Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845

by Various

Chapter II.

Next morning, at approach of dawn, Clara hastened up to run to the stove, to awake the sparks in the ashes. Henry soon came to her assistance, and they laughed like children, as, with all their efforts, the flame would not come. At last, with much puffing and blowing, the shavings kindled, and slips of wood were most artistically laid on so as to heat the little stove without any waste of the precious store. "You see, Henry dear," said Clara, "there is hardly enough for to-morrow, and then"——

"A fresh supply must be had," said her husband, in a tone as if this matter of supply was the simplest thing in the world; whereas he well knew, that whatever stock of money remained to them, must be reserved for the still more essential article of food. After breakfast, he again took up his journal. "How I long to come to that page which records how you and I, dearest, ran away with one another."

"O Heaven!" cried Clara, "how strange, how unexpected as that eventful moment! For some days my father had shown a certain ill-humour towards me, and had spoken in a quite unusual manner. He had before expressed his surprise at your frequent visits; now he did not name you, but talked at you, and spoke continually of young men who refused to know their own position. If I was silent on these occasions he was angry; and if I spoke it was still worse: he grew more and more bitter. One morning, just as I was going out in the carriage to pay some visits, my faithful maid ran down the steps after me, and, under pretence of adjusting my dress, whispered into my ear that all was discovered—that my desk had been broken open, and your letters found—and that, in a few hours, I was to be sent off a prisoner to an aunt in a distant part of the country. How sudden was my resolution! I had not ridden far before I alighted from the carriage, under pretence of buying something at a trinket-shop. I sent the coachman and servant away, bidding them return for me in at hour, and then"——

"And then," interrupted Henry, "how delighted was I, how almost terrified with joy, to see you suddenly enter my apartments! I had just returned from my ambassador, and had by good chance some blank passports with me; I filled one up with the first name that occurred; and then, without further preparation, we entered a hired carriage, crossed the borders, were married, and were happy."

This animated dialogue was interrupted by the entrance of an old woman, by name Christina, who had formerly been Clara's nurse. In their flight they had entered into her little cottage as a place where they could safely stop to rest themselves, and the faithful old dame had entreated them to take her with them. She now lived in a small room below, in the same house, and entirely supported herself by going out to work amongst the neighbors. She entered the room at present to mention that she should not sleep that night in her own apartment below; but that, nevertheless, she should return next morning early enough to make their usual daily purchases for them. Clara followed her out of the room to speak with her apart. Henry, in her absence, as if relieved from the necessity of supporting his spirits, or deprived of the power which sustained them, sunk his head upon the table, and burst into tears.

"Why cannot I," he muttered to himself, "work with my hands as this poor woman does? I have still health and strength. But no—I dare not—she would then, for the first time, feel the misery of our position; she would torture herself to work also; besides, we should be discovered and separated—and, come what may, while we can yet live, we are happy."

Clara returned in excellent spirits. They sat down to their frugal and cheerful meal, to which some additions had been made by the obstinate kindness of old Christina. "I could not have the heart to refuse her," said Clara. "Now, if only wood were not wanting, all would be well."

The next morning Clara slept longer than usual. She was surprised, on waking, to see that the day had dawned, and still more to find that her husband had left her side. Her astonishment was further increased when she heard, in the next room, a crashing and grating noise, as of one sawing through an obstinate piece of timber. She got up as speedily as possible, to ascertain the cause of these unusual events.

"Henry," she cried, as she entered the room, "what are you about there?"

"Sawing wood, my dear," he replied, as he looked up panting from his labours.

"But how in the world did you come by that saw, and this famous piece of wood?"

"I remembered," answered Henry, "having seen in the loft above us, soon after we came here, in one of my voyages of discovery, a saw and a hatchet, belonging, I suppose, to some previous tenant of our apartment, or perhaps to our old landlord. So much for these brave tools. As to this noble piece of wood, it was till this morning the banister to our staircase. Observe what solid, substantial men our ancestors were! What a broad, magnificent piece of oak! This will make a quite different sort of fire from your deal shavings and slips of fir."

"But," cried Clara, "the damage to the house!"

"No one comes to see us," said Henry. "We know these steps, and indeed seldom or never go down them. The old Christina is the only person who will miss it, and I will say to her very gravely—Look you, old lady, do you think that a noble oak of the forest is to be hewn down, and then planed and polished by carpenters and joiners, merely that you may come up and down these steps a little more easily? No, no, such a magnificent banister is a most palpable superfluity."

"Since it is done," said Clara, "I will at least take my share in this new species of woodcraft."

So they laid the beam, which filled the apartment, on two chairs, and first they sawed with united efforts at the middle to make it the more manageable. It was hard work, for the oak was tough, and the saw was old, and the workmen were more willing than skilful; but at length it came in two with a crash.

"Well," said Clara, as she looked up, and threw her ringlets aside, her face glowing with the unwonted exercise, "this work has one advantage at least; we want no fire this morning to warm us."

After sawing off several square blocks, Henry set to work with his hatchet to cleave them into pieces fit for the stove. It was fortunate that, during this operation, which made the walls of their little dwelling re-echo, their landlord was absent. Nor were the neighbours likely to be much surprised at the noise, as many handicraftsmen inhabited that locality.

On this eventful day breakfast had been forgotten; dinner and breakfast were consolidated into one meal. This being dispatched with their usual cheerfulness, they retired to their seat by the window. To-day there was no frost upon the glass; and the sky—all that could be seen of it—was clear as crystal. It was a curiously simple prospect which this window presented. Underneath them, over the ground-floor of the house, had been constructed—for what reason it would not be easy to say—a tiled roof, which projected in such a manner as completely to hide the narrow street from their view. In front stretched the long low roof of a building, which seemed to be used as a warehouse; and on both sides they were hemmed in by the blank projecting walls and the tall chimneys of larger houses—so that certain masses of brickwork, a long roof, and a fragment of the open sky, was all that the eye could possibly command. This complete isolation suited the lovers very well; for, besides that it effectually concealed them from the discovery of their pursuers, it permitted them to stand at the window, and talk and caress, without the restraint occasioned by envious spectators. When they first occupied the apartment, if they heard an unusual noise out of doors, they naturally ran to the window to look down into the street; and it was not till after many fruitless experiments that they learned to sit quiet on such occasions. It was quite an event if a cat was seen stealthily making its way over the long sloping roof in front of them. In the summer, when the sparrows built their nests in the tall chimneys on either side, and were perpetually flying to and fro, twittering, caressing, quarrelling—this was quite a society. When a chimney-sweeper once thrust out his black face from one of these chimneys, and shouted aloud to testify the accomplishment of his ascent, it was an event that brought a shriek of surprise from Clara.

Thus passed the days, and the pair were happy as kings, though they were living very like beggars. Very singular was their power of abstraction from the future, their entire satisfaction with the present. Clara, it is true, cast some anxious thoughts after the wood; but Henry brought in every morning the necessary supply: there was no symptoms of failure. She thought indeed, of late, that the grain of the wood seemed altered; but it burned as well as ever.

"Where," said Clara, one morning, "where is our faithful Christina? I have not seen her for many a day. You rise in the morning before I can get up—you take in the bread and the water-jug—I never see her. Why does she not come up? Is she ill?"

"No," said Henry, with a slight embarrassment of manner, which his wife did not fail to detect.

"Ah! you conceal something from me" she cried. "I will go down directly and see what is the matter with her."

"It is so long since you descended these steps, and there is no banister—you will fall."

"No, no, I know the steps—I could find them in the dark."

"Those steps," said Henry, with a mock solemnity of manner—"those steps will you never tread again!"

"Oh, there is something you conceal from me!" exclaimed Clara. "Say what you will, I will go down and see Christina."

She turned quickly round and opened the door, but Henry clasped her as quickly in his arms.

"My dear," cried he, "will you break your neck?"

The secret was at once disclosed. They stepped together to the landing-place. There were no longer any stairs to be seen. Clara clasped her little hands as she looked first down into the dark precipice below, and then at her husband, who maintained the most comical gravity in the world. She then ran back to the stove, snatched up one of the pieces of wood, and, looking at it closely, said—"Ah, now I see why the grain was so different! So, then, we have burned up the stairs?"

"So it seems," answered Henry, quite calmly. "I hardly know why I kept this secret from you—perhaps that you might not be distressed by any superfluous scruples. Now that you know it, I am sure you will find it quite reasonable."

"But Christina?"

"Oh, she is quite well! In the morning I let her down a cord, to which she fastens her little basket. This I draw up, and afterwards the water-jug. Our housekeeping proceeds in the most orderly fashion in the world. When the banister was at an end, it struck me that one half at least of the steps of our staircase might be dispensed with; it was but to step a little higher, as one is forced to do in many houses. With the help of Christina, who entered into this philosophical view of the matter, I broke off the first, third, fifth, and so forth. When one half of the steps was consumed, the other half was also condemned as superfluous—for what do we want with stairs, we who never go out?"

"But the landlord?"

"He will not return till Easter. Meanwhile the weather will be getting milder, and there are still some old doors and planks up above, which I shall pronounce altogether superfluous. Therefore warm thee, dearest Clara, without any care for the future."

Things, however, did not quite fall out as expected. On the afternoon of that very same day, a carriage was heard to drive up to the little house. They heard the rattling of the wheels, the stopping of the vehicle, the descent of the passengers. It was in vain to put their heads out of window, they could see nothing there. But they heard the sound of unpacking, then the greeting of neighbours—it was evident, beyond a doubt, that their dreaded landlord had returned home much sooner than he ought. The heavy tread of the gouty gentleman now resounded in the passage—the crisis was at hand. Henry stood at the half-open door, listening. Clara sat within, regarding him with a questioning look.

"I must go up," the landlord was now heard to say; "I must go up, and see after my lodgers. I hope they are as cheerful as ever, and the young wife as pretty."

There was a pause. The old man was groping about in the dark.

"How is this?" he muttered to himself. "Don't know my own house! Not here—not there! Ulric! Ulric! help here!"

Ulric, his servant and factotum, came to his assistance.

"Help me up these stairs," said the landlord. "I am blinded—bewitched! I cannot find the steps, and yet they were broad enough!"

"Herr Emmerich," said the old and somewhat surly domestic, "you are a little giddy from travelling."

"An hypothesis," whispered Henry, turning to his wife, "which unhappily will not hold."

"Zounds!" cried Ulric, who had run his head against the wall, "I have lost my wits too!"

"I am groping right and left," said the landlord, "and all round, and up above. I think the devil has taken the stairs!"

"Another hypothesis," whispered Henry, "and a very bold one."

Meanwhile the more sensible domestic had at once run for a light. This he now returned with, and, holding it up in his sturdy fist, he illuminated the quite empty space.

"Ten thousand devils!" exclaimed the landlord, as he gazed around and above him with astonishment. "This is the strangest business! Herr Brand! Herr Brand! Is any one up there?"

It was of no use to deny himself. Henry stepped out, bent over the landing, and saw, by the uncertain flicker of the light, the portly form of his landlord.

"Ah, my worthy friend, Herr Emmerich!" he called out in the blandest manner imaginable, "you are most welcome. It speaks well for the gout that you have returned so much earlier than your appointed time. I am delighted to see you looking so well."

"Your obedient servant," answered the other; "but that is not the question. What has become of my stairs?"

"Stairs! were there any stairs here?" said Henry. "Indeed, my friend, I go out so seldom, or rather not at all, that I take no notice of any thing out of my own chamber. I study, I work—I concern myself about little else."

"Herr Brand," said the landlord, half choking with rage, "we must speak about this in another tone! You are the only lodger. You shall give an account before a court of justice"—

"Be not overwroth," replied Henry. "If you really contemplate legal proceedings, I think I can be of use to you; for, now I think of it, I perfectly remember that there were stairs here, and have a vivid recollection of having, in your absence, used them."

"Used them!" cried the old man, stamping with his feet; "and how used them? You have destroyed them—you have destroyed the house."

"Nay, do not exaggerate, Herr Emmerich. I cannot ask you to walk up-stairs, or you might see that these rooms we inhabit are in a perfect state of preservation. As to this ladder, which was but an asses' bridge for tedious visitors and bad men, I removed it with great difficulty, as being superfluous."

"But these steps," cried Emmerich, "with their noble banister, these two-and-twenty broad, strong oaken steps, were an integral part of my house. Old as I am, I never heard of a lodger who dealt as he pleased with the stairs of a house."

"Be patient," said Henry, "and you shall hear the real connexion of events. The post failed in bringing our necessary remittances; the winter was unusually severe; all ordinary means of procuring fuel were wanting; I had recourse to this sort of forced loan. At the same time I did not think, respected sir, that you would return before the warm summer weather."

"Nonsense!" said the landlord. "Summer weather! Do you think that these my stairs will sprout out again, like asparagus, when the summer comes?"

"Really," said Henry, "I am not sufficiently acquainted with the growth and habits of the stair-plant to determine."

"Ulric!" cried the wrathful landlord, "run for the police. You shall find this no jesting matter."

The police arrived. The inspector was scandalized at the outrage which had been committed, and summoned the delinquent to surrender.

"Never!" said Henry. "An Englishman says well that his house is his castle; and mine is a castle with the drawbridge up."

"There is an easy remedy for that," said the officer, who thereupon called for a ladder, and gave command to his men to mount, to bind the criminal with cords, and bring him down to his condign punishment.

The house was now filled with the people of the neighbourhood. Men, women, and children had been attracted to the spot, and a crowd of curious spectators, assembled in the street, made their comments upon the business. Clara had seated herself near the window, not a little embarrassed; but as she saw that her husband still retained his accustomed cheerfulness, she also kept her self-possession—not, however, without much wondering how it would all end. Henry came in for a moment to hearten her, and also to fetch something from the room.

"We are shut up, my dear," said he, "like our famous Götz in his Taxthausen. This obstinate trumpeter has summoned me to surrender at mercy, and I will now answer him in the manner of our great model."

Clara smiled.

"Your fate is my fate," she said, and added to herself in a low voice: "I think, if my father saw us now, he would forgive all."

Henry again stepped out upon the landing, and seeing they were verily bringing in a ladder, called to them in a solemn tone—"Gentlemen, bethink you what you do. I have been prepared, weeks ago, for every thing—for the very worst that can happen. I will not be taken prisoner, but intend to defend myself to the last drop of my blood. Here do I bring two blunderbusses loaded with ball, and this old cannon, a fearful piece of ordnance, full to the throat with every destructive ingredient. I have in this chamber powder and ball, cartridges, lead, all things necessary to sustain the war; whilst my brave wife, who has been accustomed to fire-arms, will load the pieces as I fire them. Advance, therefore, if you wish blood to flow."

Henry had laid two sticks and an old boot upon the floor.

The leader of the police, who could distinguish nothing in the dark, beckoned to his men to stand back.

"Better," said he to Herr Emmerich, "that we starve out this formidable rebel."

"Starve, indeed!" said Henry: "we are provided for months to come with all sorts of dried fruits—plums, pears, apples, biscuits. The winter is nearly passed, but should fuel fail us, there is still in the roof above much superfluous timber."

"Oh, hear the heathen!" cried Emmerich in agony. "First he breaks to pieces the bottom of my house, and then he threatens to unroof it."

"It is beyond all example," said the officer.

Many of the spectators, however, were secretly pleased at the distress of the avaricious landlord. Some suggested the calling in of the military, with their guns.

"For Heaven's sake, no!" cried Emmerich; "the house will then be utterly destroyed."

