who had been to the First Cataract was a lion in public and a bore in private life. Now a man might as well try to give himself airs from having been to Aberfeldy as from having been to Melbourne. Thirty years ago the Geographical Society would have listened patiently to a man who had gone up the Mississippi; now you require a pundit who has been over the Great Steppe to keep them interested. A man admits with something like a blush that he has never been to Rome, though he may have been to New York. A friend told us the other day, that when comparing notes with a traveller who had been where he had not, he always "shut him up" with Sedan; no one ever went there before the battle.

Our fathers had always a great idea of the grand tour, and they were most perfectly right. The old grand tour was done by the governing classes, mostly by men who were destined for Parliament; and even in the days when all continental nations were despotic, save one, this did our ruling classes a great deal of good. We are not aware of any despotic nations now in Europe, save those of Russia and Turkey; and so our young statesmen have more opportunities for comparing different degrees in freedom than their fathers had: in the last century we were the only free nation in Europe (and not so very free either) except the Swiss; now free or partly free institutions are the rule everywhere, and we can watch their working by a fortnight's journey. Surely, if any nation could get good experience of the working of the institutions of other countries, that nation should be the British, who travel more than any others. Let us hope that this nation will have the wisdom to profit by these experiences.

If a man without any particular prejudices will take the trouble to travel now, he may see an enormous deal for three hundred pounds, and reflect thereon for the rest of his life; but then a traveller must get the habit of political thought before he starts, or he may as well go to the top of the Duke of York's monument and survey London. Englishmen more than Scotchmen have, for instance, the absurd idea that when they have crossed the nineteen miles from Dover to Calais, they are in a country as remote from them as China; one of the influences of travel is to dissipate this idea. Certainly, the English do not as a general rule speak French, and it is an uncommonly rare thing to find a Frenchman who can speak English or German for social purposes, although, if it is worth their while, the French will so far yield to the Teutonic nations as to speak their languages. Yet the wants of the lower classes in the two countries are much the same, and the wonderful International Society has found that out, and is perfectly aware that it has a terribly large trump in its hand. A travelled man has infinitely more chance of giving an honest opinion on this great and very strange fact of the International Society, than one who has only read the newspapers; the majority of men now, who want to find out the simple truth about matters, must be travellers who know foreign languages, and who must be connected with no newspaper. Our newspapers are the most liberal and outspoken in Europe; but a man who is connected with a newspaper is not exactly free, deny it who can. Any ordinary traveller, however, can have his opinions inserted in any decent newspaper in the form of a letter; therefore we urge that some of our most valuable contributors to our newspapers are the great unpaid, who are not bound down to give us either the obverse or the reverse of the medal.

Our

There is nothing for a traveller so good as viva-voce conversations with foreigners; not with a foreigner, but with many intelligent foreigners, as many as possible. countrymen are nearly as bad as the French in this respect; they will only get introductions to men of their own modes of thought, and not to their opponents. Suppose that a regular Knickerbocker" New York gentleman were to come to England, and associate entirely with old Whigs and Conservatives, his opinion would not be of any extraordinary value with regard to the state of parties in England. Suppose, again, that an extreme American radical should come to England, and associate solely with English extremists, would his opinion of the temper of the country

or the balance of power be one whit better? We suppose here the case that the representatives of the two nations speak the same language. What must it be in the case where the traveller, like nine Frenchmen out of ten, can speak no language but his own? Look at the French deputation to Ireland the other day, and how they were sent away with a most dangerously false idea about the position of affairs; travelled men would have been much more cautious than those extremely puzzled gentlemen. A foreign traveller should have no foreign politics, but should most certainly understand three languages before he can express an opinion on the balance of parties abroad.

Some.

