to see the Vicar acting as chairman, and the lecturetheatre filled with nearly a thousand of his parishioners of all ranks, all animated by one kindly spirit of observation and inquiry, as fact after fact was laid before them under circumstances that rendered deception on one side or suspicion on the other quite impossible; whilst I endeavoured to show the analogy of the different states exhibited to the various conditions of health and disease, and the power that mesmerism gives us to regulate and control them. At another place, where the clergyman allowed me in the presence of a large meeting to test the influence upon his own son; whilst, listened to with the profoundest attention, I explained its uses and laid down infallible rules for preventing its abuse. At another where, in presence of the Mayor and seven hundred of the inhabitants, the free and healthy use of a contracted leg was restored to one of the citizens by a mesmeric experiment, without pain, after all other means had failed; and where public evidence was given by the patients themselves of its efficacy in the cure of deafness, lumbago, paralysis, stammering, inflammations, swellings of the ancles, and many other complaints. In the north of Scotland, where a distinguished philosopher (as chairman) gave his testimony to the validity of a class of facts that awoke such interest in the neighbourhood as could not subside, and where mesmerism has since been continually used as a curative or palliative of the most grievous disorders. And again, in a midland English town, where, owing to there being no good instrumental music at hand by which I might illustrate the influence of melody upon the system in the mesmeric trance, when the soul beams so brightly through the countenance and the whole body moves or basks in such perfect and ecstatic harmony with the sounds,—the entire audience accorded, as with one voice, in a sweet expressive tune that drew forth some of the sublimest and most instructive psychical phenomena they had ever contemplated. Contrast these facts-popular and

incontrovertible facts-with the represented or misrepresented failures and puerile bickerings so often attending or following experiments in exclusive circles; and then, ye who consider yourselves of "the higher walk of mesmerists," tell me why a Yorkshire weaver or a Northamptonshire peasant has less right than you to participate in such knowledge. Do astronomers and botanists alone enjoy or receive instruction from the stars or the flowers? Has none but the physician ever relieved pain? Do none but priests smooth the deathbed pillow? A time came when Dives would have been glad of the friendship even of Lazarus. Think of these things, and speak not contemptuously of "the common people."

CHAPTER VI.

MESMERIC RESULTS NOT TO BE CONFOUNDED WITH MIRACLESREASONS FOR BELIEVING IN THE TRANSMISSION OF HEALTH, AS WELL AS OF DISEASE, BY CONTAGION-ILLUSTRATIVE CASES IN

TRODUCED.

IT is a maxim, that there is not in nature a single agent without a use proportionate to its power. One of the principal uses of mesmerism, pathetism, or vital magnetism, is doubtless the correction of vital derangements. So striking have been some of its effects in this way as to cause many to regard it as a sort of scientific divinity, and to consider it the parent of all the attested miracles of both modern and ancient times: a view, as it appears to me, very erroneous, and from which I therefore unequivocally express my dissent. Subtle and potent though it be, and useful as enabling us to cultivate our benevolence and other humane faculties in the relief of our brother, or friend, or neighbour by applying it to his ailments, we have yet the best authority for regarding this influence as altogether subordinate to that Power which, being adequate in the first instance to the creation of the world, still occasionally manifests its superiority to those laws by which in ordinary the world is governed. If we are to believe history, the magicians of old understood much more of magnetic practice-could see deeper into the nature of themselves, and work many more wonders than are witnessed in our day. One of them, a Persian, who lived on the mountain overlooking Taoces,

was himself, at one period of his life, almost continuously lucid or clairvoyant. Yet, mark how a number of these sages" wise men from the East" -came to the BABE IN BETHLEHEM, and acknowledged the inferiority of their influence to that of pure, unostentatious, and comprehensive Christianity! True, since Jesus did not disdain to use even dirt and spittle as agents, and since he felt “ a virtue gone out of him" on an occasion when another was benefitted by touching him, I would not deny that, as Lord of All, he might use magnetism, or any other agent in creation, for the working out of his compassionate designs. And when he commanded his humble followers to heal the sick as well as to preach the Gospel, I do not deny that he was bidding them to use an agent as natural and common to them all as the language in which they were to preach. As he came to teach that religion was not confined to the priests and pharisees, but belonged as well to the common people; so also he showed that the powers of nature were not alone in the hands of the magicians or men of science-of whom the exclusive doctors in our day, who blindly deny the use of mesmerism whilst the people are curing each other by it, afford, perhaps, a distant semblance. But I do not believe that any one can possess the divine influence He and his Apostles of that or any subsequent time have manifested, except in proportion as he may become renewed and live the same obedient, unselfish, pure, faithful, divine life they lived and enjoined. If man were fully to comply with this, instead of belying what is divine by his hypocrisy or denying it by his scepticism, it is impossible for us to tell the extent of knowledge and power he would possess, as no doubt it would be commensurate with his faith and purity. Christianity is more than a sun in the firmament; compared with it science is no more than a lamp in a cloister. Whilst we remain shut up in this cloister of the senses, we are permitted to learn a little by the lamp if we will; yet * Magician simply means wise man.

let us not, by extolling its brilliancy too much, draw attention from a light more primitive, pure, and universal; but "give unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

If we had as much faith in the good as in the evil of our lot, a curative affluence from a healthy body would never have been doubted. We believe in the transmission of disease by contagion; and since nature is as equitable as economical, why not also in the transmission of health? If we have the power of communicating fever, cholera, and small-pox, by our mere presence, without contact-if the plague, sent a thousand miles in a letter from a city where it is already raging, shall on the letter being opened begin new ravages and depopulate another city-what becomes of the doctrine of nature's equitability if we have not the countervailing power, that of communicating health by an analogous law? This should be considered by those who, within sight of ships kept in quarantine for weeks or months, ridicule the means used by mesmerists as idle mummery !

The following cases will illustrate this doctrine, as well as others to which I may allude in passing.

CASE I.-" LITTLE HENRY."

The interesting somnambulist, Henry Wigston, is well known to most of my friends by the above soubriquet, having become warmly attached to and been with me for months together, during the past two years. When I first saw him he was errand-boy in a barber's shop, and appeared very poorly and dull, his stature being that of a child of seven or eight years rather than a youth of thirteen (which he then was); his temperament lymphatic; his eyes heavy; and his movements slow. He had not since his infancy been free from a serious affection of the brain, and says he could never play like other boys, for at every attempt