persons who have exhibited themselves, in different times and countries, as endowed with the natural power of resistance to fire, the frightful feats displayed serve only to convince the spectator, that the incombustibility of the exhibitants is but a skilful effort of legerdemain.

It may be observed that the persons who pretend to this miraculous faculty, seldom expose themselves to the hazard of the investigations of the scientific world. For the exhibition of their exploits, they usually prefer small towns to great cities. In former days, incombustible men assumed, in Spain, the name of saludores; and most of those who have since exhibited in public their insensibility to fire, are descendants or imitators of these Spanish mountebanks. The saludores, however, pretended to a power of curing all sorts of diseases by means of their saliva; whereas, the incombustible individuals who have figured in France and Germany, pretend only to handle fire with impunity, to swallow boiling oil, walk upon glowing embers, or even among flames; all which exploits they accomplish with perfect self-possession. So long as two hundred years ago, however, the saludores were recognised as impostors. Leonard Vain relates a story of one of them, who, having pretended to the faculty of sustaining the heat of a kindled oven, was forced by the populace into one, without sufficient preparation; on opening which, at the close of an hour, the man was found to be calcined. A somewhat severe mode of punishing imposture!

This example, however, did not serve to extinguish the race; and in 1806, a man who called himself the miraculous Spaniard, opened an exhibition in Paris, where he renewed all the skilful marvels of his predecessors, by walking barefooted on red hot iron, drawing heated bars across his arms, face and tongue, dipping his hands in molten lead, and swallowing, as if with zest, a glass of boiling oil. This exhibition, to which the idlers of the French capital resorted, produced a careful examination into the precedents of antiquity for similar instances of incombustibility.

Some cited the well-known lines of Virgil, with reference to the exhibitions of the priests of Apollo, on Mount Soracte, where they walked unhurt, in presence of the worshippers of their divinity, upon burning embers. Others quoted the equally doubtful authority of Pliny; who relates the same fact, adding that the privilege of incombustibility was hereditary in a specific family; a fact the more remarkable, because all the modern jugglers in this branch of the black art, pretend to descend from St. Catherine.

Varro, less credulous than Pliny, expressly states that the priests of the Temple of Soracte possessed the secret of a composition which rendered them fire-proof.

Long after Varro, Strabo related that the votaries of the goddess Feronia obtained, as the price of their devotions, the faculty of walking unhurt over burning piles; and that the exhibition of this miraculous power before her altars, attracted numerous spectators.

“The worship of the goddess Feronia,” says Strabo, “is much in vogue; her temple being remarkable as the site of a miracle. Those persons whose prayers the goddess deigns to propitiate, are enabled to defy the most ardent flames. This miracle is renewed at her annual festival.”

It is also related that, not far from the city of Thyane, the birth-place of Apollonius, there was a celebrated temple dedicated to Diana Persica; the virgins devoted wherein to the worship of the goddess of Chastity, possessed the power and privilege of treading unhurt upon burning embers. A confirmation of these wonders is to be found in Aristotle and Apuleius.

When the visitors of the miraculous Spaniard had satisfied themselves, that antiquity supplied a variety of examples in substantiation of the power to which he pretended, modern history was searched for further attestation; when it appeared that Ambrose Paré and Cardan, depose to having seen mountebanks so inured to the effects of molten lead and boiling oil, that they were able to wash their faces and hands, unhurt, with those terrible materials. Delrio, Delancre, and Bodin, advance many curious facts of a similar nature.

Had these incombustible individuals existed in the days when trial by ordeal was still a form of law; or, rather, had the Art of Chemistry attained at that period the power of hardening the human skin into resistance of fire, the secret would have been invaluable.

In those barbarous ages, a culprit sentenced to the fiery ordeal of walking upon heated ploughshares, or plunging his limbs into boiling oil, was tacitly condemned to death. We may infer, however, that Kings, Queens, and Dignitaries of the Church were of a less combustible nature than humbler mortals; for when these were forced to submit to the terrible ordeal of fire, it was observed that they escaped unsinged; while serfs and beggars, burnt like tinder: an understanding with the cruel executioners of these savage laws, being essential to establish the innocence of an accused person.

It would appear as though a sinister influence had always attached itself to the ill-fated See of Autun; for one of the first instances on record of the ordeal of fire being applied to a member of the hierarchy, was that of Simplicius, Bishop of Autun, who, after submitting to it in his life-time, was canonized after death. Two later Bishops of Autun—the Abbé Roquette, said to be the original of the Tartuffe of Molière, and the Prince de Talleyrand, one of the most remarkable personages of modern times, have certainly not experienced the same posthumous distinction.

Simplicius, being a married man, when called to the honours of the See of Autun, repudiated his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached. He was, nevertheless, accused of retaining her conjugally in his palace after his promotion to the mitre; in disproof of which, he submitted, and caused his beloved wife to submit to the fiery ordeal in presence of a vast congregation; when, both having escaped unhurt, Simplicius was eventually promoted to the honour of the Calendar.

St. Brie, the successor of St. Martin in the See of Tours, was also accused of having become a father, to the discredit of his episcopal functions; a charge he is said to have defeated by bestowing powers of speech upon the infant, thereby enabling it to name its real father. In addition to this exculpation, he submitted to the fiery ordeal; and having gathered up his robe, and filled it with burning embers, proceeded in this guise to the tomb of his predecessor, St. Martin, without experiencing the slightest injury. It is not added in the legend, whether the garments of the Bishop were also uninjured.

One of the most celebrated trials by fire on record, is that of Thuitberge, wife of Lothaire, King of France. Having been accused of more than becoming intimacy with the young Prince, her brother, and condemned to the ordeal, she had the good fortune to find a champion willing to undertake it in her behalf. These champions or proxies were tantamount to the special pleaders of the present day, being mostly hired by fee or reward for the purpose. The champion of Thuitberge managed to establish her innocence, by plunging his arm without injury into a cauldron of boiling water; after which, Lothaire was compelled to admit the injustice of his accusation, and retain her as his wife. Even at that epoch, however, mistrust had arisen on this score; and certain servitors of the King openly insinuated the existence of chemical compositions, by the application of which a man might fortify his flesh against the action of boiling fluids. Appeal from the decision of an