It may be said that no foreigner can understand the politics of a foreign country, but this is quite an error. of the shrewdest judges of the state of parties in England are quiet, not political, Americans. The Americans are not so very far wiser than other people; but their travellers come very much of a class without any strong prejudices, and they mostly speak both English and French; consequently it is very hard to find a man who understands European politics better than a highly educated American. European politics are a mere game of chess to them, at which they are on-lookers, and consequently they are the best umpires. O, si sic omnes! We this last year have been holding high words between ourselves about the Ger. mans and the French. Some of us had been most in Germany, and some of us more in France. Those who had been at school with Fritz at Bonn were German; those who had been to school with Alphonse at Dieppe were French. As for argument, there was none among the main of us. The artistic and half Roman-catholic Bavarians who burnt Bazeilles were denounced fiercely by the French party among us as the Protestant hordes of Prussia; while the almost entirely ignorant and brutish peasants of France were described as perishing in defence of the most highly civilized country in the world - France. On the other hand, that small part of the great untravelled, who hung by Germany, overstated their case quite as badly. Surely, a little more travel, and a little more knowledge of language, would enable our countrymen to see that neither Frenchmen nor Germans were cowards or ruffians. A trav elled American could judge of the question quite well; while we were blinded with political passion. He would never have called the highly-educated army of Germany, the most truculent of which were the men of Munich, the fellow-citizens of Kaulbach and Piloty, a horde of ignorant barbarians; nor could he, on the other hand, have called the French cowards. One incident of French heroism is too beautiful to be lost. Outside Paris a regiment of German cavalry was opposed to a regiment of French cavalry of splendid appearance, with scarlet breeches and kepis, and long snow-white cloaks. With a "Hoch!" the darkblue, travel-stained Germans went at them: the pretty French regiment was scattered to the winds at once, and then the Germans heard from their prisoners what regiment this was. It consisted of shopboys and counter-jumpers, who had been dressed up like that and put on horses which they could not ride, and after a fortnight's drill told to fight. They had done their best, and this nation which bred them are no cowards. We happen to consider these boys in white cloaks and red breeches quite as great he roes as the splendid fellows who rode them down. We have no shrieks over the matter, simply because we happen to know both Max and Louis very well, and we have associated with them, and learned to love them both very dearly. We had to attend on Max and Louis last summer, after they had fallen out, when they were both in bed side by side with their heads broken. We asked the German docfor what proportion of French there were in the barn; and he said that he could not tell us, he only spoke to them individually in either language. "But the sister will know," he said with beaming eyes. And the sister told us that she did not know; for these men were the worst cases out of the trenches, and they had been hurried up only yester day; for Bazaine was expected on us every hour, and their uniforms were left behind. "Some are German and some French; but, Herr, I cannot tell you exactly as to numbers.

that

One thing is certain, that all my pretty men must die if Bazaine makes another dash at us; so whether they are German or French, it does not matter. His outposts are only two miles off, and I shall lose them all if he beats us past here." Now here, I claim, was a travelled woman. She was a German, and by her dress I believe a Protestant; but the men were all alike to her in their common misfortune. She had only travelled into that land of ghastly horrors called Lorraine; but she had learned something, the nationality or the religion of a naked and ruined man mattered nothing in the sight of the God she worshipped. We wish to illustrate now, you see, the fact that travel, in its most hideous and horrible form, that of war, does some tenth part of good in proportion to its unutterable evils. For my own part, I cannot find words sufficient to overrate my detestation of war, unless some great principle is to be gained by war. Looking at it in that light, some will say that no principle was gained by the late war; but let that pass. War has this fifty-millionth part of good in it, that, if it is decently conducted, it throws men in a domestic manner against people of whom they previously knew nothing. This last war has caused the Germans to travel into France to the amount of about seven hundred thousand men. This generation of Germans has never been there before. The affair went for the Germans, and the sons of the men of Jena found themselves conquerors of France. It was necessary that they should stay there among a violently irritated population- the most easily irritated population in the world, as some say. What do they find? That, on the whole, the French have behaved very well, and that the only reason why the French have not fraternized with them, arises from a sense of national dignity, for which the Germans never gave them credit before. They are "Blitz Franzoren" no longer. What do the French gain by this occupation, if their newspapers will let them gain any thing? They gain that they must have a settled and strong government of some sort, likely republican in the real sense, and that a nation hardly their equal in point of numbers can conquer them (for it is little less) by self-sacrifice and organization. Then they find, or we hope they find, that the German, with his superior education, his family, and his religion of obedience to death to his sacramentum militare, makes a better soldier than the Frenchman, with all his wild dash and valor. The French people also will (or may) learn in time that the majority of their newspapers mislead them in the most gross and shameless way, as we can testify by constant perusal of them, as to the Germans. If this raid of the Germans into France can teach the French to insist on proper education, other than that of the Christian Brothers and priests, it will have done some good. Our hopes are not strong on this point; the average Frenchman is too hopelessly besotted. But, at all events, the journey of the Germans into France will leave some good behind it. It is impossible, or it would be impossible with any man but a Frenchman, that an occupation of Teutons of one year's length should leave no fruit behind it save that of hate. Surely there are some Frenchmen who can see that if things go on as they did last year, France will become as great a nuisance as Mexico. But some Frenchmen will neither travel nor learn, and in that fact lies a terrible and always existing danger for Europe.

