ne of which, except in singing, he
performed not more than most active young people can easily do. That he
was detected in an imposture with respect to the clenching of his hands.
That after money had been collected for him, he got very suddenly well.
That he never had any fits while he was at St. George's Hospital, in
London; nor when visitors were excluded from his lodgings by desire of
the author of the narrative: and that he was particularly careful never
to hurt himself by his exertions during the paroxysm.

Is it for the credit of this philosophical age, that so bungling an
imposture should deceive seven clergymen into a public act of exorcism?
This would not have passed even on the authors of the _Malleus
Maleficarum_; for they required signs of supernatural agency, such as
the suspension of the possessed in the air without any visible support,
or the use of different languages, unknown to the demoniac in his
natural state.

THE MANIAC,

OR

_FATAL EFFECTS OF WANTON MISCHIEF_.

Some years ago, a very intelligent, handsome, and promising youth, whose
names is Henry Pargeter Lewis, the son of a respectable attorney, in the
town of Dudley, was placed for a probationary time, previously to an
intended apprenticeship, with a surgeon and apothecary of the name of
Powell, in the immediate neighbourhood of one of our great public
schools. He had not been there long, before one of the scholars, who
lodged at the surgeon's, in league with the servant-boy of the house,
devised the following stratagem to frighten him. One night, during an
absence of the master, the servant-boy concealed himself under the bed
of Henry, before the latter retired to rest, and remained there till the
hour of midnight; when, on a preconcerted signal of three raps at the
chamber door, it suddenly opened, and in stalked the school-boy, habited
in a white sheet, with his face horribly disguised, and bearing a
lighted candle in his hand; the servant-boy, at the same moment, heaving
up the bed under Henry with his back. How long this was acted is not
known: it was done long enough, however, completely to dethrone the
reason of the unfortunate youth; who, it is supposed, immediately
covered himself with the bed-clothes, and so continued till the morning.
On his not rising at the usual time, some one of the family went to call
him; and, not answering, except by incoherent cries, was discovered in
the state just described.

The melancholy