g a knot of people who might be considered as representing the
mysticism, or rather the mystic sensuality, of this singular age. The
nature of the exhibition that was about to take place had probably
given the turn to their conversation.

I heard, from a pale man in blue spectacles, some stranger stories than
ever were written in a romance; told, too, with a simple, unimaginative
steadfastness, which was terribly efficacious in compelling the auditor
to receive them into the category of established facts. He cited
instances of the miraculous power of one human being over the will and
passions of another; insomuch that settled grief was but a shadow
beneath the influence of a man possessing this potency, and the strong
love of years melted away like a vapor. At the bidding of one of these
wizards, the maiden, with her lover's kiss still burning on her lips,
would turn from him with icy indifference; the newly made widow would
dig up her buried heart out of her young husband's grave before the
sods had taken root upon it; a mother with her babe's milk in her bosom
would thrust away her child. Human character was but soft wax in his
hands; and guilt, or virtue, only the forms into which he should see
fit to mould it. The religious sentiment was a flame which he could
blow up with his breath, or a spark that he could utterly extinguish.
It is unutterable, the horror and disgust with which I listened, and
saw that, if these things were to be believed, the individual soul was
virtually annihilated, and all that is sweet and pure in our present
life debased, and that the idea of man's eternal responsibility was
made ridiculous, and immortality rendered at once impossible, and not
worth acceptance. But I would have perished on the spot sooner than
believe it.

The epoch of rapping spirits, and all the wonders that have followed in
their train,--such as tables upset by invisible agencies, bells
self-tolled at funerals, and ghostly music performed on
jew's-harps,--had not yet arrived. Alas, my countrymen, methinks we
have fallen on an evil age! If these phenomena have not humbug at the
bottom, so much the worse for us. What can they indicate, in a
spiritual way, except that the soul of man is descending to a lower
point than it has ever before reached while incarnate? We are pursuing
a downward course in the eternal march, and thus bring ourselves into
the same range with beings whom death, in requital of their gross and