"You are quite right," said Henry. "And have you forgotten what for many years every newspaper has been repeating to us, that the first cannon-shot, let it fall where it may, will set all Europe in blaze?"

"He is a demagogue, a carbonaro," said the officer. "Who knows what confederates he may have even in this crowd which surrounds us?"

The alarm of the officer seemed, for a moment, to be justified, for a shout was now heard from some of the populace who were collected in the street. Emmerich and the officer turned round to enquire into the meaning of this new demonstration. Henry took the opportunity to whisper a word to his young wife.

"Be of good cheer," he said; "we gain time. We shall be able to capitulate. Perhaps even a Sickingen may come to our rescue."

The shout of the mob had been occasioned by the appearance of a brilliant equipage, which made its way slowly through the thronged and narrow street. The footmen were clad in splendid livery, and a coachman, covered with lace, drove four prancing steeds. The mob might be excused for shouting "The king! The king!" The carriage stopped before the door of the house which was now become the great point of attraction, and a nobleman descended, elegantly attired and decorated with orders and crosses.

"Does a certain Herr Brand live here?" enquired the illustrious stranger; "and what means all this uproar?"

Hereupon fifty different voices made answer with as many different accounts. The landlord, stepping forward, pointed to the dilapidated condition of the house, and explained the real state of affairs. The stranger continued to advance into the hall, and called with a loud voice, "Does Herr Brand live here?"

"Yes," replied Henry from above; "but who is this that asks?"

"The ladder here!" cried the stranger.

"No one ascends to this place!" said Henry.

"Not if he brings back the Chaucer, the edition of Caxton?"

"O Heaven! the good angel may ascend!" and immediately ran back to Clara to communicate the joyful news. "Our Sickingen is verily come!" he exclaimed. Tears of joy were starting to his eyes.

A few words from the stranger, addressed to the landlord and the officer, produced a sudden calm. The ladder was raised, and Henry, in a moment, was in the arms of his old friend Andreas Vandelmeer! All was now joy and congratulation in the little apartment, as Henry introduced to his friend his dear and beautiful wife. The first greetings passed, Vandelmeer informed them that the small fortune which Henry had entrusted to his care had increased and multiplied itself, and that he might now consider himself a rich man. Vandelmeer, on his return from India, had landed at the port of London. There it had occurred to him to procure some antiquarian present for his friend, like that which he had formerly given him. Entering the bookseller's where his previous purchase had been made, he saw a Chaucer, which attracted his attention from its similarity to the one he had procured for his friend. It was, in fact, the same. It had found its way back to its original owner. On opening it, he found some melancholy lines written on the fly-leaf, and signed with his present name and address. He immediately repurchased the book, and hastened to the discovery, and, as it proved, the rescue of his friend.

To complete the happiness of all parties, he was able to inform them that the father of Clara had laid aside his anger, and was desirous of discovering his daughter only that he might receive and forgive her. What need to say more? Even the landlord was content, and had reason to congratulate himself on the devastation committed on his staircase.

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THE OVERLAND PASSAGE.

Our intercourse with India has become so important within these few years, and the rapid transit by the isthmus of Suez has become so favourite a passage, that the public naturally feel an extreme curiosity relative to every circumstance of the route. The whole is a splendid novelty, sufficiently strange to retain some portion of the old wonder which belongs to all things Arabian; sufficiently wild to supply us with the scenes and adventures of barbarism; and yet sufficiently brought within the sphere of European interests, to combine with the romance of the wilderness, at once Oriental pomp and the powers and utilities of civilized and Christian society. The contrast is of the most exciting kind:—we have the Bedouin, with his lance and desert home, hovering round the European carriage, but now guarding what his fathers would have plundered; the caravan with all its camels, turbaned merchants, and dashing cavalry, moving along the river's bank, on whose waters the steam-boat is rushing; the many-coloured and many-named tribes of the South, meeting the men of every European nation in the streets where the haughty Osmanli was once master. The buildings offer scarcely a less singular contrast:—the lofty, prison-like, close casemented fronts of the huge Mahometan dwellings, frowning in grim repose upon the spruce shops and glittering hotels of the French and Italian trader and tavern-keeper; and though last, most memorable of all—the old Pasha, the only man in existence who has given a new being to a people; the true regenerator of his country, or rather the creator of a nation out of one of the most abject, exhausted, and helpless races of mankind. Egypt, the slave of the stranger for a thousand years, trampled on by Saracen, Turk, Mameluke, and Frenchman; but by the enterprise and intelligence of this extraordinary individual, suddenly raised to an independent rank, and actually possessing a most influential interest in the eyes of Europe and Asia.

The route of the travellers begins with Ceylon. Ceylon is a fine picturesque island, very fertile, strikingly placed for commerce, and containing a tolerably intelligent population. Yet we do not seem to have made much of its advantages hitherto; Singapore and even Hong-Kong are likely to throw it into eclipse; and the chief benefit of its possession is in keeping away foreign powers from too near an inspection of our settlements in India. But its shores have the richness of vegetation which belongs to the tropics, and the variety of aspect which is so often found in the Asiatic islands. The Major and his wife embarked on board the steamer "The India," in May 1844. The view from the Point de Galle is striking. The town is shaded by trees, which give it the look of richness and freshness that contributes such a charm to the Oriental landscape. On the left of the bay is a headland clothed with tropic vegetation. In front are two islands, giving variety to the bay. Behind is the esplanade, shut in by hills covered with cocoa-nut trees. At the foot of those hills is the native town and bridge, also shaded by trees. Crowds of canoes, of various shapes and colours, moored along the shore, complete the scene.

The passengers were discontented with the India. They never saw any thing like the dirt of the ship. The coal-dust penetrated into every thing. It was in vain to sigh for a clean face and hands, for they were unattainable. This must be true; yet it passes our comprehension. We cannot understand why coal-dust should make its appearance at all for the affliction of the passengers. It certainly blackens no one in our European steamers. Its business is in the engine-room, and we never heard of its making its entrée into either the saloon or the cabin. The India is complained of as being very ill adapted for the service, as unwieldy, and inadequate to face the south-west monsoon. Yet the vessel was handsomely decorated: the saloon was profusely ornamented with gilding, cornices, and mirrors; the tables were richly veneered, and the furniture was of morocco leather. All this exhibits no want of liberality on the part of the proprietors; but a much heavier charge is laid on the carelessness which allowed this handsome vessel to be infested with disgusting vermin. "The swarms of cock-roaches," says Mrs Darby Griffiths, "almost drove me out of my senses. The other day sixty were killed in our cabin, and we might have killed as many more. They are very large, about two inches and a half long, and run about my pillows and sheets in the most disgusting manner. Rats are also very numerous." Now, all this we can as little comprehend as the coal-dust. If such things were, they must have arisen from the most extraordinary negligence; and we hope the proprietors, enlightened by Mrs Darby Griffith's book, will have the vessel cleansed out before her next voyage.

The monsoon was now direct against them, and the probability was, that instead of getting to Aden in its teeth, their coal-dust would fail, and they would be driven back to Bombay for more. But the commander of one of the Oriental Company's ships, who was fortunately a passenger, advised the captain to go south, for the purpose of meeting winds which would afterwards blow him to the north-west. The advice was as fortunately taken. They steamed till within two degrees of the line, and then met with a south wind. This, however, though it drove them on their course, made them roll terribly. The India was not prepared for this rough treatment. There was not a swing-table in the ship. The consequence was, that bottles of wine were rolling in every direction; geese, turkeys, and curry were precipitated into the laps of the unfortunate people on the lee-side; while those on the weather-side were thrown forward with their faces on their plates. This was treatment which probably John Bull would not like; but being a philosopher, and besides a native of an island, he would endure it as one of the necessities of nature. But there were four French passengers on board who took it in a different way, and probably conceiving that a vessel at sea was something in the nature of a stage-coach, and the Indian ocean a high-road, they felt themselves peculiarly ill-used by this tossing; and at every instance of having a bottle of wine emptied into their drapery, they regarded it as a national insult, and complained bitterly to the captain. The French are a belligerent people, and we are surprised that this series of aggressions by the billows has not been taken up by Mons. Thiers and his friends, as an additional evidence of the malice of England to the grande nation. Sea-sickness, starvation, and the loss of their claret, were acts worthy, indeed, of perfide Albion. The captain himself was one of the victims to the "movement." The fair tourist thus draws his portrait—whether the captain will admire either the sketch or the limner, is another question. He is described as "an immensely fat, punchy man, resembling a huge ball, with great fat red cheeks which almost conceal his eyes, and a small turned-up nose." He was, of course, always seated at the head of the table, and, she supposed, considered it beneath his dignity to have his chair tied; but this world is all made up of compromises and compensations—if the captain preserved his dignity, he lost his balance. A surge came, "his fixity of tenure was gone in a moment, and this solid dignitary was shot forth, chair and all, and rolled against the bulkhead. Every body was in roars of laughter."

But though all this was toil and trouble for the miserable lords and ladies of the creation, it was delight for the masters and mistresses of the mighty element around them. The inhabitants of the ocean were in full sport; whales were seen rushing through the brine, porpoises were sporting with their sleek skins in the highest enjoyment through the billows, and shoals of dolphins filled the waves with their splendid pea-green and azure. It was an ocean fête, a bal-paré of the finny tribe, a gala-day of nature; while miserable men and women were shrinking, and shivering, and sinking in heart, in the midst of the animation, enjoyment, and magnificence of the world of waters. On the third night of their sailing, the wind became higher, and the swell from the south stronger than ever. They pitched about in the most dreadful manner, and during the night two sails were carried away, and the fore-topmast. They were now in peril; but they had the steam in reserve, and steered for their port. On the 9th of June they were in smooth water, running up between the coasts of Arabia and Africa. The weather now suddenly changed; the sun became intensely hot, and though forty miles from the shore, they were visited by numerous butterflies, dragon-flies, and moths. In two days after, they sailed through an orange-coloured sea, filled with a shoal of animalculæ fifteen miles long. On the next day they came in sight of the harbour of Aden. This whole track was the voyage from which the Arabian story-tellers have fabricated such wonders. One of the voyages of the celebrated Sinbad the sailor, the most picturesque of all voyagers, was over this very ocean. The orange-coloured waters, the strong effluvium of the waves intoxicating the brain, the wild headlands of Africa—each the dwelling of a necromancer—the Maldives, filled with mermaids and sea-monsters, the volcanic blaze that guarded the entrance to the Red Sea, the fiery mountains of Aden, the Hadramant, or region of Death, the Babelmandeb, or Gate of Tears, the Isle of Perim, and the Cape of Burials, wild, black, and terrific—fill the Arab imagination with wonders that throw all modern invention to an immeasurable distance.

The town of Aden is not seen from the sea; it lies behind the mountains, which are first visible. To look at the coast from this spot, nothing but a sandy desert presents itself. The peninsula is joined to the mainland, Arabia Felix, by a narrow sandy isthmus, nearly level with the ocean. It is only 14,000 feet wide. There are three rocky islands in the bay, one of which, commanding the isthmus, is fortified. The passengers of the India were disturbed during the whole day by the yells of the Arabs who were bringing the coals on board. They look more like demons than human beings. "The coal-dust, of which we had lost sight for some time, now began once more to turn every thing into its own colour. The coolies employed in this service come from the coast of Zanzibar. They keep up a continual yell during their work, and perform a kind of dance all the time." They must be very well paid, and this is the true secret of making men work. The African is no more lazy than other men, when he can get value for his labour. This is the true secret for abolishing the slave trade. Those men come hundreds or thousand of miles to cover themselves with coal-dust, in an atmosphere where the thermometer sometimes rises to 120° in the shade, and work "day and night until they have finished their task," roaring and dancing all the time, besides—and all this for the stimulant of wages. It is to be presumed that their performance is "piece-work," the only work which brings out the true effort of the labourer. Their zeal was said to be so great, that every hundred tons of coal embarked cost the life of a man. But the Africans have learned to drink grog; an accomplishment which we should have thought they would not be long in acquiring, and since that period, they live longer. This, we must acknowledge, is a new merit in grog; it is the first time that we have heard of it as a promoter of longevity.

The Arabs on the coast form two classes, perfectly distinct, at least in their conduct to the English. The class of warriors, being robbers by profession, are extremely anxious to rob us, and still more indignant at our preventing their robbery of others. Their piracies have suffered grievously from the vigilance of our gun-boats, and they have once or twice actually attempted to storm our fortifications. The consequence is, that they have been soundly beaten, the majority have left their carcasses behind them, and the survivors have been taught a "moral lesson," which has kept them at a respectful distance. But the Arab cultivators are decent and industrious men, and form the servants of the town. Whether we shall ever make a great southern colony of the country adjoining the peninsula, must be a question of the future. But it is said that a very fine and healthy country extends to the north, and that the mountains visible from Aden enclose valleys of singular productiveness and beauty.

Taste in personal decoration differs a good deal in the south from that of the north. The Arab, with a face as black as ink, thinks an enormous shock of red hair the perfection of taste; he accordingly dyes his hair with lime, and thus makes himself, unconsciously, the regular demon of the stage.

The entrance to the new British settlement is through masses of the boldest and wildest rocks. After passing a defile between two mountains, we come to the only access on this side, the "lofty mountains forming an impregnable fortification." This entrance is cut through the solid rock. A strong guard of sepoys is posted there. The passage is so high and narrow, that "one might almost compare it to the eye in a darning needle." This is a female comparison, but an expressive one. Issuing from the pass, the whole valley of Aden lay like a map beneath, bounded on three sides by precipitous mountains, rising up straight and barren like a mighty wall, while on the fourth was the sea; but even there the view was bounded by the island rock of Sera, thus completing the fortification of this Eastern Gibraltar.

Here the travellers were welcomed by a hospitable garrison surgeon and his wife, found a dinner, an apartment, great civility, and a romantic view of the Arab landscape by moonlight. They heard the drums and pipes of one of the regiments, and were "startled by the loud report of a cannon, which shook the frail tenement, and resounded with a lengthened echo through the hills. It was the eight o'clock gun, which stood only a stone's throw from the house, and on the same rock." The lady, as a soldier's wife, ought to have been less alarmed; but she was in a land where every thing was strange. "We were literally sleeping out in the open air; as there were no doors, windows, or venetians to close, and every breath of wind agitated the frail walls of bamboo and matting, I was awoke in the night by the musquitto curtains blowing up; the wind had risen, and came every now and then with sudden gusts; but its breath was so soft, warm, and dry, that I, who had never ventured to bear a night-blast in Ceylon, felt that it was harmless."

