seeing such figures revolve.

Nor are the examples of holy fire-places that kindled spontaneously
wanting in antiquity.

Pliny (_Hist. Nat_., ii., 7) and Horace (_Serm., Sat. v._) tell us that
this phenomenon occurred in the temple of Gnatia, and Solin (Ch. V.)
says that it was observed likewise on an altar near Agrigentum.
Athenaeus (_Deipn_. i., 15) says that the celebrated prestidigitator,
Cratisthenes, of Phlius, pupil of another celebrated prestidigitator
named Xenophon, knew the art of preparing a fire which lighted
spontaneously.

Pausanias tells us that in a city of Lydia, whose inhabitants, having
fallen under the yoke of the Persians, had embraced the religion of the
Magi, "there exists an altar upon which there are ashes which, in color,
resemble no other. The priest puts wood on the altar, and invokes I
know not what god by harangues taken from a book written in a barbarous
tongue unknown to the Greeks, when the wood soon lights of itself
without fire, and the flame from it is very clear."

The secret, or rather one of the secrets of the Magi, has been revealed
to us by one of the Fathers of the Church (Saint Hippolytus, it is
thought), who has left, in a work entitled _Philosophumena_, which
is designed to refute the doctrines of the pagans, a chapter on the
illusions of their priests. According to him, the altars on which this
miracle took place contained, instead of ashes, calcined lime and a
large quantity of incense reduced to powder; and this would explain the
unusual color of the ashes observed by Pausanias. The process, moreover,
is excellent; for it is only necessary to throw a little water on the