All these images are so
distinct, and produce objects seemingly as palpable as they are visible,
as sensible to touch as to sight, that the people of the country are
firmly persuaded of their reality. They consider the edifices as the
enchanted palaces of the fairy Morgana, and the moving objects as living
things which inhabit them. Whenever the optic phenomenon occurs, they
meet together in crowds, with an intense curiosity, mixed with awe and
apprehension, which is not removed by an acquaintance with those natural
causes, by which Mr. Swinburn and other foreign travellers, who have
witnessed the scene, are able to account for it.
The lakes of Ireland are equally susceptible of producing those vivid
delusions, and the imagination of the people, as lively as that of the
Sicilians, clothes them with an equal reality. There is scarcely a loch
in that country, in which the remains of cities have not been at various
times discovered; and many men have been met with who would solemnly
swear they saw, and who no doubt did see, representations of them in
certain states of the atmosphere.
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