truth" by a fairy-like fountain of clear, of mignionette and geranium flowers were sparkling water," which threw up showers placed in his hands by spirit hands, and inof silvery rays, " and dwelling on the memory side Mr. W.'s waistcoat." The seance terin perfection!" minated by Mr. Home floating in the air, and indicating his place by ringing the small handbell. "This scance," says Mr. Wason," was commenced with prayer, which I understood was the usual course.'

On the 9th of May, in a seance with nine friends, the table, without the touch of hands, lifted itself four feet off the floor; and in a room made dark at the bidding of the spirits, the window-blinds moved up and down to Passing over Chapter IX., entitled "The tone the light, and the leaves and sprigs of a Cornhill' and other Narratives," and Dr. geranium broke from their moorings with a Gully of Malvern's account of what he has snap, and fell on the right and left of the seen, as they contain no new phenomena, we party, “ though the plant was several feet come to Chapter X., entitled "Miraculous from any of them." Mr. Home then rose Preservation-France and England." and floated in the air like a feather, about six feet from the ground, the spirits moving an ottoman to receive him on his descent. He rose again, and, descending from near the ceiling, he was accomodated with a cushion to sit upon, spirit-wafted from another otto

man!

A lady witness," who for good reasons," withholds her name, saw on the 3d May new varieties of manifestations. Her darling spirit-child enfolded her in the heavy silk curtains of a bow-window, took the comb out of her hair, pulled down the blind with a visible hand, and disappeared, followed by other two hands. The table then floated above sofas and chairs, four ottoman cushions were hurled in the air to the other side of the room, nine or ten chairs flew up like lightning, and the scene closed by the sign of the cross being made on the foreheads of two of the parties!

On the 24th of July, 1860, when standing beneath a large poplar in the park of a chateau near Paris, a spirit voice called out, "Here, here!" and Mr. Home "was suddenly seized by the collar of his coat, lifted off the ground, and drawn aside a distance of six or seven feet." At the same instant a crashing sound was heard, and the medium was thus miraculously saved from being crushed to death by the fall of a limb of the poplar, which was nearly fifty feet long and one foot in diameter, and which fell from a height of forty-five feet.

A day or two after this Dr. Hoefer came to the chateau for a scance. The spirits rapped “Go see the branch." The branch was so firmly fixed in its fallen position, that it was believed that several horses would be required to move it.

"Our surprise then," says Mr. H., 66 may be imagined, when we now found that it had been moved three or four inches laterally from its original point of support. Dr. Hoefer said, 'I firmly believe that the branch will

seems almost an impossibility.' At the same time, I took in my hand one of the smaller twigs, and mentally said, 'Dear spirits, will you push this branch down! I then distinctly felt as if some one gently touched the twig which I held. This was repeated, and at the third touch, as it felt to me."

The next testimony to spiritual manifestations is that of Mr. James Wason, solicitor in Liverpool, who describes, with his name, what he saw in the company of "two baro-be pushed down before us.' I replied, "That nets, one an M.P., and the other the heir and representative of a deceased M.P. of eminent ability, the wife of a distinguished living M.P., and others; " and on another occasion in a company of equal celebrities. The floors and walls of the apartment shook like a steamer's deck with the paddles at full work. A piece of the thickest part of this fallen large, heavy table rose three or four feet from tree was sent to London, and on many occathe floor, "suspended, Mohammed's coffin sions some very marvellous manifestations took fashion, for about a minute," and descended place with it! A block of this wood, so heavy like a snow-flake. The spirit-hand of the that two strong men could hardly move it, child of a lady, one of the party, placed in" became as if it were a straw in the hands Mr. Wason's hand a small bell, and after do- of Mr. Home, who "carried it round the ing the same service to others, the bell rose room under his arm." The same block,. and rung in mid-air, visibly revolving round, three feet eight inches long, and three feet and touching the heads of the party. "Pieces round, seems on another occasion to have

