The St. James's Magazine (Volume 15)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECOND SIGHT. Mcch as we northern people, vexed by our capricious climate, with hardly two days alike, are apt to long for the more certain seasons, and clearer air and more unclouded skies of eastern and southern lands, yet land- scape painters tell us that the cloudy and misty veil, in which British and Irish Nature loves so often to hide herself, does but enhance the beauty underneath. And it enhances the mystery of nature, too, by making objects indistinct, and by suggesting forms of life and motion out of the merest Tapour wreaths. A clear blue sky is pleasing to gaze at for once in a way, and for a short time together; but the eye soon wearies of an ocean of blue ether, light-flooded and formless. One feels a longing for the changing clouds. Finding no object for the eye to rest upon, the mind sinks into inanity. Remembering the suggestiveness of mists and clouds, and considering well how prone we all are to invest obscure, indeterminate forms with supernatural attributes, one may assume, with much show of probability, that Ossian's ghost heroes would never have been imagined save under the influence of highland atmosphere; und that what is known by the designation of second sight, concerning which some descriptive words are to be written, is merely a delusion. Accordingly, some persons hare referred it to atmospheric causes; to either refraction or reflection of tangible objects, ?by wreaths of vapour, for example; and comparable, in this way, to the spectre of the Brocken. The remark may have been made by others as well as the writer, that it is far easier to explain a phenomenon to the satisfaction of the multitude- than to one's self. The major tendency of the human mind is perhaps to believe for the reason that it does not understand. So soon as one, professin...