"I must ingenuously confess," he says, "that I have a natural touch of enthusiasm, in my complexion, but such as I thank God was ever governable enough, and have found at length perfectly subduable.

In virtue of which victory I know better what is in enthusiasts than they themselves; and therefore was able to write with life and judgment, and shall, I hope, contribute not a little to the peace and quiet of this kingdom thereby." Thus far one of its votaries: and all that he vaunts to have acquired by this mysterious faculty of enthusiasm is the having rendered it "at length perfectly subduable." Yet those who have written on "Mystical devotion," have declared that, "it is a sublime state of mind to which whole sects have aspired, and some individuals appear to have attained."[A] The histories of great visionaries, were they correctly detailed, would probably prove how their delusions consisted of the ocular _spectra_ of their brain and the accelerated sensations of their nerves.

BAYLE has conjured up an amusing theory of apparitions, to show that HOBBES, who was subject to occasional terrors, might fear that a certain combination of atoms agitating his brain might so disorder his mind as to expose him to spectral visions; and so being very timid, and distrusting his own imagination, he was averse at times to be left alone.

Apparitions often happen in dreams, but they may happen to a man when awake, for reading and hearing of them would revive their images, and these images might play even an incredulous philosopher some unlucky trick.
[Footnote A: CHARLES BUTLER has drawn up a sensible essay on "Mystical Devotion." He was a Roman Catholic.

NORRIS, and Dr.HENRY MORE, and Bishop BERKELEY, may be consulted by the curious.] But men of genius whose enthusiasm has not been past recovery, have experienced this extraordinary state of the mind, in those exhaustions of study to which they unquestionably are subject.