imes, and died and lived sane.

The attack has perhaps been more developed in the last twenty or thirty
years, the influence of above-board hypnotism acted upon that practised
by criminal scoundrels. A combination possible is, for instance, one
rascal showing a faint image of a fiend, and another transmitting a sound
like a scratching at a window; this was a failure, the percipient
believing that the devil acted under the authority of the Almighty, and
had no business with innocent people. It was given to a person in a
semi-sleeping condition. Pain combined was efficient. The pain is partly
by affection of cutaneous nerves--partly by affection of the ear; but no
one on the watch would be driven into lunatic acts by it. Of course after
exhaustion (and pain makes this easier) the victim may be in a stupefied
condition and obey: this is the post-hypnotic state, which will not come
off with people who have been instructed against this villainous game.
Miss Freer's admirable nerve was doubtless due to the habit of studying
phenomena. The worn features at breakfast, mentioned before, included
those of two secular priests. Miss Freer had failed to get permission
for three well--known priests belonging to societies (perhaps Jesuits) to
come. The gentleman already mentioned who had first told Lord Bute of the
haunting of B---- was among these.

An interesting light on the effect of prayer would probably be brought
out by struggles against witchcraft, struggles doubtless very common
amongst early Christians. Indeed, the devils who were cast out must
sometimes have been baffled hypnotists confronted by One who was stronger
than they; the departing into the swine is much more intelligible on this
hypothesis than on Dean Farrar's, of the swine's terror, which suppresses
the "devils'" request.

A story is told of Titus by the rabbis: he heard a gnawing sound at his
brain; it caused him great pain. He heard a blacksmith hammering at his
anvil, and the gnawing ceased. The blacksmith was paid to go on hammering
in Titus' neighbourhood. At the end of a few days the "animal" that
gnawed at his brain got indifferent to the hammering, went on gnawing,
and Titus died. His brain was opened, and an animal as big as a sparrow
with a beak of iron was found in it. The truth of this story would be,
that some magicians, not especially adroit hypnotists, hammered at Titus'
tympanum. His nerves, tried by climatic fever--a great facilitator of
hypno