pages: practicalmagicia00harr.pdf, 78
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practicalmagicia00harr.pdf | 78 | 68 THE PRACTICAL MAGICIAN. an old woman. On the other hand, from a want of the know- ledge of how to proceed, it is very seldom that even a blundering attempt at ventriloquism is heard, except from a public plat- form. There have been many statements put forward defining ven- triloquism, but we are decidedly of opinion that the theory of two of the most celebrated of foreign ventriloquists, Baron de Men- gen and M. St. Gille, who were sufficiently unselfish to avow the secret of their art, is not only the most correct, but it is at once the most reasonable and the most natural. From Baron de Mengen's account of himself, and the observa- tions made by M. de la Chapelle, in his frequent examinations of St. Gille, whom weshall afterwards refer to, it seems that the factitious ventriloquist voice does not (as the etymology of the word imports) proceed from the belly, but is formed in the in- ner parts of the mouth and throat. The art does not depend on a particular structure or organiza- tion of these parts, but may be acquired by almost any one ar- dently desirous of attaining it, and determined to persevere in repeated trials. The judgments we form concerning the situation and distance of bodies, by means of the senses mutually assisting and correct- ing each other, seem to be entirely founded on experience ; and we pass from the sign to the thing signified by it immediately, or at least without any intermediate steps perceptible to our- selves. llence it follows that if a man, though in the same room with another, can by any peculiar modifications of the organs of speech, produce a sound which, in faintness, tone, body, and every othrer sensible quality, perfectly resembles a sound delivered from the roof of an opposite house, the ear will naturally, with- out examination, refer it to that situation and distance ; the sound which he hears being only a sign, which from infancy he has become accustomed, by experience, to associate with the idea of a person speaking from a house-top. A deception of this kind is practised with success on the organ and other musical in- struments. Rolandus, in his Aglossostomographia," mentions, that if the mediastinum, which is naturally a single membrane, be divided into tivo parts, the speech will seem to come out of the breast, so that the bystanders will fancy the person possessed. Mr. Gough, in the Manchester Memoirs," vol. V. part ii. p. 633 London, 1802, investigates the method whereby men judge by the car of the position of sonorous bodies relative to their own persons. This author observes, in general that a sudden change in direc- tion of sound, our knowledge of which, he conceives, does not |