, and forthwith the lady descanted
with terrific force on funeral pyres and the horrors of Gehenna; whilst
a male performer affected to personate sundry well-known dead orators of
past days (for as the inspirers were supposed to be disembodied spirits
no living orators were allowable), and he certainly imitated both voices
and topics with singular success. But everybody has heard of this sort
of thing, sufficiently remarkable as a mental effort; and we have all
similarly witnessed the more material marvels of Maskelyne and Cook,
known to be mechanical contrivances which are still riddles to the
world.

Again, there are those who draw and paint in a condition of spiritual
ecstasy; and I remember visiting a public exhibition in Bond Street,
exclusively of most curious and intricate pictures, asserted to have
been inspired by dead artists, some being elaborate flourishings of
scenes and figures, said to be thus depicted as with lightning speed. As
to living artists, there are in existence several excitable youths and
damsels who write and draw very rapidly in an ecstatic state; and I
myself possess a dreamy conglomerate of microscopic faces crowded
together, and stated to have been drawn thus instantaneously to prove to
us "the cloud of witnesses," "the innumerable company of angels," by
whom we are continually surrounded.

I pretermit with brief mention sundry inexplicable wonders, such as
those wherewith the spiritualistic papers are frequently full, only
stating that I was one of those who investigated the case of the Rev.
Mr. Vaughan's pew-opener, at St. James's, Brighton, whose daughter was
thought to be "bewitched." Certainly, strange knockings accompanied her
when she came in at my call, much like those I heard many years ago at
Rochester, U.S.; and her mother (a pious and credible widow) assured me,
with tears of unfeigned anxiety, that the chairs and stools followed her
about!--a statement only half credible, when we reflect that there is an
animal magnetism as well as a mineral one, and that we know nothing of
the reasons of either. Our ignorance on such matters is so profound that
we may fairly be credulous unless we obstinately refuse altogether our
belief in human testimony; but if we dare to do this, higher interests
are endangered than spiritualistics. Our religion is mainly based upon
credible evidence.

There is certainly much that is mysterious in the toy they call
"Planchette," a triangular thin slab