my coadjutor thought of, even before he had time to write the name of it! In this case, and on the same occasion, other and still more beautiful and striking phenomena were educed; but to a world so sceptical scarcely feel justified in giving them publication yetalthough no dream, but matters of actual experience that can never be obliterated from that page on which our existence itself is written-the book of Nature, the language of which is facts. They relate to prevision, premonition, prophecy, and other principles, founded, as I think, in man's spirituality. But let me not awaken prejudice.

CHAPTER V.

PUBLIC LECTURES, LECTURERS, AND THEIR TRADUCERS-THE ENEMIES OF MESMERISM COMPOSE THE VERY CLASS TO WHICH SOME WOULD CONFINE ITS PRACTICE-POPULAR TREATMENT OF THE QUESTION CONTRASTED WITH THE CONDUCT OF SOME IN SELECT CIRCLES-THE RIGHT OF "THE COMMON PEOPLE" TO A KNOWLEDGE OF ITS POWERS.

THE scribes and pharisees of Judea, in the days of old, would have excluded "the common people" (notwithstanding their openness to receive the truth with gladness) from the blessings of religion; and the scientific scribes and pharisees of modern England have shown precisely the same disposition with regard to mesmerism. When I hear any one say a word against popular lecturing on mesmerism, I invariably ask if he or she be in circumstances, or endowed with the requisite powers, to command esteem in the same walk. * If such people, when they are denouncing us, would just suppose a change of cases," they would probably be led to modify their tone. I know, and regret it as deeply as any one, that there are ignorant quacks and impostors in mesmerism, the same as in medicine and even in religion-men whose acts would stain any cause-yet, on the other hand, I know some lecturers on this subject whose conduct would raise and ennoble any profession that had truth for its basis, as mesmerism has. But it is said that by bringing the more beautiful and subtle phenomena of mesmerism before crowds, we are throwing "pearls before swine," and

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into the lap of the ignorant an instrument that might be used for base and unholy purposes. In reply to this I would ask, who are the wise? To what class and profession do the Wakleys, and Radclyffe Halls, and Headlam Greenhows belong? Is the editor of the Athenæum a specimen of " mind among the spindles," or hard and impervious to truth as the spindle itself? Miss Martineau and other well-meaning writers should have weighed these things before so unmercifully and indiscriminately condemning the whole class of lecturers. Not that I am blind to all possibility of evil, but because there has been too much special pleading against us is it that I advert to these points with somewhat of earnestness-it may seem of severity; but benevolence and a hope for the best accompany the allusion. Do we put out the domestic fire because Moscow was destroyed, or because some incendiary may have burnt our neighbour's house? We educate even children to use it properly, and then trust them with it as we would ourselves. So we may the people with mesmerism. Indeed, immense volumes might be filled with instances of the beneficial use of mesmerism by "the common people," who obtained the elements of their knowledge from public lecturers; yet quite as much might be said, on the other side, of the insult and misrepresentation to which its advocates have been subjected by the literary and scientific magnates of the day; and that not merely in popular lecturehalls but in hospitals, colleges, dignified societies, and even in private drawing-rooms. Further: there is not on record, so far as I am aware, a single instance of its criminal abuse by one of the common-that is, of the working-people. One of the professional railers against Miss Martineau did allude, în a most indelicate spirit, to some case of the kind. But who was the reputed criminal ? A PHYSICIAN! "The churchyards tell no tales," says a shrewd old proverb; but there are and have been doctors and other learned men with much to answer for in the world to come; and it would be quite as rational because of this

to denounce the whole of the medical profession, in which there are several of the noblest spirits of the age, as, for the forestated reasons, to run down "the common people" and the lecturers by whom they love to be instructed when nobody else attempts to instruct them.

My becoming a lecturer on mesmerism was as simply a matter of course as my becoming an inquirer. In the summer of 1842, when on a tour among the mountains of Derbyshire, I descended one evening to the inn at Castleton to rest, when_mesmerism chancing to be a subject of conversation, I was asked what I knew of it, and in reply mentioned some of the occurrences already related in this book. Several of the friendly people present, being much interested by what they heard, desired me to come again and give them a lecture with experimental illustrations. On reaching home I named the subject to Mr. Rodgers, who consented to accompany me on what appeared so curious yet pleasant an excursion, and our meeting was fixed for a Saturday evening. A small but fashionable party attended from Buxton, with several of the townspeople, and the experiments were satisfactory. Still I had no idea of becoming a professional lecturer till, in the month of November of the same year, a similar request was made by the committee of the Sheffield Mechanics' Institution, and the result not only astounded me, but appeared completely to revolutionise my destiny, and to give at the time an impulse to mesmerism that was felt through the country.

My first public lecture in Sheffield was in the large assembly-room where M. La Fontaine's experiments had been previously given. There was little need now to resort to the old tests. Operator and subjects operated on being so well known in the town, and so many of the townspeople having experimented for themselves, the room was filled with hundreds who came to believe and learn, and hundreds went away unable to gain admission. To remedy this difficulty, the Amphitheatre

was engaged by the committee for another lecture; but even that large building was filled from the stage to the roof, it is supposed, by not less than three thousand people, and again more than a thousand who came were unable to gain admission-when yet another lecture followed in which an equal interest was taken.

In York and Nottingham, where I was equally well known, having formerly been in both places connected with the press, a similar desire was evinced to see the experiments, and not less interest manifested in the results. Doctors and educators who came to oppose remained to approve. Not less than three hundred other experimenters came publicly before the country; and it was utterly impossible for some of them, under the circumstances, again to retire into their original pri

vacy.

Since then I have experimented, by invitation, in almost every large town from London to Dundee. In the most fashionable and aristocratic, as well as in the most grave, scientific circles, the phenomena have been viewed with all the gradations of regard, from intense rational delight down to a meaningless quiz, a shrug, or a simper. But I am bound to say, after all I have experienced, that in no rank of society have I ever seen a more intense yet quiet and philosophical interest evinced in mesmerism, than by some of the large popular audiences in the manufacturing towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and other districts of the middle and north of England and Scotland. Do not let me be misunderstood: it would be impossible to think but with the deepest respect of the kindly and unostentatious regard shown for mesmerism on various occasions by men famous in science, and by families of high aristocratic distinction. But in my estimation "the common people" of England and Scotland rank very high for humanity and intelligence, when their behaviour is compared with that of some in the class to which several writers would have mesmerism confined! How beautiful it was, in one town,