and dreadfully surprized by a marvellous dream:  it seemed to me that two Angels, opening the gates of Heaven, carried me before the throne of God with great joy:  his companion said:  this is a marvellous dream, but I have seen another more marvellous, for I saw two Angels, who carried me over the earth to Hell.  The countryman hearing this, made as if he slept; but the townsmen, desirous to finish their trick, awoke him; and the countryman, artfully as one surprised, answered:  Who are these that call me ?  They told him, we are thy companions.  He asked them:  How did you return ?  They answered:  We never went hence; why d’ye talk of our return ?  The countryman replied:  It appeared to me that two Angels, opening the gates of Heaven, carried one of you before our Lord God, and dragged the other over the earth to Hell, and I thought you never would return hither, as I have never heard that any had returned from Paradise, nor from Hell, and so I arose and eat the bread by myself.- From an old edition of Lasarillo de Tormes.

APPARITIONS.

Cynthia, Propertius’s mistress, did appear to him after her death, with the beryl-ring on her finger.  See Propertius, eleg. 7. lib.

      “Sunt aliquid manes, letum non omnia finit,
      Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos. 
      Cynthia namque meo visa est incumbere fulcro,
      Murmur ad extremae nuper humata viae: 
      Quum mihi ab exequiis somnus penderet amaris. 
      Et quererer lecti frigida regna mei. 
      Eosdem habuit secum, quibus est elata, capillos,
      Eosdem oculos.  Lateri vestis adusta fuit. 
      Et solitum digito beryllon adederat ignis,
      Summaque Lethoeus triverat ora liquor: 
      Spirantisque animos, & vocem misit, at illi
      Pollicibus fragiles increpuere manus.”

      Thus translated by Mr. Dart.

      Manes exist, when we in death expire,
      And the pale shades escape the funeral fire;
      For Cynthia’s form beside my curtain’s stood,
      Lately interr’d near Aniens’ murm’ring flood. 
      Thoughts of her funeral would, not let me close
      These eyes, nor seek the realms of still repose;
      Around her shoulders wav’d her flowing hair,
      As living Cynthia’s tresses soft and fair: 
      Beauteous her eyes as those once fir’d my breast,
      Her snowy bosom bare, and sing’d her breast. 
      Her beryl-ring retain’d the fiery rays,
      Spread the pale flame, and shot the funeral blaze;
      As late stretch’d out the bloodless spectre stood,
      And her dead lips were wet with Lethe’s flood. 
      She breath’d her soul, sent forth her voice aloud,
      And chaf’d her hands as in some angry mood.

St. Augustin affirms that he did once see a satyr or daemon.

The antiquities of Oxford tell us, that St. Edmund, Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, did sometimes converse with an angel or nymph, at a spring without St. Clement’s parish near Oxford; as Numa Pompilius did with the nymph Egeria.  This well was stopped up since Oxford was a garrison.