grave, he insults religion and common sense, and tampers with the most sacred feelings of his victims. "I am, sir, "Yours, etc., "D. BREWSTER." Here Sir David appeals to religious prejudice, as he had just done in his very weak book in reply to Whewell's "Plurality of Worlds." But his account of the séance and the imputations it cast on both Home and his host, Mr. Cox, were at once answered by that gentleman, who declared that, immediately after the séance, both Lord Brougham and Sir David had expressed their great astonishment, and that the latter had exclaimed, "Sir, this upsets the philosophy of fifty years." A friend of Mr. Cox and of Home-Mr. Colemanalso wrote, reminding Sir David that very shortly afterwards he and Mr. Cox had called upon him to talk over the subject, and that Sir David declared that what he had seen was "quite unaccountable." Mr. Coleman continues thus: "I then asked him, 'Do you, Sir David, think these things were produced by trick?' "No, certainly not,' was his reply. "No; that is out of the question.' "Then what is it?' "To which he replied, 'I don't know; but spirit is the last thing I give in to.'" To this Sir David replied by a very long letter, denying some things and explaining others. The most important passages are the following: "Mr. Home invited us to examine if there was any machinery about his person, an examination, however, which we declined to make. When all our hands were upon the table noises were heard-rappings in abundance; and, finally, when we rose up, the table actually rose, as appeared to me, from the ground. This result I do not pretend to explain.. ... "A small hand-bell, to be rung by the spirits, was placed on the ground near my feet. I placed my feet round it in the form of an angle, to catch any intrusive apparatus. The bell did not ring; but when taken across to a place near Mr. Home's feet, it speedily came across, and placed its handle in my hand. This was amusing." There is also a long account of the phenomena he saw at Ealing in a still more jocular vein, which called forth a very scathing letter from Mr. T. Adolphus Trollope, who had been present. These letters and some others can all be read in full in an appendix to Home's "Incidents in my Life," and as this appendix was drawn up by Dr. Robert Chambers (as I know from private information), the reader may feel satisfied that these letters are given as they were written. But the chief reason why I have introduced the matter here is, that we possess, fortunately, another account of Sir David Brewster's séance at Cox's Hotel, written by himself very shortly afterwards, while the facts were fresh in his memory, in a letter to some member of his own family, and published in the "Home Life of Sir David Brewster" by his daughter, in 1869. At my request my friend Mr. Benjamin Coleman sent me a copy of this contemporary account, dated London, June, 1855. It is as follows: "Last of all, I went with Lord Brougham to a séance of the new spirit-rapper, Mr. Home, a lad of twenty, the son of a brother of the late Earl of Home. He went to America at the age of seven, and, though a naturalized American, is actually a Scotchman. Mr. Home lives in Cox's Hotel, in Jermyn Street, and Mr. Cox, who knows Lord Brougham, wished him to have a séance, and his lordship invited me to accompany him, in order to assist in finding out the trick. We four sat down at a moderately sized table, the structure of which we were invited to examine. In a short time the table shuddered, and a tremulous motion ran up all our arms; at our bidding these motions ceased and returned. "The most unaccountable rappings were produced in various parts of the table, and the table actually rose from the ground when no hand was upon it. A larger table was produced, VOL. II. U and exhibited similar movements. An accordion was held in Lord Brougham's hand and gave out a single note, but the experiment was a failure; it would not play either in his hand or mine. "A small hand-bell was then laid down with its mouth on the carpet, and after lying for some time it actually rang when nothing could have touched it. The bell was then placed on the other side, still upon the carpet, and it came over to me and placed itself in my hand. It did the same to Lord Brougham. "These were the principal experiments; we could give no explanation of them, and could not conjecture how they could be produced by any kind of mechanism. Hands are sometimes seen and felt, the hand often grasps another, and melts away as it were under the grasp. "The object of asking Lord Brougham and me seems to have been to get our favourable opinion of the exhibition, but though neither of us can explain what we saw, we do not believe that it was the work of idle spirits." I have italicized certain passages in this early letter to compare with the corresponding parts of the letters Sir David wrote to the Morning Advertiser about half a year later, and it will be seen that the