Aden, in earlier times, formed one of the thirteen states of Yemen; and prodigious tales are told of its opulence, its mosques and minarets, its baths of jasper, and its crescents and colonnades. But Arabia is proverbially a land of fable, and the glories of Aden exhibit Arabian imagination in its highest stage. Possibly, while it continued a port for the Indian trade, it may have shared the wealth which India has always lavished on commerce. But a spot without a tree, without a mine, and without a manufacture, could never have possessed solid wealth under the languid industry and wild rapine of an Arab population. When we recollect, too, how long the Turks were masters of this corner of Arabia, we may well be sceptical of the opulence of periods when the sword was the law. No memorials of its prosperity remain; no ruined temples or broken columns attest the magnificence or the taste of an earlier generation. Its only hope of opulence must be dated from its first possession by the British. But the barrenness of the soil forbids substantial wealth; and though the native merchants, relying on the honour of British laws and the security of British arms, are flocking into it by hundreds, and will soon flock into it by thousands, it must be at best but a warehouse and a fortress, though both will, in all probability, be of the most magnificent description. The population is of the miscellaneous order which is to be found in all the Eastern ports. The Parsees, the handsome and industrious race who are to be seen every where in India; the Jews, keen and indefatigable, who are to be seen in every part of the world; and the Arabs, whose glance and gesture seem to despise both, are already crowding this half camp, half capital. From eighty to a hundred camels, every morning, supply the markets of Aden. They bring in baskets of fine fruit, grapes, melons, dates, and peaches. The greater number bring also poultry, grass, and straw. Troops of donkeys carry water in skins to every part of the town; and there is no want of the necessaries of life, though of course they are dear. Aden is excessively hot, but regarded as healthy. The air is pure, dry, and elastic. The engineers are building works on the different commanding positions; and Aden, within a few years, will probably be the strongest fortification, as it is already one of the finest ports, east of the Mediterranean. But we look to nobler prospects; the inland country is perhaps one of the finest regions in the world. Almost within view of Aden lies a country as picturesque as Switzerland, and as fertile as the valleys of the tropics. It is singularly salubrious; and, in point of extent, may be regarded as unlimited. We see no possible reason why Aden should not, in the course of a few years, be made the capital of a great Arabian colony. Conquest must not be the means, but purchase might not be difficult; and civilization and Christianity might be spread together through immense territories, formed in the bounty of nature, and only waiting to be filled with a free and vigorous population. It is only the centre and north of Arabia that is desert. The coast, and especially the southern extremity, are fertile. Without the ambition of empire, or the desire of encroachment, British enterprize might here find a superb field, and the Arabian peninsula might, for the first time in history, be added to the civilized world.

The travellers now ran up the Red Sea. The navigation has greatly improved within these few years, in consequence of the intercourse between England and India. Surveys have been made, and charts have been formed, which almost divest the passage of peril. But the navigation is still intricate, in consequence of the coral rocks and numerous shoals, which, however, may be escaped by due vigilance, and the experienced mariner has nothing to fear. The aspect of the coast, of both Africa and Arabia, is wild and repulsive; but some compensation for the monotony of the shores is to be found in the sea itself. When calm, the transparency of the water exhibits the bottom to the depth of thirty fathoms. "And what a new world is discovered through this vale of waters! what treasures for the naturalist!" The sands are overspread with forests of coral plants of every colour, shells of remarkable beauty; and, in the midst of this sub-aqueous landscape, fish of brilliant hues sporting in all directions. At length they reached the gulf of Suez, with the blue peaks of Sinai in the distance, and continued running up the gulf, which was one hundred and sixty miles long, until Suez came in sight. Here all is dreary: deserts and sand-banks form the whole landscape. Arab boats came alongside, and conveyed the passengers from the steamer. The town looked dismal; its walls and fortifications were in decay; the landing-place was crowded by sickly-looking creatures, the evident victims of malaria, and the chief ornament of the place was a large white-washed tomb. This condition of things was not much improved when the party found themselves in the hotel of Messrs Hill and Co. Musquittoes, and every species of frightful insect, made war against sleep; and when their reign had passed away, and the travellers rose, crowds of flies continued the persecution. The travellers made a bad bargain in paying their passage-money at once from Suez to Alexandria; and it is described as the wiser mode to pay only to Cairo, and then take the choice of the several conveyances which are sure to be found there. The Arab drivers and carriers seem to have fully acquired those arts of extortion, which flourish in such abundance wherever English money is to be found. They cheat, and lie, and cajole, with extraordinary assiduity; and the majority of the passengers on this occasion seem to have been detained unnecessarily on the road, and treated badly at the station houses. The first part of the desert is rather rocky than sandy, and the road seems to have been formed chiefly by the carriage wheels. It is covered with great pieces of stone and rock, which sorely tried the patience of the travellers. Hundreds of carcasses of camels lie in the way; the flesh is soon eaten by the wolves and rats, while the bones bleach in the sun. Little troops of Arabs were met from time to time, sometimes on camels and sometimes on horses. They were armed to the teeth, as black as negroes, and looked ferocious enough to make any party of pacific travellers tremble for their goods and chattels. But they were the patrols of Mohammed Ali, and guardians of the goods which in other days they would have delighted to plunder. There are eight stations on this road through the desert, all built by that man of wonders, the Pasha. Of these, four are only stables; but four are houses for the reception of travellers. They are generally from twelve to sixteen miles apart. The station No. 6, though by no means possessing the comforts of an English hotel, must be a miracle to the old travellers of the desert. It consists of two chambers, a kitchen, and servants' room, with a large public saloon occupying the whole of one end, and completing a little centre court. Three sides of the saloon were furnished with divans. There was a long table in the centre, with several chairs, and a glass window at each end of the room. But this was unluckily the season of flies, and they were the torment of the travellers; table, wall, ceiling, and floors swarmed with them. They flew into the face, the eyes, and the mouth. Thousands of musquittoes were also buzzing round and biting every thing. The breakfast was no sooner laid on the table than it was blackened with flies. The beds were hiving, and intolerable. No. 4, the halfway-house, was rather better. It is the largest of them all, and has a long row of bedrooms, and two public saloons. It has a large courtyard, in which were turkeys, geese, sheep, and goats, for the use of travellers. The Arab coachman here tried a trick of the road. He sent up a message that he had observed the lady looked very much tired, and that he therefore advised them to get to the end of their journey as quickly as possible; that they had better start in two hours, as the moon was very bright, and that he would take them into Cairo by breakfast-time in the morning. But it was suspected that this haste was in order that the passengers waiting at Cairo to go by the India steamer should be conveyed across the desert by himself, so they declined his offer, and enjoyed their night's rest. On rising in the morning, they felt that they had reason to congratulate themselves on their refusal of the night's journey; for they found even the morning air bitter, and the atmosphere a wet fog. The aspect of the country had now changed. Chains of hills disappeared, and all was level sand. On the way they saw the mirage, sometimes assuming the appearance of a distant harbour, at others, of an inland lake reflecting the surrounding objects on its surface; and they met one of the picturesque displays of Arabia, a wealthy Bey going on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He had a train of twenty or thirty camels. Those carrying himself and his harem had superb trappings. The women were seated in large open boxes, hanging on each side as paniers. There were red silk embroidered curtains hung round, like those on a bedstead, and an awning over all. The bey was smoking his splendid pipe, and behind came a crowd of slaves with provisions. The road on approaching Cairo grew rougher than ever; it was often over ridges of rock just appearing above the sand. The Pasha's "commissioners of paving" seem to have slumbered on their posts as much as if they had been metropolitan. At last a "silvery stream" was seen winding in the horizon—the "glorious Nile!" The country now grew picturesque; a forest of domes and minarets arose in the distance; and the Pyramids became visible. The road then ran through a sort of suburb, where the Bedouins take up their quarters on their visits to buy grain, they being not suffered within the walls. It then passed between walled gardens filled with flowers, shrubs, orange and olive trees; most of the walls were also surmounted with a row of pillars, interlaced with vines—a species of ornament new to us, but which, we should conceive, must add much to the beauty, external and internal, of a garden. Cairo was entered at last; and its lofty houses, and the general architecture of this noblest specimen of a Mahometan capital, delighted the eyes which had so long seen nothing but the sea, the rocky shore, and the desert. Cairo is, like all the rest of the world, growing European, and even English. It has its hotels; and the traveller, except that he hears more Arabic, and inhales more tobacco smoke, will soon begin to imagine himself in Regent street. The "Eastern Hotel" is a good house, where Englishmen get beefsteaks, port wine, and brown stout; read the London papers; have waiters who at least do their best to entertain them in their own tongue; and want nothing but operas and omnibuses. But the dress still makes a distinction, and it is wholly in favour of the Mussulman. All modern European dresses are mean; the Oriental is the only man whose dress adds dignity to the human form. When Sultan Mahmoud stripped off the turban, and turned the noble dress of his people into the caricature of the European costume, he struck a heavier blow at his sovereignty than ever was inflicted by the Russian sabre or the Greek dagger. He smote the spirit of his nation. The Egyptian officials wear the fez, or red nightcap—the fitting emblem of an empire gone to sleep. But the general population of Egypt wear the ancient turban, the finest ornament of the head ever invented by man; that of the Egyptian Mahometan is white muslin; that of the Shereefs, or line of Mahomet, is green; that of the Jews and Copts is black. The remaining portions of the costume are such as, perhaps, we shall soon see only upon the stage. The embroidered caftan, the flowing gown, the full trouser of scarlet or violet-coloured cloth, the yellow morocco boot, the jewelled dagger, and velvet-sheathed cimeter—all the perfection of magnificence and taste in costume. The ample beard gives completeness to the majesty of the countenance, and finishes the true character of the "lord of the creation."

The citadel of Cairo has a melancholy and memorable name, from the horrid massacre of the Mamelukes in 1811, when four hundred and seventy of those showy soldiers were murdered, and but one escaped by leaping his horse from the battlements. The horse was killed; the man is now a bey in the Pasha's service. The citadel stands on a hill, and contains the Pasha's palace, a harem, a council-hall, police-offices, and a large square, where the massacre was perpetrated. The view from the windows of the palace is superb. Cairo is seen immediately beneath, skirted by gardens on the right. Beyond those the mosques of the caliphs, and as far as the eye can reach, the Arabian desert. In front is the Nile, a silver stream, covered with sails of every description, till it is lost in the groves of the Delta. The ports of Boulac and old Cairo, with numerous villages, stud its banks, and from its bosom rise verdant islands. To the left, the Nile is still visible, and beyond are seen the Pyramids, which, though twelve miles off, appear quite close, from the transparency of the air. In the citadel is also a mosque, now building by the order of the Pasha. It is constructed of Oriental alabaster, is of great size, already exhibits fine taste, and promises to be one of the most beautiful structures in Egypt. But the Pasha has not yet attained the European improvement of lamps in the streets. After nightfall, the only light is from the shops, which, when they close, leave the street in utter darkness. However, most of the pedestrians carry lamps with them. How does it happen that no gas company has taken pity upon this Egyptian darkness, and saved the Cairans from the chance of having their throats cut, or at least their bones broken; for during the summer a considerable portion of the poorer population sleep in the streets? Still the Pasha is a man of taste, fond of living in gardens, and sensible enough to have the garden of his favourite palace at Shoobra laid out by a Scotch gardener. He used to reside a great deal there, but now chiefly lives, when at Cairo, in the house of his daughter, a widow, where his apartments are in the European style. Nothing surprises a European traveller more than the people themselves; and no problem can seem more mysterious than the means by which they are enabled to supply so much expensive costume. The Egyptian gentleman seems to want for nothing, wherever they find the money to pay for it. Fine houses, fine furniture, fine horses, and fine clothes, seem to be constantly at the command of a crowd who have nothing to do, who produce nothing, and yet seem to have every thing. The Egyptian or Turkish lady is an absolute bale of costly clothing—the more breadths of silk they carry about them the better. Before leaving her home, she puts over her house costume a large loose robe called a tob, made of silk or satin, and always of some gay colour, pink, yellow, red, or violet. She next puts on her face veil, a long strip of the finest white muslin, often exquisitely embroidered. It is fastened just between the eyes, conceals all the other features, and reaches to the feet. She next envelopes herself in large cloak of rich black silk, tied round the head by a piece of narrow riband. Her costume is completed by trousers of silk gauze, and yellow morocco boots, which reach a considerable way up the legs. How any human being can bear such a heap of clothing, especially under the fiery sun and hot winds of Egypt, is to us inconceivable. It must melt all vigour out of the body, and all life out of the soul; but it is the fashion, and fashion works its wonders in Egypt as well as elsewhere. The veil across the mouth, in a climate where every breath of fresh air is precious, must be but a slower kind of strangulation. But the preparative for a public appearance is not yet complete. Women of condition never walk. They ride upon a donkey handsomely caparisoned, sitting astride upon a high and broad saddle, covered with a rich Turkey carpet. They ride with stirrups, but they never hold the reins; their hands are busy in keeping down their cloaks. A servant leads the donkey by the bridle. Their figures, when thus in motion, are the most preposterous things imaginable. Huge as they are, the wind, which has no respect for persons, gets under their cloaks, and blows them up to three times their natural size. Those are the ladies of Egypt; the lower orders imitate this absurdity and extravagance as far as they can, and with their face veils, the most frightful things possible, shuffle through the streets like strings of spectres. Poverty and labour may by possibility keep the lower ranks in health; but how the higher among the females can retain health, between their want of exercise, their full feeding, their hot baths, and this perpetual hot bath of clothing, defies all rational conjecture. The Egyptians of all ranks are terribly afraid of what they call the evil eye, and stifle themselves and children in all kinds of rags to avoid being bewitched. The peasants are a fine-looking, strong-bodied race of men; but many of them are met blind of an eye. This is attributed to the reluctance to be soldiers for the glory of the Pasha. But Mohammed Ali was not to be thus tricked, and he raised a regiment of one-eyed men. In other instances they are said to have knocked out the fore-teeth to avoid biting a cartridge, or to have cut off a joint of the first finger to prevent their drawing a trigger. Even thus they are not able to escape the cunning Pasha. But this shows the natural horror of the conscription; and we are not surprised that men should adopt any expedient to escape so great a curse and scandal to society. It is extraordinary that in this 19th century, even of the Christian world, such an abomination should be suffered to exist in Europe. It is equally extraordinary that it exists in every country but England, and she can have no prouder distinction. The habeas-corpus and her free enlistment, are two privileges without which no real liberty can ever exist, and which, in any country, it would be well worth a revolution, or ten revolutions, to obtain. Hers is the only army into which no man can be forced, and in which every man is a volunteer. And yet she has never wanted soldiers, and her soldiers have never fought the worse. It is true, that when she has a militia they are drawn by ballot from the population; but no militiaman is ever sent out of the country; and as to those who are drawn, if they feel disinclined to serve in this force, which acts merely as a national guard, ten shillings will find a substitute at any time. It is also true that England has impressment for the navy; but the man who makes the sea his livelihood, adopts his profession voluntarily, and with the knowledge that at some time or other he may be called upon to serve in the royal navy. And even impressment is never adopted but on those extreme emergencies which can seldom happen, and which may never happen again in the life of man. But on the Continent, every man except the clergy, and those in the employment of the state, is liable to be dragged to the field, let his prospects or his propensities be what they may. In every instance of war, parents look to their children with terror as they grow up to the military age. The army is a national curse, and parental feelings are a perpetual source of affliction. If the great body of the people in Europe, instead of clamouring for imaginary rights, and talking nonsense about constitutions, which they have neither the skill to construct, nor would find worth the possession if they had them, would concentrate their claims in a demand for the habeas-corpus, and the abolition of the conscription, they would relieve themselves from the two heaviest burdens of despotism, and obtain for themselves the two highest advantages of genuine liberty.

One of the curiosities of Cairo is the hair-oil bazar. The Egyptian women are prodigious hairdressers and the variety of perfumes which they lavish upon their hair and persons, exceed all European custom and calculation. This bazar is all scents, oil, and gold braids for the hair. It is nearly half a mile long. The odour, or the mixture of odours, may well be presumed to be overpowering, when every other shop is devoted to scented bottles—the intervening ones, containing perfumed head-dresses, formed of braids of ribands and gold lace, which descend to the ground. A warehouse of Turkish tables exhibited the luxurious ingenuity of the workers in mother-of-pearl. They were richly wrought in gold and silver ornaments. Within seven miles of Cairo, there still exists a wonder of the old time, which must have made a great figure in the Arab legends—a petrified forest lying in the desert, and which, to complete the wonder, it is evident must have been petrified while still standing. The trees are now lying on the ground, many of the trunks forty feet long, with their branches beside them, all of stone, and evidently shattered by the fall. Cairo, too, has its hospital for lunatics; but this is a terrible scene. The unfortunate inmates are chained and caged, and look like wild beasts, with just enough of the human aspect left to make the scene terrible. A reform here would be well worth the interference of European humanity. We wish that the Hanwell Asylum would send a deputation with Dr Connolly at its head to the Pasha. No man is more open to reason than Mohammed Ali, and the European treatment of lunatics, transferred to an Egyptian dungeon, would be one of the best triumphs of active humanity.

