the day, I do not think we ought all to go
out and leave them; so that ---- is gone with Adelaide and Lady M----,
and I shall seize this quiet chance for writing to Emily, to whom I have
not yet contrived to send a word since she left town. God bless you.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

[The young lad Alexis, to whom I have referred in this letter was, I
think, one of the first of the long train of mesmerists,
magnetizers, spiritualists, charlatans, cheats, and humbugs who
subsequently appealed to the notice and practised on the credulity
of London society. Mr. Chauncy Hare Townsend was an enthusiastic
convert to the theory of animal magnetism, and took about with him,
to various houses, this German boy, whose exhibition of mesmeric
phenomena was the first I ever witnessed. Mr. Townsend had almost
insisted upon our receiving this visit, and we accordingly assembled
in the drawing-room, to witness the powers of Alexis. We were all of
us sceptical, one of our party so incurably so that after each
exhibition of clairvoyance given by Alexis, and each exclamation of
Mr. Townsend's, "There now, you see that?" he merely replied, with
the most imperturbable phlegm, "Yes, I see it, but I don't believe
it." The clairvoyant power of the young man consisted principally in
reading passages from books presented to him while under the
influence of the mesmeric sleep, into which he had been thrown by
Mr. Townsend, and with which he was previously unacquainted. The
results were certainly sufficiently curious, though probably neither
marvellous nor unaccountable. To make sure that his eyes were really
effectually closed, cotton-wool was laid over them, and a broad,
tight bandage placed upon them; during another trial the hands of
our chief sceptic were placed upon his eyelids, so as effectually to
keep them completely closed, in spite of which he undoubtedly read
out of a book held up before him above his eyes, and rather on a
level with his forehead; nor can I remember any instance in which he
appeared to find any great difficulty in doing so, except when a
book suddenly fetched from another room was opened before him, when
he hesitated and expressed incapacity, and then said, "The book is
French;" which it was.

Believing entir