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manifested its spiritual power by attracting them, and a crash, and a large one was thrown to itself a table in motion. This fact was down with violence." Mr. Howitt is more witnessed by "a Plain Man," who saw a minute in his details of a similar phenomestill more remarkable phenomenon, "a small non. The clap of the dethroned idols might baby's hand creeping up a gentleman's arm!" have been heard all over the house. The On the authority of Mr. Cox, of Cox's spirits unscrewed their parts," and pomelled Hotel, Jermyn Street, himself a medium, their heads lustily on the floor," saying, we have an account of still more remarkable through the alphabet, "You must all do manifestations. The spirits having previ- your best to destroy.idolatry, both in India ously prescribed for a sick little boy of his, and in England, where it prevails in numerthey again prescribed a dose of magnetized ous ways,-idolatry of rank, idolatry of water. "For this purpose," says Mr. Cox, wealth, idolatry of self, idolatry of mere in"a decanter was placed on the table. The tellect and learning! water became agitated, and a powerful aroma came from the bottle. It was strongly impregnated with something they had not tasted."

"Mr. Home was thrown into the trance

state, and taking the decanter in his right hand, he walked a few feet from the table, when, to my astonishment, I saw another decanter, apparently precisely similar to the other in his left hand. Thus in each of his hands I saw a decanter, and so real was the second, that I could not tell which was the material one!"

In a diary kept by a Mrs. P. in the Regent's Park, we have a repetition of all the various manifestations we have described. A few novelties, however, solicit our notice. In an article in Once a Week, entitled "Spiritrapping made Easy," the denizens of the invisible world were not treated with the respect which they desired, and determined upon having their revenge. At a seance, accordingly, on the 29th January, 1860, a spirit hand arose and crumpled up and tore a sheet of the offending journal. "The spirits were at work destroying the magazine. They rubbed it strongly over Mr. Home's shoe, and then placed his foot upon it. The spirits gave each person a bit of the mangled magazine!

In February 1861, Mrs. Home's health had begun to decline. One night her mother's spirit laid its hand upon Mr. Home's brow, and "the present being obliterated from his mind, he saw the being so dear to him pass

A curious specimen of a wicked spirit was seen at this seance. In a writing-desk which had belonged to the late Robert Owen, of spirit-rapping memory, there was a box of paints. Mr. Owen's spirit ordered the writing-desk to be opened. A spirit hand was then placed in Mr. Cox's, another in his wife's, and another in Mr. Home's, each hand differing in size. "The alphabet was called for, and I fearing from earth," and he was told by the spirit I may have spoilt your Claude,' was spelt out. We could not understand this; but when the lamp was re-lighted, we found that some paint had been taken from the box, and had been freely used on one of my paintings, which hung several feet from where we were sitting! "

We are not told if the painting was really a Claude. Were it so, we should have suspected that Turner had bribed for this mischief the spirit of Robert Owen.

that she was to die of consumption. On the 3d of June, 1861, at a seance at which Mrs. Home was present, the spirits gave a rosebud to a lady, and said in raps, "From one who is a mortal, but will ere long be with us emblem of Sacha." Sacha was the name of Mrs. Home.

"This announcement drew tears from us all; we were deeply affected, and Mr. Home sank back overcome with emotion. A narcissus was given to me (Mrs. P.), and a flower The reality of a spiritual world is now tes- to every one present, also some for those who tified by a Mr. W. M. Williamson, of Hamp- Home. She spoke for a length of time conwere absent, but who were loved by Mrs. stead, and the supernatural Mr. William solations for those she was about to quit. Howitt. In their presence the spirits make Her voice was very weak, and I lost the a raid against idols. Several Indian idols of greater part of part of what she said. She ivory occupied an honorable place in a draw-shook hands with us all, a farewell we wept, ing-room in Cornwall Terrace, Regent's Park. but not a word was uttered."

