good and faithful servant;" Thy prayers sincere, thine alms bestow'd CORRESPONDENCE. W. The Editor begs to remind his readers that he is not responsible for the opinions EGYPTIAN MAGIC. DEAR SIR,-I dare say that many of your readers, beside myself, have been interested by an account of Egyptian magic which appeared in the "Quarterly Review" for July; and some may probably have felt, as I do, that the reviewer's explanatory suggestion is altogether unsatisfactory, and indeed wholly inconsistent, with the facts which he supposes. Will you allow me to offer one or two remarks on it, in the hope of obtaining further information on a subject which (however explained, or remaining unexplained,) is certainly very curious. Without entering into all the details of the process, which for those who have read the article is unnecessary, and for others, though tedious, yet insufficient, I may perhaps say, that the following facts are admitted by the reviewer to be beyond all doubt; namely, that the • These lines are a tribute by " W." to the memory of the exemplary young clergyman whose letter on the "Ember Weeks" he communicated to this Magazine last month. magician is sent for without previous notice, and comes to the apartment of the inquirer; a child, wholly unknown to the magician, and provided by the inquirer, is then produced; the magician, having had no possibility of private intercourse with the child, pours" about half a tea-spoonful" of ink into the palm of his hand, orders him to look stedfastly into it, and report what he sees; the child sees a succession of things (in every case the same) represented on the surface of the ink as on a mirror, such as sweeping the ground, bringing flags, pitching tents, slaying oxen, the sultan coming to his tent and taking his state with his court around him; that when the child has reported from time to time these various appearances, and at length states that the sultan is seated, the magician directs him to ask the sultan to bring any person whom the inquirer may at that moment name; the boy does so, reports that the sultan has sent for him, and presently after that he is brought; and he minutely describes his person and dress. The accurate and unaccountable resemblance of the persons thus described by the children to the persons who are asked for, and of whom the children cannot be supposed to have any previous idea, (such as Lord Nelson, Shakspeare, and the Duc de la Rivière,) constitutes the wonder, because the inquirers are persons whose sagacity and integrity is admitted, and who are beyond the suspicion of collu sion. Now, by way of explaining the matter, the reviewer suggests that "the reflected objects of a series of pictures are thrown from the surface of a concave mirror, fixed, probably, to some part of the magician's garment, and concealed by the ample and cumbersome overlapping of his outer dress." It does not seem worth while to copy what he adds about the fumes of the frankincense, not only because it seems to me to be an affront to the common sense of the inquirers, but because the principal suggestion which it is brought to assist is so palpably inconsistent with the facts which he admits. In the first place, I think few persons will imagine it possible that a magician, unexpectedly sent for to answer the question of some unknown person, should have ready, and carry with him, portraits of Lord Nelson, Shakspeare, the Duc de la Rivière, with the peculiar silver lace on his coat, &c., especially as I cannot agree with the reviewer in thinking that the magician might naturally expect that "an Englishman would most probably feel disposed to ask for the Duke of Wellington or Lord Nelson, and a Frenchman for Buonaparte or Soult, and that he prepared himself with descriptions of them accordingly." It is hardly worth while to say that descriptions would not do; for even if they would, it seems to me that it would be more natural for an inquirer to ask for some person of whom he felt pretty sure that neither of the parties concerned in the magic had heard, as one of the Englishmen did when he asked for his father, and was astonished to hear the boy describe his hand placed (as it was habitually) to his head, his spectacles, and his very peculiar gait occasioned by a fall from his horse. But I do not insist even on this, for it appears to me that if the reviewer could suppose all this, which is to me wholly incredible, yet he could not have offered any explanation of the kind if he had understood the witnesses to mean what they seem to me very clearly to express. True it is, that (setting aside the case of the real persons) the magician might throw a series of reflected objects on the ink in the boy's hand, though even then one can hardly imagine how these children could discern on the surface of a convex mirror of ink, "about the size of a pistol bullet," such minute particulars as they detailed. What must have been the scale when such a surface comprehended the sultan's tent, himself, and his attendants, and yet the boy on being afterwards asked how he knew it to be the sultan, instanced among other things that his pipes were ornamented with diamonds? Still, if we get over all this, the chief difficulty, and that which, if I understand the statements of the witnesses, not only completely destroys the hypothesis of the reviewer, but forms one of the most curious and puzzling features of the case, is this—namely, that the pictures seen by the children in the ink were not such as could be produced by any reflection of a mere picture, but were (if I may so speak) pictures in action. The child did not see the soldiers pitching their tents, for instance, as he might be popularly said to do in a picture or a print; but as he would have seen real soldiers really doing it (or more properly the reflection of them) on the table of a camera obscura. This is obviously implied in various parts of the statements. In the first of them, for instance, when the boy had looked about a minute into the ink, he said, "I see a man sweeping the ground." Certainly a child might say this if he only (as we should colloquially express it) looked at a picture and saw a man sweeping; though there would scarcely be anything in that which should make him tremble and seem much frightened; but, in such a case, what could the magician mean by saying, "When he has done sweeping tell me?" This remark applies to all the boy's statements; and, indeed, we are expressly told, that "he described the operations as apparently performed before his eyes." A young English lady, on whom the experiment was tried, "saw a broom sweeping the ground without anybody holding it, and was so much frightened that she would look no longer. Now, if this was merely a broom standing quietly upright with nobody to support it, what was there to be afraid of? But a broom in action, "sweeping the ground, without anybody to hold it," was enough to frighten anybody of right principles. Another boy, when he saw "the usual man" with the broom, was directed by the magician to order him to sweep, which would have been obviously absurd, if it were a motionless picture; and when, afterwards, the same boy was asked how he knew that the sultan gave the order to bring the Duc de la Rivière, his "expression was, 'I saw the lips move to the words,' " &c. I do not know how the matter is to be explained, or how much trouble it may be worth while to bestow in seeking an explanation, but I submit that the reviewer's attempt is altogether a failure, and that, if the thing is a mere conjuring trick, it is one more ingenious and more difficult to explain than he seems to imagine; and I must add, that the principal reason for my taking this method of soliciting further information is, that where facts of an uncommon nature are stated on respectable and admitted authority, I feel some jealousy |