contrary; for 'in omnem actum perceptionis influit imaginatio,' as
says Wolfe.

O, strange is the self-power of the imagination--when painful sensations
have made it their interpreter, or returning gladsomeness or
convalescence has made its chilled and evanished figures and landscape
bud, blossom, and live in scarlet, green, and snowy white (like the
fire-screen inscribed with the nitrate and muriate of cobalt,)--strange
is the power to represent the events and circumstances, even to the
anguish or the triumph of the 'quasi'-credent soul, while the
necessary conditions, the only possible causes of such contingencies,
are known to be in fact quite hopeless;--yea, when the pure mind would
recoil from the eve-lengthened shadow of an approaching hope, as from a
crime;-and yet the effect shall have place, and substance, and living
energy, and, on a blue islet of ether, in a whole sky of blackest
cloudage, shine like a firstling of creation!

To return, however to apparitions, and by way of an amusing illustration
of the nature and value of even contemporary testimony upon such
subjects, I will present you with a passage, literally translated by my
friend, Mr. Southey, from the well known work of Bernal Dias, one of the
companions of Cortes, in the conquest of Mexico:

Here it is that Gomara says, that Francisco de Morla rode forward on a
dappled grey horse, before Cortes and the cavalry came up, and that
the apostle St. Iago, or St. Peter, was there. I must say that all our
works and victories are by the hand of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that
in this battle there were for each of us so many Indians, that they
could have covered us with handfuls of earth, if it had not been that
the great mercy of God helped us in every thing. And it may be that he