66

Suddenly there was a commotion among At another seance on the 5th June, Mr.

and mercy, but in tossing to and fro tables, sofas, cushions, ottomans, and chairs, for the amusement of fools.

Home went into a trance, and saw near his and-blood realities, displaying superhuman wife a mass of spirits, which he describes in muscular strength, not in deeds of utility a rhapsody, bearing reference to her predicted death. At various other seances in the months of June and July, 1861, so prolific of spirits, phenomena were seen relating to this lady; 2. If he has found it difficult to exhume but one of these was so rare and miraculous, a full-length corpse from its lair, he has that we must communicate it to our readers. wrenched from it hands and feet, and someOn the 7th July a fine lemon-scented verbena | times a head and shoulders shining with the quitted its flower-pot without human aid, and blue phosphorescence of the grave. after rolling itself up, placed itself between Mr. and Mrs. Home. Mr. Home fell back in his chair into a deep sleep.

"He then walked about the room, led apparently by a spirit; a very large bright star shone in his forehead, several clustered on his hair and on the tips of his fingers. He made passes over the verbena plant, but did not touch it. Immediately the air was filled with the scent which he wafted to each of us."

He thus extracted the essence of the flower, in the same manner as the soul is taken from the body," and he declared that the plant would die in a few days, which it did "for want of the vital principle, which he had extracted from it."

Mrs. Home died on the 3d of July, 1862, and we have a tribute to her memory by Mr. Howitt occupying fifteen pages, and forming the twelfth chapter of the work. From Perigueuex, where Mrs. Home died, Mr. Home came to England, for the purpose, we presume, of writing the work which we have been analyzing.

We have thus given our readers a brief but faithful account of the spiritual manifestations of Daniel Dunglas Home, and we submit them to the judgment of the Philosopher and the Christian. In his communion with the world of spirits, he claims to have a divine commission, and to exercise his "Godgiven powers" for the benefit and instruction of mankind. He is specially charged with the conversion of infidels, and with the refutation of materialism; and he claims hundreds of converts to his faith. The divinity of his mission is attested by a series of prophecies and miracles, inferior neither in quality or number to those interruptions of the laws of nature by which the greatest of truths have been established.

1. He raises the dead, and commands their presence and their agency, not as the shadowy apparitions of the nursery, but as flesh

3. In defiance of the laws of gravity which keep the planets in their course, he rises in the air, a living and breathing balloon, not to survey the distant battle-field, nor to res cue life from its roof-tree in flames, but to make scratches on the ceiling, and baffle the efforts of his friends to pull him down by his boots!

4. In Mr. Home's presence dead and inorganic matter floats in the atmosphere, rings rush from their lair to the finger of their owner, and bells revolve like planets but without a centre to curve their orbit, and without an object to be gained by their evolutions.

5. In his presence plants are endowed with locomotive life and with muscular power. They walk from their flower-pots-they roll themselves up-they place themselves between their medium patrons, and commit personal mutilation by throwing off sprigs and flowers to gratify the olfactory nerves of the party!

6. When our archimagus exclaims, "Let there be light," the darkness of midnight is dispelled, and his apartment shines with the brightness of the sun!

7. When the spirits lead him in his trance, his "God-given power " is attested, not by the ring of light which encircles what is divine, but by a brilliant star shining on his forehead, and indicating the heaven-born functions of his guide!

8. If he does not turn water into wine, he extracts the perfume of plants by the wave of his hand, and by this extinction of their vital principle they die in his presence! Did not the law of the land protect the lieges, he could, doubtless, extract the principle of life from the skeptics that denounce, and the wits that deride his revelations.

