-The Unsunned
Corner--AEsop Smith's Prescription--An Irish Balmoral in
1858--My Anti Celtic Ballads--Adventures 373-379

CHAPTER XLIV.

Some Spiritist Experiences--Not a Spiritualist, but an Honest
Recorder of Facts--Alexis--Howell--Vernon's Mesmerised
Child--Mrs. Cora Tappan--Chauncey Townsend's
Book--Spirit-Drawings--Planchette--Showers of Flowers, and
Sugar-Plums, and Pearls--Mr. Home--Prayer before
_Seance_--The Table in the Air--Live Coals in My Hand--The
Vitalised Accordion--The Colonel's Ghost--Iamblicus--Query
Electrical Influence--Our Mysterious Key--Miss
Hudson--Thought-Reading 380-399

CHAPTER XLV.

Fickle Fortune--Losses and Failures--Testimonial--"L'espoir
est ma force"--My _Levee_ in 1851--The Missed Codicil--Life
and Death 400-403

CHAPTER XLVI.

Henry De Beauvoir, killed in Africa--Archdeacon Kitton--Our
Old Chancery Suit: A Lost Fortune--Belgravian Five Fields,
another Missed Chance--Earl Grosvenor 404-407

CHAPTER XLVII.

Flying: my Lecture at the Royal Aquarium with Fred. Burnaby
as Chairman--Henry Middleton's Invention--De Lisle Hay's
"Conquest of the Air"--Ezekiel's Angels--Ovid, and
Tennyson--Claude Hamilton--Extracts 408-412

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Luther--The Peroration as to his Life and
Exploits--Anniversary Stanzas, in many Languages--Bullinger's
Music--Wycliffe Ballad--Wondrous Parallel 413-416

CHAPTER XLIX.

Final--Whatever is, is Right--Sick-bed
Repentance--Intuitions--What We Shall Be--Protest Against
Atheism--The Infinities--A Childlike Hymn--Eternal
Hope--Mercy for Ever--The Assurance of Ovid 417-431

MY LIFE AS AN AUTHOR.

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY.

I have often been asked to prepare an autobiography, but my objections
to the task have ever been many and various. To one urgent appeal I sent
this sonnet of refusal, which explains itself:--

"You bid me write the story of my life,
And draw what secrets in my memory dwell
From the dried fountains of her failing well,
With commonplaces mixt of peace and strife,
And such small facts, with good or evil rife,
As happen to us all: I have no tale
Of thrilling force or enterprise to tell,--
Nothing the blood to fire, the cheek to pale:
My life i