the best examples to be found of
English mesmerisers. Although invited as sceptical spectators, and the
experiments being in nowise confidential, we feel that the exhibition
not being public, we have no right to mention the names of the parties.

It will be obvious that the three exhibitions we have selected differed
much in character. The first, as we have stated, to our minds defied
collusion or self-deception. The second was open to either construction,
though, from the character of the parties, we should think collusion
was, in the highest degree, improbable; and the experiments, although
not conclusive, were very curious, and some of them not easy of
explanation. In the third case, transparent and absurd as the
experiments seemed to us, and as the account of them will probably
appear to our readers, the doctor, from his position and practice, must
have been seriously injured by his mesmeric experiments; and therefore
there is fair reason to believe, that he was not a party to a fraud
which must have been objectless, and professionally injurious to him;
but how a man of experience could be carried away by such flimsy
devices, is a psychological curiosity, almost as marvellous as the
asserted phenomena of mesmerism.

We are aware that, in giving the above accounts of experiments which we
have personally witnessed, our authority, being anonymous, is of no
great weight. We state them to avoid the charge of writing on what we
have not seen, and to show that we do not attempt unfairly to decry
mesmerism without seeing it fairly tried; if we felt justified in giving
the names of the parties, these instances would be much more conclusive.
Nearly all the cases in Mr Townshend's book are given without the names
of parties, probably for similar reasons to those which have induced us
to withhold them.

The above cases supply instances of all the phenomena included in our
categories, except those of insensibility to pain, powers of prediction,
and the curative effects. Having never personally seen cases of this
description, we shall select examples of them from the book of Mr
Townshend and others; but before we give these instances, we will
extract from Mr Townshend's book his account of the first mesmeric
sitting at which he was present. This will give the reader a fair idea
of his attractive style, and of his state of mind previously to
witnessing, for the first time, mesmeric effects.

"If to have been an unbelieve