The travellers at length left Cairo, and embarked on board Mills and Company's steam-boat, named the Jack o' Lantern. It seemed to be merely one of the common boats that ply on the river, with the addition of a boiler and paddles, and is probably the smallest steamer extant. However, when they entered the cabin upon the deck, they found every thing nicely arranged and began to think better of their little vessel. They had another advantage in its smallness, as the Nile was now so low that numbers of vessels lay aground, and a large steamer would probably have been unable to make the passage. The river seemed quite alive with many-formed and many-coloured boats. Their picturesque sails, crossing each other, made them at a distance look almost like butterflies skimming over the water. The little steamer drew only two feet and a half of water. She is jestingly described as of two and a half Cairo donkey power. About six miles from Boulac, they passed under the walls of Shoobra palace and gardens. Its groves form a striking object, and its interior, cultivated by Greek gardeners, is an earthly Mahometan paradise. It has bower-covered walks, gardens carpeted with flowers, ever-flowing fountains, and a lake on which the luxurious Pasha is rowed by the ladies of his harem. The Nile winds in the most extraordinary manner across the tongues of land; boats and sails are seen close, which are in reality a mile further down the stream. The banks were high above the boat, through the present shallowness of the river. They were chiefly of brown clay, and were frequently cut into chasms for the purposes of irrigation. As they shot along, they saw large tracts covered with cotton, wheat, Indian corn, and other crops. Date-trees in abundance, the leaves large and like those of the cocoa, the fruit hanging in large clusters, when ripe of a bright red. Water-melons cultivated every where, often on the sandy banks of the river itself, three or four times the size of a man's head, and absolutely loading the beds. Numbers of the Egyptian villages were seen in the navigation of the river. The houses are huddled together, are of unbaked clay, and look like so many bee-hives. Every village has its date-trees, and every hut has pigeons. The peasants in general seem intolerably indolent, and groups of them are every where lying under the trees. Herds of fine buffaloes, twice the size of those in Ceylon, were seen along the shore, and sometimes swimming the river. Groups of magnificent cattle, larger and finer than even our best English breed, were driven occasionally to water at the river side. The Egyptian boats come to an anchor every night; but the Jack o' Lantern dashed on, and by daybreak reached the entrance of the Mahoudiah Canal, on which a track-boat carries passengers to Alexandria. A high mound of earth here separates the canal from the Nile, which flows on towards Rosetta. This embankment is about forty feet wide. Some of Mrs Griffith's observations are at least sufficiently expressive; for example:—"All the children, and some past the age of what are usually styled little children, were running about entirely devoid of clothing. We observed a great deal of this in Egypt. Men are often seen in the same condition; and the women of the lower orders, having concealed their heads and faces, appear to think they have done all that is necessary." This is certainly telling a good deal; nothing more explicit could be required. The track-boats are odious conveyances, long and narrow, and the present one very dirty, and swarming with cockroaches. They were towed by three horses, ridden by three men. In England one would have answered the purpose. The Canal itself is an extraordinary work, worthy of the country of the Pyramids, and one of the prodigies which despotism sometimes exhibits when the iron sceptre is combined with a vigorous intellect. It is ninety feet wide and forty-eight miles long, and yet was completed in six weeks. But it took the labour of 250,000 men, who worked, if the story be true, night and day. Along the canal were seen several large encampments of troops, rather rough instruments, it is true, for polishing African savagery into usefulness, but perhaps the only means by which great things could have been done in so short a period as the reign of Mohammed Ali. An Italian fellow-passenger, who had resided in Egypt twenty-five years, gave it as the result of his experience, that without the strong hand of power, the population would do nothing. Bread and onions being their food, when those were obtained they had got all that they asked for. They would leave their fruitful land to barrenness, and would prefer sleeping under their trees, to the simplest operation of agriculture in a soil that never requires the plough. Yet they are singularly tenacious of their money, and often bury it, keeping their secret to the last. The Italian told them that he was once witness to a scene exactly in point. He accompanied the tax-gatherer to a miserable village, where they entered one of the most miserable huts. The tax-gatherer demanded his due, the Egyptian fell at his feet, protesting that his family were starving, and that he had not a single coin to buy bread. The tax-gatherer, finding him impracticable, ordered some of his followers to give him a certain number of stripes. The peasant writhed under the stripes, but continued his tale. The beating was renewed on two days more, when the Italian interfered and implored mercy. But the officer said that he must continue to flog, as he was certain that the money would come forth at last. After six days' castigation, the peasant's patience could hold out no longer. He dug a hole in the floor of his hut, and exhibited gold and silver to a large amount.

All this may be true; but it would be an injustice to human nature to suppose that man, in any country, would prefer dirt, poverty, and idleness, to comfort, activity, and employment, where he could be sure of possessing the fruits of his labours. But where the unfortunate peasant is liable to see his whole crop carried off the land at the pleasure of one of the public officers, or the land itself torn from him, or himself or his son carried off by the conscription, how can we be surprised if he should think it not worth the while to trouble his head or his hands about any thing? Give him security, and he will work; give him property, and he will keep it; and give him the power of enjoying his gains in defiance of the tax-gatherer, and he will exhibit the manliness and perseverance which Providence has given to all. Whether even the famous Pasha is not still too much of a Turk to venture on an experiment which was never heard of in the land of a Mahometan before, must be a matter more for the prophet than the politician; but Egypt, so long the most abject of nations, and the perpetual slave of a stranger, seems rapidly approaching to European civilization, and by her association with Englishmen, and her English alliance, may yet be prepared to take a high place among the regenerated governments of the world.

The road from the termination of the canal to Alexandria, about two miles long, leads through a desert track. At last the Mediterranean bursts upon the eye. In front rise Pompey's stately and well-known pillar, and Cleopatra's needle. High sand-banks still intercept the view of Alexandria. At length the gates are passed, a dusty avenue is traversed, the great square is reached, and the English hotel receives the travellers. Mahometanism is now left behind, for Alexandria is comparatively an European capital. All the houses surrounding the great square, including the dwellings of the consuls, have been built within the last ten years by Ibrahim Pasha, who, prince and heir to the throne as he is, here performs the part of a speculative builder, and lets out his houses to Europeans. These houses are built as regularly as those in Park Crescent, and are two stories high above the Porte Cochère. They all have French windows with green Venetian shutters, and the whole appearance is completely European. The likeness is sustained by carriages of every description, filled with smartly dressed women, driving through all the streets—a sight never seen at Cairo, for the generality of the streets are scarcely wide enough for the passage of donkeys. But the population is still motley and Asiatic. Turbans, caps, and the scarlet fez, loose gowns, and embroidered trousers, make the streets picturesque. On the other hand, crowds of Europeans, tourists, merchants, and tailors, are to be seen mingling with the Asiatics; and the effect is singularly varied and animated.

The pageant of the French consul-general going to pay his respects to the Viceroy, exhibited one of the shows of the place. First came a number of officers of state, in embroidered jackets of black cachmere, ornamented gaiters, and red morocco shoes. Each wore a cimeter, an essential part of official costume. Next followed a fine brass band; after them came a large body of infantry in three divisions, the whole in heavy marching order. Their discipline and general appearance were striking; they wore the summer dress, consisting of a white cotton jacket and trousers, with red cloth skull-caps, and carried their cartouche-boxes, cross-belts, and fire-locks in the European manner. The next feature, and the prettiest, consisted of the Pasha's led horses, in number about eighteen, all beautiful little Arabs, caparisoned with crimson and black velvet, and cloth of gold. We repeat the description of one, for the sake of tantalizing our European readers with the Egyptian taste in housings. "The animal was a chestnut horse, of perfect form and action. His saddle was of crimson velvet, thickly ribbed by gold embroidery. His saddle-cloth was entirely of cloth of gold, embossed with bullion, and studded with large gems; jewelled pistols were seen in the holsters; the head-piece was variegated red, green, and blue; embroidered and golden tassels hung from every part." But the European portion of the scene by no means corresponded to the Oriental display. The French consul followed in a barouche and pair, with his attachés and attendants in carriages; but the whole were mean-looking. The French court-dress, or any court-dress, must appear contemptible in its contrast with the stateliness of this people of silks and shawls, jewelled weapons, and cloth of gold.

Mohammed Ali is, after all, the true wonder of Egypt. A Turk without a single prejudice of the Turk—an Oriental eager for the adoption of all the knowledge, the arts, and the comforts of Europe—a Mahometan allowing perfect religious toleration, and a despot moderating his despotism by the manliest zeal for the prosperity of his country; he has already raised himself to a reputation far beyond the rank of his sovereignty, and will live in the memories of men, whenever they quote the names of those who, rising above all the difficulties of their original position, have proved their title to the mastery of nations.

The Pasha affected nothing of the usual privacy, or even of the usual pomp, of rajahs and sultans. He was constantly seen driving through Alexandria, in a low berlin with four horses. The berlin was lined with crimson silk, and there, squatting on one of the low broad seats, sat the Viceroy. Two of his officers generally sat opposite to him, and by his side his grandson—a handsome child between eight and nine years old, of whom he seems remarkably fond. Like so many other eminent men, his stature is below the middle size. His countenance is singularly intelligent, his nose aquiline, and his eye quick and penetrating. He does not take the trouble to dye his beard, as is the custom among Orientalists. He wears it long and thick, and in all its snows. Years have so little affected him, that he is regarded as a better life than his son Ibrahim—his general, and confessedly a man of ability. But his second son, Said Pasha, the half brother of Ibrahim, is regarded as especially inheriting the talents of his father. He is an accomplished man, speaks English and French fluently, seems to enter into his father's views with great intelligence, and exhibits a manliness and ardour of character which augur well for his country. But the appearance of the Pasha is not without its attendant state. In front of his berlin ride a number of attendants, caracoling in all directions. Behind the carriage rides his express, mounted on a dromedary, in readiness to start with despatches. The express is followed by his pipe-bearer; the pipe-bearer followed by a servant mounted on a mule, and carrying the light for the Pasha's pipe. The cavalcade is closed by a troop of the officers in waiting, mounted on showy horses.

At length the day of parting arrived, and the travellers embarked on board the Tagus steamer. The view of Alexandria from the sea is stately. A forest of masts, a quay of handsome houses, and the viceroyal palace forming one side of the harbour, tell the stranger that he is approaching the seat of sovereignty. The sea was rough, but of the bright blue of the Mediterranean, and the steamer cut swiftly through the waves. The vessel was clean and well arranged, the weather was fine, and the travellers began to feel the freshness and elasticity of European air. At length they arrived at Malta, and heard for the first time for years, the striking of clocks and the ringing of church-bells. They were at length in Europe. But there is one penalty on the return from the East, which always puts the stranger in ill-humour. They were compelled to perform quarantine. This was intolerably tedious, expensive, and wearisome; yet all things come to an end at last, and, after about a fortnight, they were set at liberty.

Malta, in its soil and climate, belongs to Africa—in its population, perhaps to Italy—in its garrison and commerce, to Europe—and in its manners and habits, to the East. It is a medley of the three quarters of the Old World; and, for the time, a medley of the most curious description. The native carriages, peasant dresses, shops, furniture of the houses, and even the houses themselves, are wholly unlike any thing that has before met the English eye. Malta, in point of religious observances, is like what St Paul said of Athens—it is overwhelmingly pious. The church-bells are tolling all day long. Wherever it is possible, the cultivation of the ground exhibits the industry of the people. Every spot where earth can be found, is covered with some species of produce. Large tracts are employed in the cultivation of the cotton plant—fruit-trees fill the soil—the fig-tree is luxuriant—pomegranate, peach, apple, and plum, are singularly productive. Vines cover the walls, and the Maltese oranges have a European reputation. The British possession of Malta originated in one of those singular events by which short-sightedness and rapine are often made their own punishers. The importance of Malta, as a naval station, had long been obvious to England; and when, in the revolutionary war, the chief hostilities of the war were transferred to the Mediterranean, its value as a harbour for the English fleets became incalculable. Yet it was still in possession of the knights; and, so far as England was concerned, it might have remained in their hands for ever. A national sense of justice would have prevented the seizure of the island, however inadequate to defend itself against the navy of England. But Napoleon had no such scruples. In his expedition to Egypt, he threw a body of troops on shore at Malta; and, having either frightened or bribed its masters, or perhaps both, plundered the churches of their plate, turned out the knights, and left the island in possession of a French garrison. Nothing could be less sagacious and less statesmanlike than this act; for, by extinguishing the neutrality of the island, he exposed it to an immediate blockade by the English. The result was exactly what he ought to have foreseen. An English squadron was immediately dispatched to summon the island; it eventually fell into the hands of the English, and now seems destined to remain in English hands so long as we have a ship in the Mediterranean. Malta is a prodigiously pious place, according to the Maltese conception of piety. Masses are going on without intermission—they fast twice a-week—religious processions are constantly passing—priests are continually seen in the streets, carrying the Host to the sick or dying. When the ceremonial is performed within the house, some of the choristers generally remain kneeling outside, and are joined by the passers-by. Thus crowds of people are often to be seen kneeling in the streets. The Virgin, of course, is the chief object of worship; for, nothing can be more true than the expression, that for one prayer to the Deity there are ten to the Virgin; and confession, at once the most childish and the most perilous of all practices, is regarded as so essential, that those who cannot produce a certificate from the priest of their having confessed, at least once in the year, are excluded from the sacrament by an act of the severest spiritual tyranny; and, if they should die thus excluded, their funeral service will not be performed by the priest—an act which implies a punishment beyond the grave. And yet the morals of the Maltese certainly derive no superiority from either the priestly influence or the personal mortification.

