is in every way most repulsive to me....

Mrs. Martin is surprised at me and others on account of our 'horror.'
Surely it is a natural feeling, and she would herself be liable to it
if she were _more credulous_. The agency seems to me like the shaking
of the flood-gates placed by the Divine Creator between the unprepared
soul and the unseen world. Then--the subjection of the will and vital
powers of one individual to those of another, to the extent of the
apparent solution of the very identity, is abhorrent from me. And then
(as to the expediency of the matter, and to prove how far believers
may be carried) there is even now a religious sect at Cheltenham, of
persons who call themselves advocates of the 'third revelation,' and
profess to receive their system of theology entirely from patients in
the sleep.

In the meantime, poor Miss Martineau, as the consequence of her desire
to speak the truth as she apprehends it, is overwhelmed with atrocious
insults from all quarters. For my own part I would rather fall into
the hands of God than of man, and suffer as she did in the body,
instead of being the mark of these cruel observations. But she has
singular strength of mind, and calmly continues her testimony.

Miss Mitford writes to me: 'Be sure it is _all true_. I see it every
day in my Jane'--her maid, who is mesmerised for deafness, but not,
I believe, with much success curatively. As a remedy, the success
has been far greater in the Martineau case than in others. With
Miss Mitford's maid, the sleep is, however, produced; and the girl
professed, at the third _seance_, to be able to _see behind her_.

I am glad I have so much interesting matter to look forward to in the
'Eldon Memoirs' as Pincher's biography. I am only in the first volume.
Are English chancellors really made of such stuff? I couldn't have
thought it. Pincher will help to reconcile me to the Law Lords
perhaps.

And, to turn from Tory legislators, I am vainglorious in announcing to
you that the Anti-Corn-Law League has taken up my poems on the top of
its pikes as antithetic to 'War and Monopoly.' Have I not had a sonnet
from Gutter Lane? And has not the journal called the 'League' reviewed
me into the third heaven, high up--above the pure ether of the five
points? Yes, indeed. Of course I should be a (magna) chartist for
evermore, even without the previous predilection.

And what do you and Mrs. Martin say about O'Connell? Did you read
last Saturday'