I
There are, first, the idle, curious gazers who under the late Roman Empire would have been thronging to the worship of Isis or Mithra. Sir Samuel Dill and Dr. Reaveley Glover have painted these men and women, some of whom had great possessions. Their successors were found in Paris under the Second Empire, when society, for a short time, was bewitched by the revelations of Douglas Home. Neither time nor space, it was believed, had any existence for him. Through his means the spirits of St. Louis, Pascal, Rousseau, and even ancient Greeks like Aristides and Solon, were consulted, and if we may trust French memoir-writers of the period, they replied with touching alacrity. Père Lacordaire, the foremost preacher of his time, was almost deceived by the phenomena. He wrote to Madame Swetchine in 1853 that he had heard tables talk and made them talk. “They have told me some very remarkable things about the past and the present.” “A poor and vulgar phenomenon,” was his verdict, yet he did not think it was all imposture. The Roman Catholic Church, in our own day, speaks with sharper condemnation. Under the Second Empire, about the time of the Crimean War, table-turning and spirit-rapping were the amusements of every drawing-room. While our great war lasted the need for distraction was felt by those who in normal times are known as “the pleasure-loving classes.” Individuals among these classes—hundreds, nay thousands, of them—were occupied to the limit of their strength in public service. Crowded theatres and music-halls proclaimed their need of respite and excitement. Spiritualism had its distractions to offer to the weary rich.