. Lytton said, and there was little chance of
success under the circumstances. It has been done several times in
Florence, and the fact of the possibility seems to have passed among
'attested facts.' There was a placard on the wall yesterday about a
pamphlet purporting to be an account of these and similar phenomena
'scoperte a Livorno,' referring to 'oggetti semoventi' and other
wonders. You can't even look at a wall without a touch of the subject.
The _circoli_ at Florence are as revolutionary as ever, only tilting
over tables instead of States, alas! From the Legation to the English
chemist's, people are 'serving tables' (in spite of the Apostle)
everywhere. When people gather round a table it isn't to play whist. So
good, you say. You can believe in table-moving, because _that_ may be
'electricity;' but you can't believe in the 'rapping spirits,' with the
history of whom these movements are undeniably connected, because it's
'a jump.' Well, but you will jump when the time comes for jumping, and
when the evidence is strong enough. I know you; you are strong enough
and true enough to jump at anything, without being afraid. The tables
jump, observe--and _you_ may jump. Meanwhile, if you were to hear what
we heard only the evening before last from a cultivated woman with
truthful, tearful eyes, whose sister is a medium, and whose mother
believes herself to be in daily communion with her eldest daughter, dead
years ago--if you were to hear what we hear from nearly all the
Americans who come to us, their personal experiences, irrespectively of
paid mediums, I wonder if you would admit the possibility of your even
jumping! Robert, who won't believe, he says, till he sees and hears with
his own senses--Robert, who is a sceptic--observed of himself the other
day, that we had received as much evidence of these spirits as of the
existence of the town of Washington. But then of course he would
add--and you would, reasonably enough--that in a matter of this kind
(where you have to jump) you require more evidence, double the evidence,
to what you require for the existence of Washington. That's true.

[_Incomplete_]

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

Florence: June [1853].

My dearest Fanny,--I hope you will write to me as if I deserved it. You
see, my first word is to avert the consequences of my sin instead of
repenting of it in the proper and effectual way. The truth is, that ever
since I