most

A man may be no Internationalist. He may think that each nation should, if possible, wash their dirty linen at home. He may think that the masters have, as a general rule, the best notion of what they can afford to pay; and, in fact, he may think that the masters are generally in the right in most cases, and the workmen are often the screws, and not the masters. He may think that this, however, is a matter which is capable of infinite discussion, and there is no doubt that a great battle between labor and capital is imminent, in which labor, with good generals, will win quite as much as it ought to win; that if they win more, they are ruined. He may say that the masters have made a most foolish mistake at the very beginning, and have played straight into the hands of the International Society, by inviting foreign workmen over here. It is a Saarbrück for

them; let them mind that it is not a Sedan: they have sent away five or six hundred propagandists from the English trades-unions - that is all they have done by their move; and as sure as there are apples in Devonshire, they will reap what they have sown sooner or later. These men have been sent back with money in their pockets, to tell the countries from which they came that the trades-unions are all-powerful. The masters, says our imaginary friend, in reality made the first practical move in Internationalism. Had they taken the trouble to travel more among the working-classes abroad, it is possible they would not have made it.

Max

While thinking of these above sentiments of my friend, I came back to Max and Louis, and to the eternal hatred between the Latins and the Teutons, a thing which I do not believe will last forever if travelling goes on. was brought from Pomerania to fight in the cause of a united Germany, which he did most nobly on the great day of St. Privat; on the other hand, Louis was brought from Brittany and Alphonse from Languedoc, to fight for a general thing called France; they, too, fought well, and all three were wounded and housed in the château at Briey, where I first saw them. The Germans had taken all the tobacco; but when I heard that there were three convalescents at the château, I took my private stock there. There were two French and one German among the vines. Max, the German, the only educated one of the three, was lying with his head in Louis the French lad's lap, and Louis was feeding him with grapes while he translated the Kölnische Zeitung into French. Will those two boys ever fight against one another again? I say no; they are évol. It will come some day not yet-when it would be dangerous for any king who depends on his throne for the principle of nationality to let his people see much of other peoples; but this power is passing out of the hands of all princes, presidents, and parliaments. The time will come when Louis and Max will fight together for a cause, and not for a name. Max fought for a cause, and has travelled and learned: if Emperor William thinks that Max is the same man he was before he went to France on his errand, then Emperor William will find himself very much mistaken. It is possible, looking at all things as well as one can without farther facts, that this last expedition of Germany to France will have an "influence of travel" (dare we say the word ?) not quite contemplated by the great Bismarck himself. Max has lain wounded for months among the sons of the great French Revolution.