The travellers now embarked on board the Neapolitan steamer, Ercolano—bade adieu to Malta, and swept along the shore of Sicily. Syracuse still exhibits, in the beauty of its landscape, and the commanding nature of its situation, the taste of the Greeks in selecting the sites of their cities. The land is still covered with noble ruins, and the antiquarian might find a boundless field of interest and knowledge. Catania, which was destroyed about two centuries ago, at once by an earthquake and an eruption, is seated in a country of still more striking beauty. The appearance of the city from the sea is of the most picturesque order. It looks almost encircled by the lava which once wrought such formidable devastation. But the plain is bounded by verdant mountains, looking down on a lovely extent of orange and olive groves, vineyards, and cornfields. But the grand feature of the landscape, and the world has nothing nobler, is the colossal Etna; its lower circle covered with vegetation—its centre belted with forests—its summit covered with snow—and, above all, a crown of cloud, which so often turns into a cloud of flame. The travellers were fortunate in seeing this showy city under its most showy aspect. It was a gala-day in Catania; flags were flying on all sides—fireworks and illuminations were preparing—an altar was erected on the Cave, and all the world were in their holiday costume. As the evening approached the scene became still more brilliant, for the fireworks and illuminations then began to have their effect. The evening was soft and Italian, the air pure, and the sky without a cloud. From the water, the scene was fantastically beautiful; the huge altar erected on the shore, was now a blaze of light; the range of buildings, as they ascended from the shore, glittered like diamonds in the distance. Fireworks, in great abundance and variety, flashed about; and instrumental bands filled the night air with harmony. The equipages which filled the streets were in general elegant, and lined with silk; the dresses of the principal inhabitants were in the highest fashion, and all looked perfectly at their ease, and some looked even splendid. A remark is made, that this display of wealth is surprising in what must be regarded as a provincial town. But this remark may be extended to the whole south of Italy. It is a matter of real difficulty to conceive how the Italians contrive to keep up any thing approaching to the appearance which they make, in their Corsos, and on their feast-days. Without mines to support them, as the Spaniards were once supported; without colonies to bring them wealth; without manufactures, and without commerce, how they contrive to sustain a life of utter indolence, yet, at the same time, of considerable display, is a curious problem. It is true, that many of them have places at court, and flourish on sinecures; it is equally true, that their manner of living at home is generally penurious in the extreme; it is also true that gaming, and other arts not an atom more respectable, are customary to supply this yawning life. Yet still, how the majority can exist at all, is a natural question which it must require a deep insight into the mysteries of Italian existence to solve. Whatever may be the secret, the less Englishmen know on these subjects the better; communion with foreign habits only deteriorates the integrity and purity of our own. On the Continent, vice is systematized—virtue is scarcely more than a name; and no worse intelligence has long reached us than the calculation just published in the foreign newspapers, that there were 40,000 English now residing in France, and 4000 English families in that especial sink of superstition and profligacy, Italy.

The sail from the Sicilian straits to Naples is picturesque. The Liparis, with their volcanic summits, on one side—the Calabrian highlands, on the other—a succession of rich mountains, clothed with all kinds of verdure, and of the finest forms; and around, the perpetual beauty of the Mediterranean. The travellers hove to at Pizza, in the gulf of Euphania, the shore memorable for the gallant engagement in which the English troops under Stuart, utterly routed the French under Regnier—a battle which made the name of Maida immortal. Pizza has obtained a melancholy notoriety by the death of Murat, who was shot by order of a court-martial, as an invader and rebel, in October 1815. Murat's personal intrepidity, and even his fanfaronade, excited an interest for him in Europe. But he was a wild, rash, and reckless instrument of Napoleon's furious and remorseless policy; the commandant of the French army in Spain in 1808 could not complain of military vengeance; and his death by the hands of the royal troops only relieved Europe of the boldest disturber among the fallen followers of the great usurper.

The finest view of Naples is the one which the mob of tourists see the last. Its approaches by land are all imperfect—the city is to be seen only from the bay. Floating on the waters which form the most lovely of all foregrounds, a vast sheet of crystal, a boundless mirror, a tissue of purple, or any other of the fanciful names which the various hues and aspects of the hour give to this renowned bay, the view comprehends the city, the surrounding country, Posilipo on the left, Vesuvius on the right, and between them a region of vineyards and vegetation, as poetic and luxuriant as poet or painter could desire.

The wonders of Pompeii are no longer wonders, and people go to see them with something of the same spirit in which the citizens of London saunter to Primrose hill. It was a beggarly little place from the beginning; and the true wonder is, how it could ever have found inhabitants, or how the inhabitants could ever have found room to eat, drink, and sleep in. But Herculaneum is of a higher rank. If the Neapolitan Government had any spirit, it would demolish the miserable villages above it, and lay open this fine old monument of the cleverest, though the most corrupt people of the earth, to the light of day. In all probability we should learn from it more of the real state of the arts, the manners, and the feelings of the Greek, partially modified by his Italian colonization, than by any other record or memorial in existence. In those vaults which still remain closed, owing to the indolence or stupidity of the existing generation, eaten up as it is by monkery, and spending more upon a fête to the Madonna, or the liquifying of St Januarius's blood, than would lay open half the city, there is every probability that some of the most important literature of antiquity still lies buried. Why will not some English company, tired of railroad speculations and American stock, turn its discharge on Herculaneum, pour its gold over the ground, exfoliate the city of the dead, recover its statues, bronzes, frescoes, and mosaics, transplant them to Tower Stairs, and sell them by the hands of George Robins, for the benefit of the rising generation? This seems their only chance of revisiting the light of day; for the money of all foreign sovereigns goes in fêtes and fireworks, new patterns of soldiers' caps, and new costumes for the maids of honour.

We have now glanced over the general features of these volumes. They are light and lively, and do credit to the writer's powers of observation. The result of his details, however, is to impress on our minds, that the "overland passage" is not yet fit for any female who is not inclined to "rough it" in an extraordinary degree. To any woman it offers great hardships; but to a woman of delicacy, the whole must be singularly repulsive. Something is said of the decorations of the work proceeding from the pencil of the lady's husband. Whether the lithographer has done injustice to them, we know not; but they seem to us the very reverse of decoration. The adoption, too, of new modes of spelling the Oriental names, is wholly unnecessary. Harem, turned into Hharéem—Dervish into Derwéesh—Mameluke into Memlook, give no new ideas, and only add perplexity to our knowledge of the name. These words, with a crowd of others, have already been fixed in English orthography by their natural pronunciation; and the attempt to change them always renders their pronunciation—which is, after all, the only important point—less true to the original. On the whole, the "overland passage" seems to require immense improvements. But we live in hope; English sagacity and English perseverance will do much any where; and in Egypt they have for their field one of the most important regions of the world.

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MESMERISM.

"They say miracles are past, and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless."—All's Well that Ends Well, Act II., Scene 3.

From the many crude, illiterate, and unphilosophical speculations on the subject of mesmerism which the present unwholesome activity of the printing-press has ushered into the world, there is one book which stands out in prominent and ornamental relief—a book written by a member of the Church of England, a scholar and a gentleman; and the influence of which, either for good or for harm, is not likely to be ephemeral. Few, even of the most incredulous, can read with attention the first half of "Facts in Mesmerism, by the Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend," of which a second edition has recently appeared, without being staggered. The author leads the reader up a gentle slope, from facts abnormal, it is true, but not contradictory to received notions, to others deviating a little more from ordinary experience; and thence, by a course of calm narrative, to still more anomalous incidents; until at length, almost unconsciously, the incredible seems credible, impossibilities and possibilities are confounded, and miracles are no longer miraculous.

There is much difficulty in dealing with such a book; gentlemanly courtesy, which should grant what it would demand, and an unavoidable faith in the purity of the author's intentions, entirely prevent our treating it as the work of an empiric. It is evident that the author believes what he writes, that the facts in mesmerism are facts to him; to those unprepared by previous experience for the fallacies which the enthusiastic temperament is led into, the book would be irresistible; to those, however, accustomed to physical or phsycological investigation, the last half of the work does much to unravel the web which the first half has been engaged in weaving. When the author departs from the narrative of facts, and endeavours to render those facts consistent with reason and experience, we see the one-sided bias of his mind—we see that he is not a judge but an advocate; and the faith which we should repose on the circumstantial narrative of a gentleman, becomes changed into the courtesy with which we listen to an honourable but deceived enthusiast.

If the utilitarian school has done harm by its hasty attempts to reduce every thing to rule and to the dominion of human reason, no stronger proof than this book need be given of the evils to which the opposite extreme of transcendental philosophy has given rise. As an instance of the fallacies to which one-sided philosophic views may lead, Mr Townshend says, that if asked of what use is the eye if we can see without it, he might answer, "To show us how to make a camera obscura." The case is put illustratively, and we are far from wishing to take it literally to the author's disadvantage; but, in setting at nought the ordinary and sufficient reasoning on this subject, the author himself is obliged to adopt a similar but weaker line of argument. Unfortunate it is, that even in philosophy the judicial character is so rare; it is vainly imagined that error may be counteracted by antagonist error; and because neutrality is too often the companion of impotence, impartiality is supposed to be synonymous with neutrality.

It will be seen from the above, that Mr Townshend has failed to convince us that all the "facts in mesmerism" are facts; and certainly if he has failed, the herd of peripatetic lecturers[3] on the so-called science are not likely to have succeeded; but, although unconvinced of the marvellous, we are by no means indisposed to believe some of the abnormal phenomena of mesmerism. We have witnessed several mesmeric exhibitions—we have never seen any effect produced which was contradictory to the possible of human experience, in which collusion or delusion was fairly negatived. We insist on our right to doubt, to disbelieve. The more startling the proposition, the more rigorous should be the proof; we have never seen the tests which are applied to the most trifling novelty in physical science applied to mesmeric clairvoyance, and withstood. The advocates of it challenge enquiry in print, but they shrink from, or sink under, experiment.

In endeavouring to analyse the work before us, and to examine generally the phenomena of mesmerism, we shall do our utmost to avoid the vices of partial advocacy which we censure; we moreover agree with Mr Townshend, that ridicule is not the weapon to be used. Satire, when on the side of the majority, is persecution; it is striking from a vantage ground—fair, perhaps, when the individual contends with the mass, as when an author writes to expose the fallacies of social fashion; but unfair, and very frequently unsuccessful, when directed against partially developed truths, or even against such phenomena as we believe mesmerism presents, viz. novel and curious psychical truths, o'erclouded with the dense errors of sometimes enthusiasm, sometimes knavery. We shall soberly examine the subject, because we think that much good may be done by its investigation. The really skilful and judicious steer clear of it from a fear of compromising their credit for commonsense; and while the caution necessarily attendant upon habitual scientific studies, dissuades the best men from meddling with that which may blight their hardly-earned laurels, the public is left to be swayed to and fro by an under-current of fallacious half-truths, far more seductive and dangerous than absolute falsehoods. We cannot undertake to say, thus far is true, and thus far false;—to mark out the actual limits of true mesmeric phenomena, demands the very difficult and detailed enquiries which, for the reasons just mentioned, have been hitherto withheld;—but we think we shall be able to succeed in showing, that, though there be much error, there is some truth, and truth of sufficient importance to merit a calm and careful investigation.

We may class the phenomena of mesmerism, as asserted by its professors, as follows:—

1st. Sleep, or coma, induced by external agency, (partly mental, partly physical.)

2d. Somnambulism, or, as called by Mr Townshend, sleep-waking; i.e. certain faculties rendered torpid while others are sensitive.

3d. Insensibility to pain and other external stimuli.

4th. Physical attraction to the mesmeriser, and repulsion from others; community of sensation with the mesmeriser.

5th. Clairvoyance, or the power of perception without the use of the usual organs; and second-sight, or the power of prediction respecting the mesmeric state and remedial agencies.

6th. Phreno-mesmerism, or the connexion between phrenology and mesmerism.

7th. Curative effects.

We believe these categories will include all the leading phenomena of mesmerism. We purpose to give instances of these, partly derived from our own experience, and partly from the book of Mr Townshend, or other the best sources to which we can have recourse; to state fearlessly what we believe may be true, and what we entirely disbelieve; and then to examine the arguments by which the reason of the public has been assailed, and in many cases rendered captive.

First, then, as to the power of induced coma, we will relate an instance which came under our own observation, and which serves to demonstrate that a power may be exercised by one human being over another which will produce a comatose or cataleptic state. In the Christmas week of the year 1842, we dined at a friend's house with a party of eight, (numeric perfection for a dinner-party, according to the ingenious author of the Original.) In the evening, Mackay's book on popular delusions being on the drawing-room table, some one asked if the author had treated of mesmerism. Upon this, one of the party who had recently returned from London—a man who had led a studious life, and of a highly nervous temperament—said he had recently witnessed a mesmeric exhibition, and would undertake to mesmerise any one present. Upon this, two or three ladies volunteered as patients; and he commenced experimenting upon a lady of some twenty-five years old, whom he had known intimately from childhood, clever, and well read, but rather imaginative. To make the thing more ridiculous, he knelt on both knees, and commenced making passes with both hands slowly before her eyes, telling her, whenever she took her eyes off, to look fixedly at him, and keeping a perfectly grave face when every body around was laughing unreservedly. After this had endured for some three minutes, the lady's eyes gradually closed, she fell forwards, and was only prevented from farther falling by being caught by the mesmeriser. He shook her, and, in rather a rough manner, brought her to her senses; then, suspicious lest she had been purposely deceiving him, questioned her seriously as to whether her sleep were feigned or real. She assured him that it was not simulated, that the sensation was irresistible, different from that of ordinary sleep, and by no means unpleasant; but that the only disagreeable part was the being roused. Upon this, the gentleman declared that he knew nothing of mesmerism, and that, had he believed there was any thing in it, he would not have attempted the joke. Another lady present, married, and having a family, was now most anxious to have the experiment repeated upon her. She said she had before sat to an experienced mesmeriser, who had failed, and she was still incredulous, and believed that M—— had merely given way to an imaginative temperament. It required considerable persuasion to induce the gentleman who had before operated to try any more experiments. He protested that he knew nothing about it, that he had once seen a person said to be in the mesmeric state; but that, if he succeeded again in inducing coma, he knew not at all how to awake the patient. Curiously enough, he was instructed in the manipulation by the sceptical patient, who had previously seen public mesmeric exhibitions. After some further persuasion, and with the permission of the lady's husband, who was present, he commenced again the same passes as with the former patient, the only difference being, that he was in this case sitting instead of kneeling. The patient kept constantly bursting into fits of laughter, and as constantly apologising, telling him that his gravity of face was irresistible. Of the other persons present, some laughed, others were too much terrified to laugh, but they kept up a constant running fire of comment, satirical and serious, upon the mesmeriser and mesmerisee. In four or five minutes, the fits of laughter of the latter assumed a rather unnatural character. It was evident she forced herself to laugh in spite of the strongest disinclination, and in a minute or two more she fixed into a state of ghastly catalepsy, the eyes wide open, but the lids fixed, the features all rigid, (except the lower lip, which was convulsed,) and pale as a corpse. The bystanders, now much frightened, interfered, and laid hold of the mesmeriser. After some time, water being given her to drink, she came to herself, and appeared not to have suffered from the experiment.

Notwithstanding the external difference of the case from the first, she described her sensations as the same; viz. a sleep differing from ordinary sleep, pleasing and irresistible, but the rousing very disagreeable. The lady's husband now insisted on being operated on himself. This was done, and entirely without success. Another lady was also experimented on with no success; at least she said she felt sleepy, but nothing more, which was not extraordinary, as it was now getting late. When questioned as to what means he had used, the mesmeriser said he had done nothing but stare steadily at the patients, making them also look fixedly at him, and move his hands slowly and in uniform directions, his instructor in these manœuvres having been Tyrone Power in the farce of His Last Legs. He stated that soon after the commencement of the experiment, he felt an almost irresistible tendency to go on with it; but whether this resulted from a conviction that he was exercising some unknown influence, or from mere experimental curiosity, he would not undertake to say—"this only was the witchcraft he had used."

The result was to all present conclusive as to the production of some effect inexplicable upon received theories. The second case defied simulation, and we believe it was equally removed from hysteria. The patient was a strong-minded person, of a temperament neither nervous nor hysterical, to all appearance perfectly calm, except when overcome by a sense of the ridiculous, and before the experiment obstinately incredulous. It was certainly a strong case. Any hypothesis to account for it would be hasty; but one point suggests itself to us as arising from the remark made by the mesmeriser, viz. that the only influence he was conscious of using was that of a fixed determined stare. This may possibly afford some key to a more philosophical examination of these curious phenomena.