9. If he does not multiply loaves and fishes to feed his disciples, he multiplies wine-decanters to astonish Mr. Cox of Jermyn Street! 10. If he has not given sight to the blind,

he has by a pass from his hand, given hearing | Typtology, in which the spirit speaks by to the deaf!

means of raps and an alphabet; and by Psychography, or medianimic writing, in which the communications are written by a hand holding a pen, guided by the presiding spirit. Under the head of Typtology, we have in the two series of M. Flammariez's work one hundred and twenty apophthegms or thoughts 12. If he cannot see into the human heart, from beyond the tomb. These apophthegms and divine its workings, he can do much are often brief references to texts in the Old more. He can look at a beautiful marble and New Testaments-moral and religious bust, and discern that the person whom it sentiments-quotations in different languages represents is possessed with a demon.

11. If he has not enabled the man ill of the palsy to take up his bed and walk, he has in many instances healed the sick, and he has cured a disease under which he himself labored, by means of self-inflicted and involuntary blows!

13. If "gravitation does not cease when Home goes by," he is divinely snatched from its influence. A spirit arm drags him from beneath the falling branch, and the heavy log thus cheated of its victim is pacified by the grant of supernatural powers!

from eminent authors-conversations with the spirit Marie-sometimes" bizarre assemblages" of letters which the spirit kindly arranges, frequently verses of poetry-and occasionally acrostics. The following is a favorable specimen of the Typtologies: "Science is an extensive forest, in which some follow the beaten path, many go astray, and all see the limits of the forest receding as they advance."

Under the head of Psychography, we have,

In order to form a just idea of spiritualism, we should study its developement in different countries and under different articles of faith. We will not shock our readers by taking them to the United States, where spiritual domina-occupying the greater part of the two brotion stares at us in its most hideous features, -a modern Antichrist exalting itself above all that is called God, uttering from a thousand tongues its blasphemous inspirations, and hurling its victims in hetacombs to the halter of the suicide, or the cells of the madhouse. *

chures, a large number of homilies or short addresses, by the spirits of the illustrious dead, from the time of Socrates to that of Galileo, Columbus, Pascal, Fenelon, Lammenais, and Channing. Socrates discourses from the text, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Galileo exclaims, "Raise thy head, O man, and observe the heavens," and in a long and eloquent address he points to the glorious life, and the innumerable modes of existence which are yet to be developed in a plurality of worlds. Columbus counsels his readers to be friendly with their brethren in the New World. Pascal dictates a solitary page on the grandeur of human intelligence, pitying those who seek truth without finding it, and counselling his readers to shun all reasoning which throws a shadow on the goodness and greatness of God. Fenelon discourses on the importance of truth, recommending to spiritualists humility of heart, and united efforts against the great enemy of Mademoiselle Huet sits as a medium at the man. Lammenais is a frequent teacher from salon of Mont-Thabor, and records the reve- his grave. He conducts the pilgrim through lations made to her by a spirit called Marie, the pitfalls of life to the happy land. He who has been dead for ten years. These rev-abuses ridicule as the child of skepticism and elations are made in two different ways,--by death. He discourses on Jacob's ladder, and he comforts parents and friends with the as* Mr. Howitt tells us that in America spiritualism surance that death is not "misfortune, but adds annually to its ranks 300,000 persons, and that there are, at a moderate estimate, two millions the completion of their sublimest aspiration, and a half of spiritualists in the United States! and an entrance to their happy home."

In France, where spiritualism is chastened by the intelligence of the upper classes, and checked by the principles and strict discipline of the Catholic Church, it has not assumed the repulsive phase which Mr. Home has given it in England. Its professors perform no visible miracles. They neither float in the air, nor launch tables and chairs through their halls, nor foretell what Infinite Wisdom has so kindly withheld from man. The French medium, generally female, employs two processes for revealing pious sentiments, or dictating brief homilies, which the Christian may peruse with moral and even religious profit.

Channing utters five conversational responses | They are much worse than the worst form of These abberraon spiritualism, the nature of the soul, on the doctrine of materiality. affability, and the justice of God. Queen Clotilda is eloquent on the physical and moral superiority of the inhabitants of Jupiter; and the editor informs us that the spirits in every part of the globe with which he has been in communication, represent in the most brilliant colors a residence on that planet.