But let us get on to far pleasanter matters. Look at the wonderfully genial influence which recent travel has bred between the peoples of England and of America. Eleven years ago the Civil War in America began, and the feeling at first was most favorable to the Northern States. Then, in consequence possibly of the action of Capt. Wilkes, possibly of the sudden loss of cotton, possibly of the very illadvised speeches of Mr. Cassius M. Clay, the feeling turned against the North, until in 1860-61 it was hard to find a man in society who was not more or less a Southern sympathizer. One band of men, however, were generally sympathizers with the North, and those were the men who had travelled in America. At one time there were only three journals of great note who were on the Northern sile, the Star, the Daily News, and the Spectator - we can remember no others. Since then the journey to America has become popular, nay fashionable; and look at the change of tone which has been produced by it. Year by year the two nations have been drawing closer and closer to one another. The Americans are proud of us, they always were; but now we are growing proud of them. Some people tell us that in one hundred years our coal will be exhausted, and that we shall be an agricultural people of about twenty-five millions. Let it be so, if God wills it, but we shall still look on America with her 100,000 millions with pride. A know!edge of them, gained by intercommunication, has removed all jealousy; and if they are to be more powerful than ourselves, we have the satisfaction of knowing that they are carrying freedom and civilization wherever they go. Every

traveller who goes to America brings back a new message of peace. Eleven years ago it was all anger between us, and had it not been for a few cool and wise heads on both sides of the Atlantic we might have been at war. Eleven years ago they would have thrown our money in our teeth, even if we had offered it. What do we see now? One of their most beautiful cities and one of their fairest provinces have been ruined by a visitation of God: instantly every Englishman, Scotchman, and Irishman worthy of the name, dashes to their assistance; they receive our aid without the smallest arrière-pensée, and thank us in terms which we, at all events, shall never forget, paying us ten times over in sheer good-will. The amount we are sending to Chicago and Michigan is very small; it is not half enough at present; but the two nations know one another now so well, that the will is taken for the deed, and they thank us in terms which warm the heart of every true man among us. Why is this? Because we have got to understand one another by circulating in one another's countries, and by finding out that we both want the same thing, peace, freedom, and sound government. Newspapers, with all their enormous value, are sad mischiefmakers sometimes. Nations will never get to know one another through their newspapers: a hundred things prevent any newspaper from giving the public opinion of more than a certain section of the community. Take, for example, the Spectator, which, with all ability and valor, stood up, as far as we remember, alone among the weekly press for the North in the American war. Did the Spectator represent the public opinion of Great Britain? Most certainly not. We may more or less allow that they were right now, but their position was very unpopular then. Newspapers cannot be taken, as a rule, to express the public opinion of any nation; for example, are the present Nationalist newspapers in Ireland a true representation of the feeling of the people? We most profoundly think not. Now, Irish and American newspapers are written in English, and very soon copied into our own. So we get the result, that any idle word or taunt has double its force to us. What is the simple remedy for this? Let the intelligent citizens circulate more among one another and speak by word of mouth: this is only to be gained by circulation, or, in other words, by travel; and this leads us to the very sad reflection, that for ten of my acquaintances who know France, but one in ten knows Ireland.

What a result of travel would be here, if Englishmen could be induced to go to Ireland as they do to Scotland! But they do not, and will not. Scotland every year is like another England. Englishmen, in extremely bad taste we think, absolutely adopt the so-called Highland dress, and go about with bare legs. (By the bye, Mr. Hill Burton, who should be an authority, says that this dress is only an invention of the last century.) Scotland and Scotticism is a kind of craze with some Englishmen; and the money which is poured into Scotland in consequence of this craze takes half the winter to count. The Scotch take the money and give the money's worth for it; while their members act as a solid Whig brigade, free and generous enough to any ministry on imperial questions, but absolutely inexorable on Scotch questions. They have got "Home Rule" with a vengeance, and without a thought of separation. Why? Because they are always meeting the English both in Scotland and in England; because the two nations entirely understand one another from talking together. There is some grumbling in Scotland just now, for example, about game and hypothec, — and the Scotch have been saying that they have been neglected for the Irish, with much justice; but the Scotch interchange words with the English habitually, and so the Englishman knows that, although the Scotchman will wait, he will not wait forever, and that if the Scotch get sulky, their behests must be done. The Scotch brigade might not have waited quite so long for a few things, had it not been that the two nations see one another continually. But who ever goes to Ireland? What an immense deal there might be done did English people travel more in Ireland! For some reason, Ireland reins almost as little known as America. We honestly

confess that we find a great difficulty in accounting for this fact. The greater part of Ireland is romantically beautiful, the people are amusing, kindly to strangers, and hospitable. The innumerable agrarian outrages of which we read have no more to do with the safety of strangers, than the dangers of a number of Greek banditti. Ireland is exceptionally free from crime, save of agrarian crime. The Fenians are not in the least degree likely to meddle with a stranger. There must be something of fashion in this neglect of the beauties of Ireland. We wish that some great personage would set a new fashion. The last royal visit to Dublin was a perfect success; the mishap in the Phoenix Park had little or nothing to do with it.