The fabled effects of the basilisk, the serpent, and the evil eye, have probably all some facts for their foundation. The effect of the human eye in arresting the attacks of savage animals is better authenticated, and its influence upon domestic animals may be more easily made the subject of experimental proof. Let any one gaze steadily at a dog half dozing at the fireside—the animal will, after a short time, become restless, and if the stare be continued, will quit his resting-place, and either shrink into a corner, or come forward and caress the person staring. How much of this may be due to the habitual fixed look of stern command with which censure or punishment is accompanied, it may be difficult to say; but the fact undoubtedly is, that some influence, either innate or induced, is exercised. Again, those who, in society, habitually converse with an averted glance, we generally consider wanting in moral force. We doubt the man who doubts himself. On the other hand, if, in conversation, the ordinary look of awakened interest be prolonged, and the eyes are kept fixed for a longer period than usual, an embarrassed and somewhat painful feeling is the result; an indistinct impulse makes it difficult to avert the eye, and at the same time a consciousness of that impulse is an inducement to avert it. We lay no undue stress upon these phenomena; but they are phenomena, and fair subjects for scientific investigation. An explanation of mesmerism has been sought in the physical effect of the stare alone; thus it is said that, if a party look intently at a prominent object fixed to his forehead, he will in time be thrown into mesmeric coma. There is more in it, we think, than this; there is an influence exerted by that nearest approach to the intercourse of soul—"the gaze into each other's eyes"—the extent and normæ of which are unknown. The schoolboy's experiment of staring out of countenance, is not so bad a test of moral power as it would at first sight be deemed to be.

The second case we shall relate is also one at which we were personally present, but one in which both mesmeriser and mesmerisee were, if we may use the term, adepts—the former a gentleman of fortune and education; the latter a half-educated young man, who had been in service as a footman. We shall designate them as Mr M—— and G——.

At this "soirée magnétique" G. was brought in in the sleep-waking state, walking, or rather staggering, and holding the arm of Mr M., his eyes to all appearance perfectly closed, and his gait and gestures those of a drunken man. After some little time he was detached from the mesmeriser, and followed him to different parts of the room. When in proximity Mr M. raised his hand, the patient's hands followed it, his legs the same, while they receded from the hands and legs of any other of the party present. Some of these effects were certainly curious, and not easy of explanation. The mesmeriser would walk or stand behind the patient, and, waving his hands somewhat after the manner of the cachuca dancer, the hands of the patient followed his with tolerable but not unerring precision. We determined to bear in mind these effects when some other phenomena were exhibiting, and try whether similar results would ensue when the attention of the parties was devoted to other subjects. When the attention of every body present was intently strained upon some experiments which we shall presently mention, we approached, as though watching the experiment, very near to G., and frequently without his at all flinching; at other times we were told by Mr M. not to come too near, and once in particular we observed, that having had one knee and toe in close juxtaposition, almost in contact, with the patient's, we retained it so for several seconds before he withdrew his leg. These facts, which would probably be explained by mesmerists on the ground of the whole power of sensation being concentrated upon one object, rendered, however, the experiments upon mesmeric attraction inconclusive. Passing over several experiments, such as the mesmerisation of water, showing community of taste, in which, after some hesitation, the patient selected from three or four glasses of water one which had been tasted by the mesmeriser, we come to the most important point, viz. the clairvoyance. One of the party stood behind the patient, and he was asked how the former was dressed; his reply, after some hesitation was, "not over nice—he has a queerish waist-coat on," (it was a plain white.) A book was then taken off the table—one of the annuals. Mr M. held his hands tightly over the eyes of G., and the title-page was presented open opposite the covered eyes of the latter; after struggling and moving his head about for some time, just as if endeavouring to catch a glimpse of the book, he mentioned the place of publication, and afterwards the title. Other experiments were proposed, such as holding a book behind the party, or to different parts of his body; but of these some did not succeed, others were not tried. To obviate the doubt of the book having been previously seen, we were requested to write, in large letters, a word on a card, such as a slightly educated person could read, and to present it, looking at the same time as closely as we wished at the eyes of G., the lids of which were, as before, apparently tightly held down by Mr M. We did so: the word was Peru; and, after some struggles, the word was read certainly without an exposure of any part of the eye to us. We now proposed, as likely to be more satisfactory, to write another word on a similar card, and, instead of the hands of the mesmeriser being held over the eyes, to place a piece of thin paper over the card. This, it was said, was useless and would not succeed, as the influence would not be transmitted through the person of the mesmeriser; we then proposed that he (the mesmeriser) should place his hand over the card; in short, that the card should be blinded and not the eye. Our reason will be obvious. According to the known laws of vision, viz. the convergence of all the rays of light to a focus in the eye, were the least part of this exposed, vision, though imperfect, of every object within the visual angle, would follow; but, were the object covered, a partial opening would assist vision but little, and only quoad the part exposed. The experiment thus performed would have been optically conclusive; and we cannot see, according to any of the mesmeric hypotheses, any mesmeric reason why it should not have succeeded: it was, however, declined. We are obliged to omit many other points in this evening's proceedings to avoid prolixity. Though many facts were curious, and certainly not easy of explanation by ordinary means, there was nothing which defied it; every experimentum crucis failed, and we, of course, remained unconvinced.

The third case which we shall instance, was one at which we were also personally present. Having been invited to view the mesmeric experiments of Dr B., we arrived at his house, with a friend, at about ten in the morning, and having been duly introduced to the Doctor in one room, were instantly ushered into another, when a scene presented itself certainly one of the most extraordinary we have ever witnessed. There were seven females in the room, and not one man. On a sofa near the fire-place, a young girl sat upright, supported by cushions, her eyes were fixed, and opposite her stood a middle-aged woman, slowly moving her hands before the eyes of the patient. On the hearth-rug near this lay a woman covered with a coarse blanket. She appeared sound asleep, was breathing heavily, and looked deadly pale. A third patient was seated on a chair, also undergoing the mesmeric passes from another woman; and on the opposite side of the room from the fire-place, two others were seated on chairs, with their heads hanging on their shoulders, and eyes closed. Description cannot convey the mystic and fearful appearance of this room and its inmates to the first glance of the unexpectant spectator. Not a word was spoken; the solemn silence, the immobility and deathlike pallor of the objects, was awful—they were as breathing corpses. The clay-cold nuns evoked from their tombs, presented not a more unearthly spectacle to Robert of Normandy. The free-and-easy expressions of Dr B., however, which first broke the silence, instantly dissolved the spell. "That woman," he said, pointing to her on the floor, "has a disease of the liver, and her left lung is somewhat affected. I think we shall do her good. She is now getting into the clairvoyant state. She can see into the next room." He then stooped over her, and said, "How are you, Mary?" She replied, "I have the pain in my side very bad." He approached his hand to the part affected, and again withdrew it several times, opening the fingers as it neared, and closing them as it receded, as though he would gently extract the pain. He again asked her how she felt; she said better. He then pointed to the girl on the sofa, and said, "She is deaf and dumb. We cannot get her asleep." He subsequently pointed out other of the patients, and mentioned their ailments. These, and the sombre darkness of the room, accounted to us for the unnatural paleness of the patients. Dr B. next asked one of two sleeping patients to follow him into another room. We accompanied him, and his experiments upon the female, whom we shall call S., commenced. First of all, he placed her hands with the palms together, and making with his fingers motions the converse of those made in the former case, asked us to endeavour to separate them. We did, and instantly succeeded, with no more effort than would be expected were any woman of average strength purposely to hold her hands together. "Ah!" said the Doctor, "not an easy matter, is it?" We made no reply. He then walked, having on a pair of loudly-creaking boots, to the other end of the room, and looked sternly at the patient. She, after a second or two, followed him, and sat on the same chair. He then said, "I willed her to come to me."

He next asked our friend to hold the patient's hands, and ask her a question mentally, without expressing it.

After some little time she frowned, and endeavoured to withdraw her hands.

Dr. "Ah, she does not like your question! Ask her another."

After some time she burst out into a fit of laughter.

Dr. "Ah, you have tickled her fancy now!"

What the question asked by our friend was, did not transpire. This experiment having been so successful, we were asked to do the same. Not without a feeling of shame we complied; and, taking hold of the patient's hands, we mentally asked her the question—"Are you single or married?" which question did not appear to us to involve any metaphysical subtilty. However, after struggling and frowning for some time, she said, with a sort of hysteric gasp, "He's a funny man!"

Dr B. "Ah, she can't make you out!"

We are not aware to what feature in our character the epithet funny will apply; but probably our self-esteem will not permit us justly to appreciate the appositeness of this somewhat ambiguous epithet. So much, however, for the power of divination, with which the mesmeriser seemed perfectly satisfied. Dr B. now showed us a camomile flower, put it in his mouth, and chewed it. The patient made a face as if tasting something disagreeable, and, in answer to his questions, said it was bitter. He then did the same with a lozenge; and after some time, required, according to the doctor, for the removal of the bitter taste, she said she tasted lozenges.

Dr B. "There you see the community of taste." Dr B. now touched her forehead a little above and outside of the eyebrows; she burst out laughing.

Dr B. "I touched the organ of gaiety." He then did the same with the organs of music; she set up an old English ditty. Then touching these organs with one hand, and placing the other on the top of her head, she instantly changed the ballad to a doleful psalm-tune. Affection, philo-progenitiveness, were in turn touched, the doctor stating aloud beforehand what organ he was going to excite. We should weary our readers with a detail of the platitudes which ensued.

She was asked what was going on in the next room, and said, "Ah, Sophy may try, but cannot get the girl asleep!" A few other experiments, such as suspending chairs on her arms, &c., followed, and we returned to the next room, where the deaf and dumb girl was found fast asleep. Upon being asked how long she had been so, the female mesmeriser replied, "Just after you left the room." No comment was made upon the answer of the clairvoyante patient above given, which appeared to have been forgotten by all but ourselves.

Had we been anxious to give a factitious interest to our narrative, we should certainly have avoided a description of the above cases, which could not at the same time be made to possess graphic interest, and to relate accurately the real facts as presented; but we have selected them as having happened to ourselves, and as being shown not by public exhibitors, but by parties both holding a highly respectable station in life, and being, as we believe, among 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 unbeliever in the very existence of the state in question, can add weight to my testimony, my reader, should he also be a heretic on the subject, may be assured that his incredulity in this respect can scarcely be greater than mine was, up to the winter of 1836. That, at the time I mention, I should be both ignorant and prejudiced on the score of mesmerism, will not surprise those who are aware of its long proscription in England, and the want of information upon it, which, till very lately, prevailed there.

"In the course of a residence at Antwerp, a valued friend detailed to me some extraordinary results of mesmerism, to which he had been an eyewitness. I could not altogether discredit the evidence of one whom I knew to be both observant and incapable of falsehood; but I took refuge in the supposition that he had been ingeniously deceived. Reflecting, however, that to condemn before I had examined was as unjust to others as it was unsatisfactory to myself, I accepted readily the proposition of my friend to introduce me to an acquaintance of his in Antwerp, who had learned the practice of the mesmeric art from a German physician. We waited together on Mr K——, the mesmeriser, (an agreeable and well-informed person,) and stated to him that the object of our visit was to prevail on him to exhibit to us a specimen of his mysterious talent. To this he at first replied that he was rather seeking to abjure a renown that had become troublesome—half the world viewing him as a conjurer, and the other half as a getter-up of strange comedies; 'but,' he kindly added, 'if you will promise me a strictly private meeting, I will, this evening, do all in my power to convince you that mesmerism is no delusion.' This being agreed upon, with a stipulation that the members of my own family should be present on the occasion, I, to remove all doubt of complicity from every mind, proposed that Mr K—— should mesmerise a person who should be a perfect stranger to him. To this he readily acceded; and now the only difficulty was to find a subject for our experiment. At length we thought of a young person in the middling class of life, who had often done fine work for the ladies of our family, and of whose character we had the most favourable knowledge. Her mother was Irish, her father, who had been dead some time, had been a Belgian, and she spoke English, Flemish, and French, with perfect facility. Her widowed parent was chiefly supported by her industry: and, in the midst of trying circumstances, her temper was gay and cheerful, and her health excellent. That she had never seen Mr K—— we were sure; and of her probity and incapacity for feigning we had every reason to be convinced. With our request, conveyed to her through one of the ladies of our family, for whom she had conceived a warm affection, she complied without hesitation. Not being of a nervous, though of an excitable temperament, she had no fears whatever about what she was to undergo. On the contrary, she had rather a desire to know what the sensation of being mesmerised might be. Of the phenomena which were to be developed in the mesmeric state, she knew absolutely nothing; thus all deceptive imitation of them, on her part, was rendered impossible.

"About nine o'clock in the evening, our party assembled for what, in foreign phrase, is called 'une séance magnétique.' Anna M——, our mesmerisee, was already with us. Mr K—— arrived soon after, and was introduced to his young patient, whose name we had purposely avoided mentioning to him in the morning; not that we feared imposition on either hand, but that we were determined, by every precaution, to prevent any one from alleging that imposition had been practised. Utterly unknown as the parties were to each other, a game played by two confederates was plainly out of the question. Almost immediately after the entrance of Mr K—— we proceeded to the business of the evening. By his directions Mademoiselle M—— placed herself in an arm-chair at one end of the apartment, while he occupied a seat directly facing hers. He then took each of her hands in one of his, and sat in such a manner as that the knees and feet of both should be in contact. In this position he remained for some time motionless, attentively regarding her with eyes as unwinking as the lidless orbs which Coleridge has attributed to the Genius of destruction. We had been told previously to keep utter silence, and none of our circle—composed of some five or six persons—felt inclined to transgress this order. To me, novice as I was at that time in such matters, it was a moment of absorbing interest: that which I had heard mocked at as foolishness, that which I myself had doubted as a dream, was, perhaps, about to be brought home to my conviction, and established for ever in my mind as a reality. Should the present trial prove successful, how much of my past experience must be remodelled and reversed!

