ses would have
deemed it very infra dig. to make the attempt. The two things stand on
quite different grounds; and I cannot help thinking that the
spiritualists unwisely concede a point when they accept the challenge of
the conjurers. I am quite aware that the theory of the spiritualists
makes of many a conjurer a medium malgre lui, and says he ought to come
out in his true colours. It was so Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke were
originally introduced to a London public at the Crystal Palace under the
auspices of an eminent spiritualist; but it really appears to me that
such an assertion amounts to begging the question; for I doubt whether
it would not "pay" quite as well to come out boldly in Mr. Williams's or
Mr. Morse's line as in that of Dr. Lynn or Mr. Maskelyne.

In a lengthened confab which I once had with Mr. Maskelyne himself after
one of his performances, he told me that by constant attendance at the
seances of the Davenports he found out how that was all done; and, being
a working watchmaker, was able soon to get the necessary apparatus
constructed. I must again be just, and state that while the cabinet
seance of Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke seems to me the exact counterpart
of the Davenports', their dark seance fails to reproduce that of the
spiritualists as the performances of Professor Pepper himself. True,
this latter gentleman does all his exposes on a platform which is sacred
against all intrusion, and Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke assume to allow
as much examination as the spiritualists. But I myself, who have seen
Mr. Home float around Mr. S. C. Hall's drawing-room, and handled him
above and below in transitu, quite fail to discern any reproduction of
that phenomenon in the heavy, lumbering levitation of the lady by means
of the scissors-like apparatus behind her, which we are only privileged
to behold from the stalls. The dancing walking-stick is as palpably made
terpsichorean by a string as the chairs I have seen cross Mr. Hall's
drawing-room in full light were not drawn by strings, for I was able to
look closely at them; and I do not know how that was done.

Fresh from Dr. Lynn's really marvellous performances of recent times,
and with Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke's equally clever tricks in my
mind's eye, though not quite so recently, I still am bold to say I
believe there are still six of one to half-a-dozen of the other. If the
conjurers reproduce the spiritual phenomena in some instances, the
spirituali