It is a great pity again, in many ways, that the intelligent French do not travel more and learn other languages than their own. The result of their almost universal stay-athome policy is that they, with the best intentions, enormously overrate their moral influence in Europe. Take, as one example, the manifesto of Victor Hugo in his new paper, the Rappel. In it is shown an almost entire ignorance of European politics. The questions which are torturing the ouvrier classes of Europe are, fair wages, fair hours, free land, free speech, and the avoidance of war. M. Hugo starts by saying that France is the pillar of the universe, and goes away into generalities which must make his best friends smile, and the gist of which is that they must have one revolution more. Dear old Garibaldi is rather a hasty and unthinking man about politics, but he has seen many men and many lands intimately; consequently, his manifesto, though remarkably vague, reads like common-sense beside the Frenchman's. The Americans and the British are the greatest travellers, and, whether by accident, or in consequence of travelling, are the only two great nations at this moment free; for France is certainly not so, though, we hope for the best. The Swiss, the only pure republic in Europe, is composed of men notoriously cosmopolitan for ages.

Look at the enormous injury which Chauvinism has done France an injury which a generation will not repair. Now, what is Chauvinism of the worst kind, save want of travel? The English, as a rule, have seen and know a great deal of France, and have consequently got over the strange old Chauvinism which began at the Revolution, and scarcely ended until the Crimean war- - this belief in the immeasurable superiority of the English in all things. We know now exactly where we are superior to the French, and where the French are superior to us; but the average Frenchman does not know, because he will not come and see us. He has imbibed certain notions about us, and to them he clings through every thing. The Englishman of the French stage is much the same as he was thirty years ago; and so is the Englishman of the Petit Journal pour Rire of the last few months a ridiculous-looking lunatic. We at one time had in our caricatures a most remarkable being, whom we called a Yankee, with short trowsers and large Wellington boots. We have, since we have known the Americans better, entirely given up this wonderful American, and have discovered that the American gentleman is as well dressed, as well spoken, and as well educated as any of us; but the old French Englishman is as rampant

as ever.

I have written down above some of the slighter social and political results of travel; let me, before concluding, look farther afield, and take a larger view.

One of the greatest highways in the world was sealed to us twenty years ago. The Nile, which casts a vast volume of fresh water into the Mediterranean, in Egypt was totally unknown to us beyond Abyssinia; in fact, it was generally supposed that the little Blue Nile was the real river, until Grant and Speke announced the discovery of the great system of lakes in the centre of Africa, with a nearly fair water-way leading to a vast and rich district, capable of producing most things. This system of lakes was farther developed by Baker, who discovered one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world, surrounded by mountains which in all probability give every climate,- for Mount Mfumbizo is clothed in snow nearly under the equa

tor. Here is a discovery which may make Alexandria double the place it is now. Baker is up there with the power and wealth of the Khedive at his back, getting his steamers on the great lake, and surveying. The country can scarcely be more unhealthy than India: for Sir Samuel and Lady Baker went through a course of hardship and starvation there which would have killed them in most countries in the world. If this region can be made to produce any thing, and it swarms with the most gigantic forms of animal life, a few hundred thousand pounds will be enough to make locks on each cataract, and the road into the centre of Africa is free from the Mediterranean.

We are waiting breathless to hear what Baker is doing, and whether he will find Livingstone. Alas, if he does, the kindly soul which waited so long and so patiently for the return of his friend has passed from among us, and if Livingstone is ever welcomed at the Geographical Society, Murchison will not be there to meet him. This expedition of Baker's will, we believe, have a result of travel which is at present incalculable. The influence which it will have on the slave-trade, and on Eastern manners and African civilization, is equally beyond guessing.