"Convinced, as I have since been, to what valuable conclusions the phenomena of mesmerism may conduct the enquirer, never, perhaps, have I been more impressed with the importance of its pretensions than at that moment, when my doubts of their validity were either to be strengthened or removed. Concentrating my attention upon the motionless pair, I observed that Mademoiselle M—— seemed at her ease, and occasionally smiled or glanced at the assembled party; but her eyes, as if by a charm, always reverted to those of her mesmeriser, and at length seemed unable to turn away from them. Then a heaviness, as of sleep, seemed to weigh down her eyelids, and to pervade the expression of her countenance; her head drooped on one side; her breathing became regular; at length her eyes closed entirely, and, to all appearance, she was calmly asleep, in just seven minutes from the time when Mr K—— first commenced his operations. I should have observed that, as soon as the first symptoms of drowsiness were manifested, the mesmeriser had withdrawn his hands from those of Mademoiselle M——, and had commenced what are called the mesmeric passes, conducting his fingers slowly downward, without contact, along the arm of the patient. For about five minutes, Mademoiselle M—— continued to repose tranquilly, when suddenly she began to heave deep sighs, and to turn and toss in her chair. She then called out, 'Je me trouve malade! Je m'étouffe!' and rising in a wild manner, she continued to repeat, 'Je m'étouffe!' evidently labouring under an oppression of the breath. But all this time her eyes remained fast shut, and at the command of her mesmeriser, she took his arm and walked, still with her eyes shut, to the table. Mr K—— then said, 'Voulez-vous que je vous éveille?'—'Oui, oui,' she exclaimed; 'je m'étouffe.' Upon this Mr K—— again operated with his hands, but in a different set of movements, and taking out his handkerchief, agitated the air round the patient, who forthwith opened her eyes, and stared about the room like a person awaking from sleep. No traces of her indisposition, however, appeared to remain; and soon shaking off all drowsiness, she was able to converse and laugh as cheerfully as usual. On being asked what she remembered of her sensations, she said that she had only a general idea of having felt unwell and oppressed: that she had wished to open her eyes, but could not, they felt as if lead were on them. Of having walked to the table she had no recollection. Notwithstanding her having suffered, she was desirous of being again mesmerised, and sat down fearlessly to make a second trial. This time it was longer before her eyes closed, and she never seemed to be reduced to more than a state of half unconsciousness. When the mesmeriser asked her if she slept, she answered in the tone of utter drowsiness, 'Je dors, et je ne dors pas.' This lasted some time, when Mr K—— declared that he was afraid of fatiguing his patient, (and probably his spectators too,) and that he should disperse the mesmeric fluid. To do so, however, seemed not so easy a matter as the first time when he awoke the sleep-waker; with difficulty she appeared to rouse herself; and even after having spoken a few words to us, and risen from her chair, she suddenly relapsed into a state of torpor, and fell prostrate to the ground, as if perfectly insensible. Mr K——, entreating us not to be alarmed, raised her up—placed her in a chair, and supported her head with his hand. It was then that I distinctly recognised one of the asserted phenomena of mesmerism. The head of Mademoiselle M—— followed every where, with unerring certainty, the hand of her mesmeriser, and seemed irresistibly attracted to it as iron to the loadstone. At length Mr K—— succeeded in thoroughly awaking his patient, who, on being interrogated respecting her past sensations, said that she retained a recollection of her state of semi-consciousness, during which she much desired to have been able to sleep wholly; but of her having fallen to the ground, or of what had passed subsequently, she remembered nothing whatever. To other enquiries she replied, that the drowsy sensation which first stole over her was rather of an agreeable nature, and that it was preceded by a slight tingling, which ran down her arms in the direction of the mesmeriser's fingers. Moreover she assured us, that the oppression she had at one time felt was not fanciful, but real—not mental, but bodily, and was accompanied by a peculiar pain in the region of the heart, which, however, ceased immediately on the dispersion of the mesmeric sleep. These statements were the rather to be relied upon, inasmuch as the girl's character was neither timid nor imaginative."—(P. 38-42.)

We would willingly give the whole of the second sitting of the same patient, in which were developed the phenomena of,

1st, "Attraction towards the mesmeriser."

2d, "A knowledge of what the mesmeriser ate and drank, indicating community of sensation with him."

3d, "An increased quickness of perception."

4th, "A development of the power of vision."

Our space will not permit us to give these in detail. We shall therefore give an extract from the third sitting, where the clairvoyance was more decidedly developed, and the impressions of Mr Townshend on the phenomena he had witnessed are stated.

"Upon first passing into the mesmeric state, Theodore seemed absolutely insensible to every other than the mesmeriser's voice. Some of our party went close to him, and shouted his name; but he gave no tokens of hearing us until Mr K——, taking our hands, made us touch those of Theodore and his own at the same time. This he called putting us 'en rapport' with the patient. After this Theodore seemed to hear our voices equally with that of the mesmeriser, but by no means to pay an equal attention to them.

"With regard to the development of vision, the eyes of the patient appeared to be firmly shut during the whole sitting, and yet he gave the following proofs of accurate sight:—

"Without being guided by our voices, (for, in making the experiment, we kept carefully silent,) he distinguished between the different persons present, and the colours of their dresses. He also named with accuracy various objects on the table, such as a miniature picture, a drawing by Mr K——, &c. &c.

"When the mesmeriser left him, and ran quickly amongst the chairs, tables &c., of the apartment, he followed him, running also, and taking the same turns, without once coming in contact with any thing that stood in his way.

"He told the hour accurately by Mr K——'s watch.

"He played several games at dominoes with the different members of our family, as readily as if his eyes had been perfectly open.

"On these occasions the lights were placed in front of him, and he arranged his dominoes on the table, with their backs to the candles, in such a manner that, when I placed my head in the same position as his own, I could scarcely, through the shade, distinguish one from the other. Yet he took them up unerringly, never hesitated in his play, generally won the game, and announced the sum of the spots on such of his dominoes as remained over at the end, before his adversaries could count theirs. One of our party, a lady who had been extremely incredulous on the subject of mesmerism, stooped down, so as to look under his eyelids all the time he played, and declared herself convinced and satisfied that his eyes were perfectly closed. It was not always, however, that Theodore could be prevailed upon to exercise his power of vision. Some words, written by the mesmeriser, of a tolerable size, being shown to him, he declared, as Mademoiselle M—— did on another occasion, that it was too small for him to distinguish.

"Towards the conclusion of the sitting, the patient seemed much fatigued, and, going to the sofa, arranged a pillow for himself comfortably under his head; after which he appeared to pass into a state more akin to natural sleep than his late sleep-waking. Mr K—— allowed him to repose in this manner for a short time, and then awoke him by the usual formula. A very few motions of the hand were sufficient to restore him to full consciousness, and to his usual character. The fatigue of which he had so lately complained seemed wholly to have passed away, together with the memory of all that he had been doing for the last hour.

"I must now pause to set before my reader my own state of mind respecting the facts I had witnessed. I perceived that important deductions might be drawn from them, and that they bore upon disputed questions of the highest interest to man, connected with the three great mysteries of being—life, death, and immortality. On these grounds I was resolved to enter upon a consistent course of enquiry concerning them; though as yet, while all was new and wonderful to my apprehension, I could scarcely do more than observe and verify phenomena. It was, however, necessary that my views, though for the present bounded, should be distinct. I had already asked respecting mesmeric sleep-waking, 'Does it exist?' and to this question, the cases which had fallen under my notice, and which were above suspicion, seemed to answer decidedly in the affirmative: but it was essential still further to enquire, 'Does it exist so generally as to be pronounced a part—though a rarely developed part—of the human constitution?' In order to determine this, it was requisite to observe how far individuals of different ages, stations, and temperaments, were capable of mesmeric sleep-waking. I resolved, therefore, by experiments on as extensive a scale as possible, to ascertain whether the state in question were too commonly exhibited to be exceptional or idiosyncratic. Again, the two cases that I had witnessed coincided in characteristics; but could this coincidence be accidental? It might still be asked, 'Were the phenomena displayed uncertain, mutable, such as might never occur again; or were they orderly, invariable, the growth of fixed causes, which, being present, implied their presence also?' In fine, was mesmeric sleep-waking not only a state, but entitled to rank as a distinct state, clearly and permanently characterized; and, as such, set apart from all other abnormal conditions of men? On its pretensions to be so considered, rested, I conceived, its claims to notice and peculiar investigation: to decide this point was, therefore, one of my chief objects; and, respecting it, I was determined to seek that certainty which can only be attained by a careful comparison of facts, occurring under the same circumstances. To sum up my intentions, I desired to show that man, through external human influence, is capable of a species of sleep-waking different from the common, not only inasmuch as it is otherwise produced, but as it displays quite other characteristics when produced."—(P. 49-52.)

In the subsequent portions of the book, similar and still more wondrous phenomena are produced by Mr Townshend. He mesmerises several Cambridge friends. He procures two patients, designated by the names of Anna M—— and E—— A——, who are said to be very susceptible of the mesmeric state, and sight or mesmeric perception is manifested in a dark closet, with large towels over the head, through the abdomen, through cards, books, &c. &c. Anna M. is mesmerised unconsciously when in a separate house from the mesmeriser; they predict remedies for themselves and others, read thoughts,[4] state how they and others can be further mesmerised and demesmerised.

As an instance of the curative effects, and the power of predicting remedies, we cite the following:—

"Accident threw in my way a lad of nineteen years of age, a Swiss peasant, who for three years had nearly lost the faculty of sight. His eyes betrayed but little appearance of disorder, and the gradual decay of vision which he had experienced, was attributed to a paralysis of the optic nerve, resulting from a scrofulous tendency in the constitution of the patient. The boy, whom I shall call by his Christian name of Johann, was intelligent, mild-tempered, extremely sincere, and extremely unimaginative. He had never heard of mesmerism till I spoke of it before him, and I then only so far enlightened him on the subject, as to tell him that it was something which might, perhaps, benefit his sight. At first he betrayed some little reluctance to submit himself to experiment, asking me if I were going to perform some very painful operation upon him; but, when he found that the whole affair consisted in sitting quiet, and letting me hold his hands, he no longer felt any apprehension.

"Before beginning to mesmerise, I ascertained, with as much precision as possible, the patient's degree of blindness. I found that he yet could see enough to perceive any large obstacle that stood in his way. If a person came directly before him, he was aware of the circumstance, but he could not at all distinguish whether the individual were man or woman. I even put this to the proof. A lady of our society stood before him, and he addressed her as 'mein herr,' (sir.) In bright sunshine he could see a white object, or the colour scarlet, when in a considerable mass, but made mistakes as to the other colours. Between small objects he could not at all discriminate. I held before him successively, a book, a box, and a bunch of keys, and he could not distinguish between them. In each case he saw something, he said, like a shadow, but he could not tell what. He could not read one letter of the largest print by means of eyesight; but he was very adroit in reading by touch, in books prepared expressly for the blind, running his fingers over the raised characters with great rapidity, and thus acquiring a perception of them. Whatever trifling degree of vision he possessed, could only be exercised on very near objects: those which were at a distance from him, he perceived not at all. I ascertained that he could not see a cottage at the end of our garden, not more than a hundred yards off from where we were standing.

"These points being satisfactorily proved, I placed my patient in the proper position, and began to mesmerise. Five minutes had scarcely elapsed, when I found that I produced a manifest effect upon the boy. He began to shiver at regular intervals, as if affected by a succession of slight electric shocks. By degrees this tremour subsided, the patient's eyes gradually closed, and in about a quarter of an hour, he replied to an enquiry on my part—'Ich schlaffe, aber nicht ganz tief'—(I sleep, but not soundly.) upon this I endeavoured to deepen the patient's slumber by the mesmeric passes, when suddenly he exclaimed—his eyes being closed all the time—'I see—I see your hand—I see your head!' In order to put this to the proof, I held my head in various positions, which he followed with his finger; again, he told me accurately whether my hand was shut or open. 'But,' he said, on being further questioned, 'I do not see distinctly.—I see, as it were, sunbeams (sonnen strahlen) which dazzle me.' 'Do you think,' I asked, 'that mesmerism will do you good?' 'Ja freilich,' (yes, certainly,) he replied; 'repeated often enough, it would cure me of my blindness.'

"Afraid of fatiguing my patient, I did not trouble him with experiments; and his one o'clock dinner being ready for him, I dispersed his magnetic sleep. After he had dined, I took him into the garden. As we were passing before some bee-hives, he suddenly stopped, and seemed to look earnestly at them: 'What is it you see?' I asked. 'A row of bee-hives,' he replied directly, and continued—'Oh! this is wonderful!—I have not seen such things for three years.' Of course, I was extremely surprised, for though I had imagined that a long course of mesmerisation might benefit the boy, I was entirely unprepared for so rapid an improvement in his vision. My chief object had been to develop the faculty of sight in sleep-waking; and I can assure my readers, that this increase of visual power in the natural state was to me a kind of miracle, as astonishing as it was unsought. My poor patient was in a state of absolute enchantment. He grinned from ear to ear, and called out, 'Das ist prächtig!' (This is charming!) Two ladies now passed before us, when he said, 'Da sind zwei fräuenzimmer!' (There go two ladies!) 'How dressed?' I asked. 'Their clothes are of a dark colour,' he replied. This was true. I took my patient to a summer-house that commanded an extensive prospect. I fear almost to state it, but, nevertheless, it is perfectly true, that he saw and pointed out the situation of a village in the valley below us. I then brought Johann back to the house, when, in the presence of several members of my family, he recognised, at first sight, several small objects, (a flowerpot, I remember, amongst other things,) and not only saw a little girl, one of our farmers' children, sitting on the steps of a door, but also mentioned that she had a round cap on her head. In the house, I showed Johann a book, which, it will be remembered, he could not distinguish before mesmerisation, and he named the object. But, though making great efforts, he could not read one letter in the book. Having ascertained this, I once more threw Johann into the mesmeric state, with a view to discover how far a second mesmerisation could strengthen his natural eyesight. As soon as I had awaked him, at the interval of half an hour, I presented him with the same book, (one of Marryat's novels,) when he accurately told me the larger letters of the title-page, which were as follows—'Outward Bound.' Johann belonging to an institution of the blind situated at some distance from our residence, I had unhappily only the opportunity of mesmerising him three times subsequently to the above successful trial. The establishment, also, of which he was a member, changed masters; and its new director having prejudices on the score of mesmerism, there were difficulties purposely thrown in the way of my following up that which I had so auspiciously begun."—(Pp. 176-179)

Many of these cases of clairvoyance, given by Mr Townshend, appear on the face of them ambiguous; thus the reading is said to be effected with difficulty and imperfectly, the difficulty to be increased by the superposition of obstacles. Others, as related, certainly admit of no explanation by deductions from ordinary experience. All we can say of them, therefore, is, that we have fairly sought to see such phenomena, and have never succeeded; when we see them, and can properly test them, we will believe them. But from the internal evidence of the latter portion of Mr Townshend's book, which we shall presently discuss, we cannot, although not doubting his honesty of purpose, set our faith upon his experiments and judgment.

Mr Townshend gives no account of the phreno-mesmerism, or of the surgical operations performed without any evidence of pain during the mesmeric states. We have already related one of the former exhibitions, which, we think, requires no further comment. Viewed abstractedly, the attempt to support by the assumed accuracy of one science, at best in its infancy, and confessedly fallible, another still more so, is making too large demands upon public credulity to require much counter argument. With regard to the surgical cases, they stand on a very different ground; three operations, among the most painful of those to which man is ever subjected, are alleged to have been performed during the mesmeric state—Madame Plantin, amputation of cancerous breast; and James Wombwell and Mary Ann Lakin, amputation of the leg above the knee. The case of Wombwell was canvassed at length at the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London; and in that and the other cases there seems to have been no question raised as to the facts of the patients having undergone the operation without the usual evidence of suffering. In Wombwell's case the divided end of the sciatic nerve was purposely (it appears to us very wantonly) touched with the forceps, but without any appearance of sensation on the part of the patient. In all these cases the medical men most opposed to mesmerism seem to have admitted the fact, and to have rested their incredulity on the various cases known to them, of parties having borne operations with such fortitude as not to have expressed the usual cries of suffering.

In Madame Plantin's case it is stated; that she subsequently confessed to a nurse in an hospital, that she felt the full pain, but purposely, and by great effort, kept silent. This confession is, however, strongly denied by Dr Elliotson and others, and does not appear to be clearly substantiated.

A professional "odium" appears to have arisen on the subject; and, from the controversial tone of the speaking and writing on both sides, it is difficult to get at the truth. We must say, however, that, admitting the facts, which the antagonists of mesmerism seem to do, we are more inclined to believe the paralysis of nervous sensation by mesmeric influence, than that, with such inadequate motives as the patients could feel, they should have such marvellous self-control as to feign sleep, and keep their whole muscular system in a relaxed state, while suffering such exquisite pain. Medical men are, indeed, better judges of the power of endurance and simulation than we can pretend to be; but, to make their testimony conclusive, they should have witnessed the operation. The elaborate research for causes explanatory of an unseen case, lessens the weight of authority which would otherwise be very high.

