nswered by the pundits. One regards Spectrum Analysis: How can we
be sure that the lines indicative of gases and other elements are not
mainly due to the emanations from our own globe, swathed as it is by
more than forty miles of an atmosphere impregnated by its own salts and
acids in aerial solution? May we not be deducing false conclusions as to
the varying lights of stars and nebulae, if all the while to our vision
they are as it were clouded by our own smoke? Telescopes have to pierce
so thick a stratum of earth's aura and ether that it is expectable they,
would show us only our own composites in those of other worlds. The
spectra are varied, I know, but so may be our wrappings of atmosphere
from one night to another. Let this ignorant query suffice about Dr.
Huggins' great discovery.

Again, I certainly (after some knowledge of strange facts) could have
wished that Mr. Crookes's philosophical spiritualism had met with a more
patient hearing than Dr. Carpenter or Mr. Huxley offered at the time;
and that Faraday's clumsy mechanical refutation of table-turning had not
been considered so conclusive. For there really are "more things in
heaven and earth, Horatio," &c., than even your omniscience is aware of;
and without pinning faith on Madame Blavatsky, or Mr. Hume, or any other
wonder-worker from America or Thibet, there doubtless are petty miracles
in what is called spiritualism (possibly some form of electricity) that
demand more scrutiny than our materialists will have the patience to
vouchsafe: I for one believe in human testimony even as to the
miraculous.

For a third and last inquiry: justly indignant at the horrors of
Continental vivisection, and especially in our own humane England at Dr.
Ferrier's red-hot wires thrust into live monkeys' brains, I have often
vainly asked _cui bono_ such terrible cruelty? The highest authorities
are at variance with each other as to the practical utility in human
therapeutics of experiments upon agonised brutes; but all must be agreed
that, so far as morals are concerned, vivisection only hardens the heart
and sears the feelings and conscience of doctors who may surround the
dying-bed of our dearest, and very possibly make capital of peculiar
symptoms in their patient, by experiments transferred from dogs and
rabbits to himself! Single votes are useless against the annual list of
selected candidates, or I for one would have at all inconvenience
testified both at Oxford and in