The results, again, of the Pacific Railway are utterly beyond human calculation, but are beginning to show themselves already, notably in the suppression of the Mormons, a most objectionable body, who were, to my own certain knowledge, doing immense injury to idle young Americans. That place was to some, and I have heard it from their own lips, very much like the establishment of the Old Man of the Mountain, of which we may read in Marco Polo. Now that the railway has come within thirty miles of it, the nuisance has become too patent, and the United States have said inexorably that monogamy is to be the rule of their great future empire. The Mormons thought that they had got entirely beyond human reach. But no: travelling pioneers came and reported that a railway was possible: it was made, and the Mormons have no place on earth to fly to the irrepressible American is upon them, and they must submit or go. It is the same way in India; now intersected by railways, the irrepressible Briton is there, destroying old prejudices, introducing new ideas. East, west, south, and north, the travelling nations are civilizing; while the untravelling ones, equally able, equally brave, seem to spend the most of their time in cutting one another's throats.

"TILL DEATH US DO PART."

per

Ir is necessary, in order to tell my story, that I should be, at the outset, somewhat personal-somewhat egotistical, if you will. As I am going to be the hero of my own narrative, it is almost inevitable that such should be the case. I have tried to avoid it by dressing up the history in the third son, and telling it about somebody else; but it was no good. I had even thought at one time of interweaving a highly sentimental love-story as a subsidiary plot, and making the whole run through two or three volumes by means of judicious padding; but I find the interest always flags, unless I confine myself, as I now purpose doing, to the barest recital

of facts.

When I was at the university, without being in any sense a "fast" man, indeed enjoying with most of that genus the reputation of a "reading" man, I very studiously devoted my reading to every thing but what was likely to be useful to me there and then. I dabbled in science, flirted with literature, and was wedded to music, applying myself only so far to the classics as was necessary to ballast my magazine articles with Greek and Latin quotations, or occasionally to enable me to publish a few "bits" of the classical authors in the unlikeliest forms of the vernacular. Mathematics I altogether eschewed as being far too demonstrable, too "slow and sure," for my then desultory state of mind. Consequently I need scarcely say I considerably disappointed the hopes of my pater and numerous admirers, who mistook my versatility for genius, and altogether thought me a sort of Admirable Crichton.

It was during my college career, and whilst I was working pro tem. in a psychological groove, that Mr. Home's reputed doings in Paris and London made modern spiritualism a nine-days' wonder. This was, of course, exactly the thing to suit me a short and easy cut at the solution of problems which had puzzled philosophers for ages. Spiritual problems were henceforth to be as capable of demonstration as mathematical ones, and a good deal more interesting. The condition of the departed was to be no longer a matter of speculation or revelation, but of purely scientific inquiry; and I the Bacon to inaugurate the Novum Organum. Without being, in the accepted sense of the words, a religious man, a "Simeonite," in the current slang of my set, I had, I believe, a vein of latent piety quite as fully developed as most young men close upon their majority. Valeat tantum. I really thought at first, that, by the time I got my degree, theology would be a fixed science, and modern spiritualism was to do the work. In a very short time there cropped up upon my bookshelves the principal works of English and American spiritualists, with manuals of magnetism, and old, high-priced, rakish-looking volumes on occult science generally. I learned to cast a nativity, swear by Andrew Jackson Davis, and puzzle myself and everybody else by discoursing of the odic force. Contemporaneously my little round table commenced active gyrations, whilst a "circle" assembled almost nightly in my rooms for "manifestations," which, when they did come, were very physical indeed. I am free to confess, however, the results were not great on academic ground. The "circle" were apt to be irregular, and to be impatient if results did not come immediately to order. I attributed my failures at the time to two principal causes: 1st, the absence of the female element in our circle (my bedmaker having proved cantankerous, and shied at the first intimation of invisible agency); 2d, the fact that men would smoke when sitting, a practice which I fancied the "intelligences" objected to.