Our spirit friends in France, thus instructive and eloquent, have not yet dabbled in astronomical predictions. Zadkiel has not appeared in Paris; and a French court of justice has not yet awarded damages against any member of the Imperial Institute for denouncing lying prophets, and clerical peepers into glass balls and tumbler bottoms.*

Such is spirit-rapping, spirit-raising, and spirit-seeing, and such the spawn which they have cast upon the waters. We have been bold enough to sketch their history from the pages of a "weak, credulous, half-educated, and fanatical person,' as the Saturday Reviewer† calls Mr. Home; but we want courage to characterize them in their moral, social, and religious bearings, and eloquence to express the horror and disgust which they inspire.

We borrow, therefore, the eloquent pen of a distinguished philosopher, who has poured out the vials of his wrath in "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn: "

tions betoken a perverse and prurient play of the abnormal fancy-groping for the very holy of holies in kennels running with the most senseless and God-abandoning abominations. Our natural superstitions are bad enough; but thus to make a systematic business of fatuity, imposture, and profanity, and to imagine all the while that we are touching on the precincts of God's spiritual kingdom, is unspeakably shocking. The horror and disgrace of such proceedings were never even approached in the darkest days of heathendom and idolatry. Ye who make shattered nerves and depraved sensations the interpreters of truth, the keys which shall unlock the gates of heaven, and open the secrets of futurity-ye who inaugurate disease as the prophet of all wisdom, thus making sin, death, and the devil the lords paramount of creation-have ye bethought yourselves of the backward and downward course which ye are running into the pit of the bestial and the abhorred? .O ye miserable mystics! when will ye know that all God's truths and all man's blessings lie in the broad heath, in shine of the universe; and that all intellect, the trodden ways, and in the laughing sunall genius, is merely the power of seeing wonders in common things?**

We do not ask the man of science or the that they think of the miracles of the spiritphilosopher or the moralist to tell us what rapper; but the Christian is bound to compare them with the revelation which he has accepted, and with the truths which he professes to believe.

"The word," says Professor Ferrier, "by which the thinking principle is designated in all languages, bears evidence to the inveterHas the Christian spiritualist, if there acy of the superstition, that the conception lives a person who can combine such jarring of mind might be formed by conceiving a material substance of extreme fineness and names- —has he pondered the divine denunciatenuity. Many circumstances have conspired tion against the abominations of the "users to keep this fanaticism in life. The sup- of divination ❞—against the consulters of faposed visibility of ghosts helps it on consid- miliar spirits-against "wizards, that peep erably; and it is still further reinforced by and that mutter," and that "whisper out some of the fashionable deliraments of the of the dust"-against those "who in latter day, such as Clairvoyance and (even A.D. times shall depart from the faith, giving heed 1854, credite posteri) Spirit-rapping. These, however, are not to be set down-at least so to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils"— it is to be hoped-among the normal and against the spirits of devils working miracles catholic superstitions incident to humanity.—against the doers of great wonders—against *These lower parts of our drinking vessels, the deceivers by miracles-against "him whether tumbler or wineglass, have been used by whose coming is with signs and lying wondistinguished mediums, and have been as successful ders "--and against "the false prophets, in the communication of spirit lore as the more costly sphere. Did the neophyte appeal to the ves- that shall give signs and wonders?" sel when brimful, he would obtain brighter visions from its foot-stalk.

We recommend to our readers two admirable

articles in the Saturday Review of March 21 and 28, on Howitt's "History of the Supernatural," and on "The Incidents" in Mr. Home's life.

If the spirit-raisers in former days, and their patrons, have been thus denounced, and deemed worthy of death, what shall be the

*Ferrier's Institutes of Metaphysic, the Theory of Knowing and Being. pp. 224, 225.