ns between facts as presented to and as represented by
mankind, remains to be investigated. Of all persons who have been
levitated since St. Joseph, a medium named Eglinton was most subject
to this infirmity. In a work, named There is no Death, by Florence
Marryat, the author assures us that she has frequently observed the
phenomenon. But Mr. Eglinton, after being 'investigated' by the
Psychical Society, 'retired,' as Mr. Myers says, 'into private
life'. The tales told about him by spiritualists are of the kind
usually imparted to a gallant, but proverbially confiding, arm of
Her Majesty's service. As for Lord Orrery's butler, and the others,
there are the hypotheses that a cloud of honourable and sane
witnesses lied; that they were uniformly hallucinated, or
hypnotised, by a glamour as extraordinary as the actual miracle
would be; or again, that conjuring of an unexampled character could
be done, not only by Home, or Eglinton, in a room which may have
been prepared, but by Home, by a Zulu, by St. Joseph of Cupertino,
and by naked fakirs, in the open air. Of all these theories that of
glamour, of hypnotic illusion, is the most specious. Thus, when Ibn
Batuta, the old Arabian traveller, tells us that he saw the famous
rope-trick performed in India--men climbing a rope thrown into the
air, and cutting each other up, while the bodies revive and reunite--
he very candidly adds that his companion, standing by, saw nothing
out of the way, and declared that nothing occurred. {107a} This
clearly implies that Ibn Batuta was hypnotised, and that his
companion was not. But Dr. Carpenter's attempt to prove that one
witness saw nothing, while Lord Lindsay and Lord Adare saw Home
float out of one window, and in by another, turns out to be
erroneous. The third witness, Captain Wynne, confirmed the
statement of the other gentlemen.

We now approach the second class of marvels which regaled the circle
at Ragley, namely, 'Alleged movements of objects without contact,
occurring _not_ in the presence of a paid medium,' and with these we
shall examine rappings and mysterious noises. The topic began to
attract modern attention when table-turning was fashionable. But in
common table-turning there _was_ contact, and Faraday easily
demonstrated that there was conscious or unconscious pushing and
muscular exertion. In 1871 Mr. Crookes made laboratory experiments
with Home, using mechanical tests. {107b} He demonstrated, to his
ow