In the first "Long," however, after my inoculation with the spiritualistic mania, I took all my books "down" with me, and resolved to "develop somebody or something at the parsonage before long. I mentioned the matter very seriously for I felt seriously to my father, as he was plodding through his sermon for the following Sunday; but he took a line for which I was not quite prepared. Instead of pooh-poohing my facts, he readily admitted them; but considered the whole affair diabolical, and all assumed identity with the spirits of the defunct as the machinations of "lying spirits." This only gave a new impetus to my study. I had great respect for my father's opinion up to a certain point. I fancy now that point was where it coincided with mine. "So you concede these manifestations are spiritual, sir?" I asked.

"Provided the facts be as you state them - and I have no time or inclination to go into the matter of testimony decidedly yes. Spiritual because diabolical.”

With my step-mother, who was considerably younger than my father, I succeeded better. The subject was new to her, and helped to dispel the gloom of a country parsonage. Even the little children (for there was a second family) wrote beautiful moral sentiments in a genuine scrawl with the planchette. But none of these produced results sufficient to give them more than a very secondary place in my narrative. However, I had succeeded so far. From my sanctum sous les toits down through the drawing-room and into the servants' hall itself tables were spinning and sibyllic sentences rapped out or automatically written from morning to night.

Reversing the ordinary process of most "experiences," I was not led on gently from mesmerism, or animal magnetism, to spiritualism, but plumped at once into spiritualism, and then left to work my way back to first principles via mesmerism.

pared to admit the "spiritual" element as readily as my father did. My standard of belief, in fact, was the introduction to the book "From Matter to Spirit," by Prof. de Morgan, which treats the pneumatological theory only as easier than any of the psychological. It was thus I formulated my doctrines during the course of this vacation, and before the startling events of the present story occurred to shake it :

1. It is proved to demonstration that material substances can be rendered independent of the hitherto accepted "laws of nature," such as gravitation, &c., by human volition, with or without contact.

2. An intelligence which is not that of the medium is constantly found present at spirit circles.-N.B. Whether such intelligence is altogether independent of those surrounding the medium has not been proved to my satisfaction. I have of course read of instances where facts and events quite unknown to the persons present have been communicated; but I have had no experience of this myself.

3. The "higher phenomena," such as automatic writing, trance-speaking, and spirit-voice, are phases so easily simulated as to need much longer investigation than I have as yet been able to give them. It is only fair to add, that in the whole course of my investigation I have not been able to detect a single case of fraud.

This opinion, be it known, was strictly esoteric, being written in my private diary for my own edification. It was based on my experiences at college on a round of visits I had paid to the different professional media in London, and my brief experiments at the parsonage. Now came the

test.

--

A governess had been engaged for the younger members of the family in the person of a tall, raw-boned Scotch girl, externally about as unspiritual-looking a lady as could be imagined. She "went in," however, mildlyas became her position for my experiments. She had lots of traditional stories of second-sight attaching to various members of her family, and was also inclined to argue the matter (as Sydney Smith says) “in the aibstract at greater length than I cared. The servants, I afterwards found, had their own opinions as to why Miss M'Gorgon was so fond of sitting hand in hand with young master, and "adored dark séances;" but such a suspicion never crossed my mind then, and I have no idea even now whether it had the slightest foundation in fact. Whatever other ghostly element there may be in what I have to relate, there certainly is not the ghost of a love-story.

I came down from my sky parlor to the drawing-room latish one evening, and found my step-mamma and Miss M'Gorgon obviously boring one another from their easychairs at opposite sides of the fireplace. I had just been reading the Reverend Chauncey Hare Townshend's book on mesmerism, and the resemblance of Miss M'Gorgon's pose to one of the plates prompted me to say, "Miss M'Gorgon, you look as though you were sitting to be magnetized. Will you let me experiment on you?

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By all means, but I am sure you will not succeed." And, to do her justice, her great Scotch eyes looked far too wide awake for any earthly power to shut.