discrepancies are very serious. He told the public that he had satisfied himself that all could have been done by human hands and feet; whereas in his earlier private letter he terms them unaccountable, and says that he could not conjecture how they were done. Neither did he tell the public of the tremulous motion up his arms, while he denied that the bell rang at all, though he had before said that it actually rang where nothing could have touched it. If this case stood alone it would not, perhaps, be worth mentioning, but a similar tendency has prevailed in all the scientific opponents of spiritualism, one example of which I have given in the case of Mr. Lewes's declaration that he had forced Mrs. Hayden to avow herself an impostor, whereas what happened really proved that Mrs. Hayden herself did not consciously give the answers to his questions. One of the eminent men with whom I became acquainted through spiritualism was Mr. Cromwell F. Varley, the electrician. Any one who will read his evidence, printed in the Report of the Dialectical Society (1871), will see that he was at first as sceptical as any other scientific man usually is, and ought to be, but, having married a lady who was a medium, phenomena of such a marvellous nature were presented to him in his own home, that he could not help becoming an ardent believer. But he was always a critic and an experimenter, and he assisted Sir William Crookes in applying some of the electrical tests to Mrs. Fay, as described by that gentleman in The Spiritualist newspaper of March 12, 1875. I became acquainted with him in 1868 through a letter from Professor Tyndall referring, I think, to the single test at one séance as proposed by G. H. Lewes in the Pall Mall Gazette shortly afterwards, and suggesting that Mr. Varley, who had published some of his investigations, might be able to supply such a test. To this letter I replied as follows: "DEAR MR. TYNDALL, "May 8, 1868. "I do not know Mr. Varley, but I will forward him your note, and he can reply if he thinks proper. I rather doubt if any single case would be conclusive to you. Hume's argument is overwhelming against any single case, considered alone, however well authenticated. He himself admits that no facts could possibly be better authenticated than the (so-called) miracles which occurred at the tomb of the Abbé Paris. But when you look at a series of such cases, amounting to thousands in our own day, and a corresponding series extending back through all history, Hume's argument. entirely fails, because his major proposition-that such facts are contrary to the universal experience of mankind—ceases to be true. "During the last two years I have witnessed a great variety of phenomena, under such varied conditions that each objection as it arose was answered by other phenomena. The further I inquire, and the more I see, the more impossible becomes the theory of imposture or delusion. I know that the facts are real natural phenomena, just as certainly as I know any other curious facts in nature. "Allow me to narrate one of the scores of equally remarkable things I have witnessed, and this one, though it certainly happened in the dark, is thereby only rendered more difficult to explain as a trick. "The place was the drawing-room of a friend of mine, a brother of one of our best artists. The witnesses were his own and his brother's family, one or two of their friends, myself, and Mr. John Smith, banker, of Malton, Yorkshire, introduced by me. The medium was Miss Nichol. We sat round a pillar-table in the middle of the room, exactly under a glass chandelier. Miss Nichol sat opposite me, and my friend, Mr. Smith, sat next her. We all held our neighbour's hands, and Miss Nichol's hands were both held by Mr. Smith, a stranger to all but myself, and who had never met Miss N. before. When comfortably arranged in this manner the lights were put out, one of the party holding a box of matches ready to strike a light when asked. "After a few minutes' conversation, during a period of silence, I heard the following sounds in rapid succession: a slight rustle, as of a lady's dress; a little tap, such as might be made by setting down a wineglass on the table; and a very slight jingling of the drops of the glass chandelier. An instant after Mr. Smith said, 'Miss Nichol is gone.' The match-holder struck a light, and on the table (which had no cloth) was Miss Nichol seated in her chair, her head just touching the chandelier. "I had witnessed a similar phenomenon before, and was able to observe coolly; and the facts were noted down soon afterwards. Mr. Smith assured me that Miss Nichol simply glided out of his hands. No one else moved or quitted hold of their neighbour's hands. There was not more noise than I have described, and no motion or even tremor of the table, although our hands were upon it. "You know Miss N.'s size and probable weight, and can judge of the force and exertion required to lift her and her |