After twenty minutes' manipulation, however, she was in a deep magnetic sleep. My step-mother was not at first quite inclined to accept as a conclusive fact that while Miss M'Gorgon was deaf to her, she responded readily to all my questions; but when she saw me stand up on Miss M'Gorgon's knees - I row over eleven stone, I should mention she began to think that the laws of matter, even matter so material as the M'Gorgon shanks, were in a state of flux. But this was not all.

Some time before, the children had been ill with scarlet fever, and Miss M' Gorgon, in the course of her assiduous attention to them, took the disease. Being naturally of a somewhat hysterical temperament, she, as the ladies say, gave way a good deal; and, after the malady had left her, whether as one of its manifold sequelæ, or a result of her hysterical tendency, she either could not, or fancied she could not, move her left arm. At any rate, she did not use

it in the slenderest degree possible, keeping it rigidly bent close to her side. My mother's astonishment may be imagined, then, when, at my command, Miss M'Gorgon assumed the attitude of the eagle-slayer, using the diseased member as the bow arm, and keeping it elevated in the most statuesque manner possible.

My father entered at this moment from his sermonmongery, and, dismissing a pardonable doubt as to Miss M'Gorgon's sanity, proceeded to examine the phenomenon.

On this and subsequent occasions all the ordinary phases of animal magnetism, including phreno-mesmerism and clairvoyance, were exhibited, and at last we had a specimen of that peculiar condition known as lucidity.

Miss M'Gorgon threw herself into a chair, became pale and semi-rigid, exhibiting every appearance of death. Had I not been prepared by previous reading, my courage might have failed, and possibly disastrous consequences to the mind and even life of the "patient " followed. As it was, I preserved my equanimity, and bade her describe her condition. She was basking, she said, in light ineffable. Her only anxiety was to leave the body, and remain in that lucid state. The most curious part of the manifestation was, that she was utterly ignorant of the names of living persons. She readily remembered the dead, described herself as being with them, and exclaimed almost petulantly,

"You know they are here! You are with me.

Let me

go to them. I can see them, if you will only let me." Her volition was utterly lost in mine. It seemed a strange link between spiritism and magnetism; but my mother began to look nervous, my father evidently smelt sulphur, and, in fact, I felt myself that I was trenching somewhat closely on the limits of the "knowable." Much against her wish-I was going to write "will," but that was in abeyance-I bade her come back; and after my using the ordinary method for dispersing the "magnetic aura," she returned to earth utterly ignorant of all that had taken place. That evening I formulated another" opinion" in my diary:

"Whatever be the power that seems, under certain conditions, to animate dead matter, and which, for lack of a better term, we call magnetism, that same power is capable of producing in the human frame a state of exaltation of the faculties which apparently lifts the patient into a higher condition of being."

Having produced this lucid phase at a second séance, after I had taken some lessons of a professional mesmerist, I was induced to extract a promise from Miss M'Gorgon which I knew would be sacred if made in the magnetic state that she would allow no one else to mesmerize her, and, moreover, that she would never resist my will. She even wrote it down in the blank page of my Reichenbach, and after having done so, said in a voice that startled us all,— "I am yours yours till death us do part."

She

It was, I fancy, more the matrimonial than the magnetic import of this particular phrase that frightened us at the time. Mine most unmistakably, whether with views matrimonial or magnetic, she was from that day forth. anticipated my every wish, even to such trivial matters as passing things at table, &c. Had Miss M'Gorgon been young and beautiful, I do not know what I or other people might have thought of her attentions. As it was, nobody thought any thing at all; and, for myself, I soon found out the unsatisfactory nature of the spiritualistic inquiry; and by the time October came, I was quite prepared to leave all my occult works behind for my father to elaborate a learned discourse on Beelzebub, whilst I devoted my attention to the subject of brass bands in general, and the big saxhorn in particular, in consequence of having been promoted to the dignity of a bandsman in the University Rifle Corps.

But I was not to dissociate myself so easily from Miss M'Gorgon and spiritism.

Soon after I went "up," a change became visible in the governess. She was nervous and excitable to the last degree. The servants chuckled, and asked one another, "Hadn't they said so, all along? The partial paralysis of her arm, which had disappeared under magnetic