Many other minor cases, such as teeth drawn, and division of tendons, are given; and though we have never had an opportunity of witnessing such effects, we must say we think, from their benefit to suffering humanity, the possibility, however remote, of their truth, deserves more calm and dispassionate enquiry than appears hitherto to have been given them.

While doctors, however, seek to explain, by various profound theories, the efficient causes of asserted mesmeric cures, a member of the Church of England, and popular preacher at Liverpool, the Rev. Hugh M. Neill, M.A., has cut the Gordian knot, by a sermon preached at St Jude's Church, on April 10th, 1842, and published in Nos. 599 and 600 of the Penny Pulpit, price twopence. By this sermon it appears to have occurred to the philosophic mind of the reverend divine, that mesmeric marvels may be accounted for as accomplished by the direct agency of Satan! Doubtless Satan is as actively at work in this the nineteenth century, as in any anterior period of our history; but we are inclined to think the progress of civilization has opened a sufficient number of channels for his ingenuity, without rendering it necessary that he should alarm the devout by miraculously interfering to assuage human suffering.

We have given above as many instances as our space will permit, of the asserted phenomena of mesmerism; and now to return to Mr Townshend's book.

In taking a general view of the lines of argument adopted by the author to support the possibility or probability of mesmerism, we perceive they are of two sorts, essentially different, and in some measure inconsistent with each other.

1st, It is very properly argued, that our whole knowledge of the normal course of nature is derived from experience; that a law is a mere generalization from that experience, and is not any thing intrinsically or necessarily true. Thus, if the sun were to rise in the west to-morrow, instead of in the east, it would at first sight appear to be a deviation from natural laws; in other words, a miracle. If, however, the latter circumstance were wanting, after the first sensation of the marvellous had subsided, the philosopher would enquire, whether, instead of being a deviation from a law, it were not a subordinate instance of some higher law, of which the period of history had been too short to give any co-ordinate instances; and were it found, by a long course of experience, that in every 4000 years a similar retrocession of the earth took place, a new law would be established. Applying this to mesmerism, it is said our notions of sleep and waking, of sight and hearing, and of the possible limits and modes of sensation, are derived from experience alone; we cannot estimate or understand the modus agendi of a new sensation, because we have never experienced it. If, then, it be proved, by the acts of A, B, or C, that they attain cognizance of objects by other means than those which any known organ of sensation will permit, you must admit the fact, and by degrees its rationale will become supported by the same means as all other truths are supported, viz. by habitual experience. Its law is, indeed, nothing but its constant recurrence under similar circumstances. To take Mr Townshend's own mode of enunciating this—

"Are we entitled to conclude, in any case, that, because we have not hitherto been able to assign a law to certain operations, they are therefore absolutely without law? Are we to assert, that the orderly dispositions of the universe are deformed by a monstrous exception; or is it not wiser to believe that our own knowledge is in fault, whenever Nature appears inconsistent with herself? Surely we have enough order around us to suggest, that all which to us seems chance, is 'direction which we cannot see;' that all apparent anomalies are but like those discords which, in the most masterly music, prepare the transitions from one noble passage to another, and are actually essential to the general harmony. In many instances this is not mere conjecture. How much of fancied imperfection and disorder has fled before our investigation! The motions of comets at first appear to offer an exception to the exact arrangements of the universe.—'They traverse all parts of the heavens. Their paths have every possible inclination to the plane of the ecliptic; and, unlike the planets, the motion of more than half of those which have appeared has been retrograde—that is, from east to west.' Yet have we been able to detect the elements of regularity in the midst of all this seeming confusion, and to predict with certainty the day, the hour, and the minute of a comet's return to our region of the sky.

"Experience also shows, that apparently insulated and lawless phenomena may not only be reduced to a law, but to a well-known law; that many a familiar agent puts on strange disguises; and that events, with which, in their mazy channels, we seem to be unacquainted, may be perfectly recognised by us at their source. Thus galvanism and magnetic force are proved, by recent discoveries, to be only forms of electricity; showing that a fact may be altered, not in itself, but in the circumstances that surround it, and that complexity of development is perfectly consistent with unity of design. Instances like these, while they encourage us to enquiry, should teach us to believe that all which is needed to vindicate the regularity of nature is a more extended observation on our parts."—(Pp. 14-15.)

This is the highest and safest ground for the advocate of mesmerism to tread; to support himself on this he has only to demonstrate his facts beyond the possibility of a doubt, and the truth of the phenomena, however inconsistent with previous experience, must in the end be admitted. But to support him on this high ground his proof must be demonstrative; he must be able to say—I ask not for faith, nor even a balanced mind; but doubt to the utmost, examine with the most rigorous scepticism; I stand upon the facts alone; I offer no explanation, or at least I make their truth dependent upon no explanation. They are or they are not. I will prove their existence, and I will defy you to disprove them.

It will not, we conceive, be denied, that one essential attribute of the social mind, a jealousy of credence in apparent anomalies, is a just and necessary guard upon human knowledge. If mere assertion were believed, every succeeding day would upset the knowledge of the preceding day; and however high the character of the assertor of new and abnormal facts may be, he must not expect them to be received upon the strength of his assertion. The best men may be deceived, and the best men may be led astray by enthusiasm. When the slightest discovery in physical science is published, it is immediately assailed by doubts from every quarter; and its promulgator, if he be accustomed to research and trained to scientific investigation, never complains of these doubts, because he knows the vast number of perplexing deceptions in which he has himself been entangled, and the caution with which he himself would receive a similar announcement.

It is vain to cite instances of truths unappreciated by the age in which they were advanced. We deprecate as much as any the persecution with which occasionally men who have seen far in advance of their age have been attacked; but the saying, "Malheureux celui qui est en avance de son siècle," is not always true: if the new truth be difficult of demonstration it will be proportionately tardy of reception, but if easy of proof it is very rapidly received. As an example of this we may instance the discovery of Volta. In the history of physical science, never was a more sudden leap taken than by this illustrious man—that a juxtaposition of matter in its least organic form should produce such surprising effects upon the human organism, was to the world, as it existed in the year 1800, a most marvellous phenomenon; and had the link in the finest chain of proof been wanting, men would have been justified in any degree of scepticism or incredulity. But it was easy of demonstration; any one with a dozen discs of iron and zinc, and the same number of penny-pieces, could satisfy himself; and the consequence was, the discovery was instantly admitted. Let mesmerists put the same power of self-satisfaction into the hands of the world, and doubt will be at once removed; if, as they say, their science is not of equal exactitude, they must bide their time and not complain.

Magnetism and electricity, moreover, often cited by Mr Townshend, and undoubtedly the most surprising additions to human knowledge within the historical period, though abnormal, are not contradictory to experience—they were an entirely new series of facts added to our previous store—they did not destroy or lessen the force of any previously received truths. Not so mesmerism, and therefore the more stringent should be, and is, the proof required.

Come we now to the second class of arguments adopted in favour of mesmerism, and by the same persons (Mr Townshend, for instance) as support the first. Mr Townshend says, (p. 29,) "to the mesmeriser the facts of mesmerism are no miracles;" and yet he avers that mesmerism can make the blind see and the deaf hear. (Pp. xxxii., and 178.) We cannot very clearly see his notion of a miracle. Passing over this, however, and taking him to assert what the first branch of his argument requires to be asserted, that there is no miracle, or that there is nothing but the contradiction of a necessary truth, such as that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, which may not fall within some natural law of which we have not all the data—we cannot see why, in the second half of his book, he so sedulously endeavours to prove that mesmerism is consistent with experience, and may be supported upon similar grounds, and accounted for by similar theories, to those by which the agency of the imponderable forces is established and accounted for. After using every argument in his power to show the fallibility of experience, and the reasons why we should not disbelieve mesmerism because contradictory to it, which contradiction he admits in terms, the author writes a chapter, the title of which is, "Conformity of Mesmerism with General Experience."—(P. 155.) As instances of these reverse modes of viewing the subject, we quote the following passages—the one taken from the commencement of the book, where the first line of argument is adopted; the other from the latter portion, where the second is.

"Thus, then, till the initial step towards a comprehension of mesmerism be taken anew, there is no hope that it will ever be understood or appreciated. Why unavailingly seek to reduce it to a formula of which it is unsusceptible? If we ascribe it to a power already ascertained, why not treat it, at least, as an entirely new function of that power? Why limit it to what we know, when, possibly, it may be destined to extend the boundaries of our knowledge? Why are we to be trammelled with foregone conclusions? Yet upon these very restrictions the opponents of mesmerism insist; thus taking away from men the means of investigating the agency in question, by forcing them to set about it in the wrong way."—(P. 12.)

Having, then, thus expressed himself in the early part of the work, towards the close we find the following sentence. "Taking this simple view of sensation, (that objects should be brought into a certain relation with us by something intermediate,) we find nothing in mesmerism contradictory of nature. Under its influence, the human frame continues to be still a system of nerves acted upon by elastic media, for the purpose of conveying to us the primal impulse of the Almighty Mind, which made, sustains, and moves the universe—having, as I trust, shown the conformity of mesmerism in all essential points with the principles of nature, and the inferences of reason," &c. &c.

If we are to admit mesmerism as a series of facts apparently inconsistent with experience, it is most hasty and unphilosophical to attempt to generalize it by crude hypotheses. To rest its probable truth upon these hypotheses, is to take a totally different ground, and one much lower and more assailable. We have no desire to be hypercritical—to expose minor scientific inaccuracies in the work before us; but we do not hesitate to assert, that, independently of its inconsistency with the previous course of reasoning, the hypothesis or hypotheses of Mr Townshend are most unsatisfactory.

Heat, light, electricity, magnetism, are by some regarded as specific fluids; by others, as undulations of one or more specific fluid; and by a third class, as undulations or polarizations of ordinary matter. Thus, by the first, light would be viewed as a material emanation from the luminous body; by the second, as an undulation of an imponderable ether, existing between the luminous body and the recipient; and by the third, as an undulation of the air, glass, or other matter, placed between the luminous body and the object. The last would regard the ether in the planetary spaces, not as a specific imponderable fluid, but as a highly attenuated expansion of air, gas, or other matter, having all the functions of ordinary matter. Whewell has, indeed, published a demonstration that all matter is ponderable, and that imponderable matter is not a conceivable idea. Be this as it may, the diversity of opinion on this point shows the difficulty the mind finds in departing from the truths of phenomena to the uncertainties of hypothesis; but if hypothesis be justifiable, which it is only on the ground of absolute necessity to link together, and render conventionally intelligible, certain undoubted, undeniable facts, which have been associated together under the terms electricity, magnetism, &c.—how difficult and dangerous it must be when the facts which it seeks to associate are denied by the mass of thinking men, when they are confessed to be mysterious and irregular by their most strenuous advocates, each of whom differs, in many respects, as to these facts!

These difficulties have by no means been conquered by Mr Townshend. At p. 11, he objects to this mode of theorizing, in the following strong terms:—

"A certain school of German writers especially have theorized on our subject, after the false method of explaining one class of phenomena in nature by its fancied resemblance to another. Wishing, perhaps, to avoid the error of the spiritualists, who solve the problem in debate by the power of the soul alone, they have ransacked the material world for analogies to mesmerism, till the mind itself has been endued with its affinities and its poles. Such attempts as these have done the greatest disservice to the cause we advocate. They submit it to a wrong test. It is as if the laws of light should be applied to a question in acoustics. It is as if we should expect to find in a foreign kingdom the laws and customs of our own."—(P. 11.)

And yet, in the subsequent parts of his book, he asserts mesmerism to be capable of "reflection like light"—to have "the attraction of magnetism"—to be "transferred like heat;" to escape from a point like electricity, and to have the sympathetic undulations of sound!—(Pp. 335, 6, 7, and 8.)

Such general resemblances as the following are given:—-

"We know that electricity is capable of all that modification in its action which our case demands. Sometimes its effects are sudden and energetic; sometimes of indefinite and uninterrupted continuance. It is 'capable of moving with various degrees of facility through the pores or even the substance of matter;' and is not impeded in its action by the intervention of any substance whatever, provided it be not in itself in an electric state. This capacity of varied action and of pervading influence, has already been shown to characterize the mesmeric medium."—(P. 335.)

Why, what is here stated of electricity, may be said of heat, of light, of any force, and its moving through the pores may be denied as easily as asserted; by many it is thought to be a molecular polarization, and not a transmission.

Zinc and silver are said (p. 237) to "produce a taste resulting from the galvanic concussion, and not from any actual flavour." This is incorrect; zinc and silver produce a taste when in voltaic communication, because they decompose the saliva, and eliminate acid and alkaline constituents.

Further on it is said, (p. 237,) "A spark drawn by means of a pointed metal from the nose of a person charged with electricity, will give him the sensation of smelling a phosphoric odour." This is also an erroneous assumption; the electric spark, in passing through the atmosphere, combines its constituents, and forms nitrous acid. This has a pungent smell; probably there are some other physical changes wrought upon the constituents of the atmosphere by the electric spark, which are now objects of anxious enquiry to natural philosophers; yet none of them have any doubt that the electric smell is the result of a physical or chemical action of the spark, by which either the air is decomposed, or fine portions of metal carried off, or both. So again—

"The electric medium is a far more swift and subtle messenger of vision than is the luminous ether. 'A wheel revolving with celerity sufficient to render its spokes invisible, when illuminated by a flash of lightning, is seen for an instant with all its spokes distinct, as if it were in a state of absolute repose, because, however rapid the motion may be, the light has already come and ceased before the wheel has had time to turn through a sensible space.' Again, some ingenious experiments, by Professor Wheatstone, demonstrate to a certainty, that the speed of the electric fluid much surpasses the velocity of light. It is, therefore, a different medium; yet can it serve for all the purposes of vision, and even in a superior manner. After hearing these things, shall we start at the notion of mesmeric sensation being conveyed through another medium than that in ordinary action? Even should the sleep-waker perceive the most distant objects, (as some are said to have done,) can we, from the moment a means of communication is hinted to us, be so much amazed? If his perception be more vivid, there seems to be an efficient cause in his abjuring the grosser media for such as are more swift and subtle."—(P. 272.)

The electric medium is not a messenger of vision. To call the light produced by the electric spark electricity, would be the same as to call magnetism electricity, heat electricity, motion electricity—for all these are produced by it, and it by them. All modes of force are capable of producing the other phenomenal effects of force. It is an obvious fallacy to call the medium which transmits electric light, an electric medium; this, if carried out, would overthrow natural as well as conventional divisions, would subvert "the pales and forts of reason."

Mr Townshend, accustomed to metaphysical abstractions, shows, in these and many other instances, a want of acquaintance with physical science, and entirely fails when he bases his reasoning upon it. Many of the arguments of Mr Townshend are of such a transcendental nature, that we fear, should we attempt to follow them, our readers would lose their clairvoyance in the mist of metaphysical speculation. The following will give a fair specimen of the conclusion to which such reasoning tends:—

"Indeed, if we lay to heart the deceptiveness and mutability of all the external species of matter, at the same time considering that we have no reason to deem it capable of change in its ultimate and imperceptible particles; if, also, we reflect, that whatever is not palpable in itself is yet indicated by its effects, forces us on pure reason by withdrawing at once the aid and the illusion of our external senses, we shall perhaps come to the conclusion that the Invisible is the only true, exclaiming, with the old Latinist, 'Invisibilia non decipiunt.'"—(P. 355.)

And yet the facts of mesmerism are to be judged of by the very senses which mesmerism proves to be so fallacious. It is because we see that E—— A—— reads when the book is presented to the back of his hand, that we are to believe that he does not perceive with the usual organs. Upon the rule which the author adopts, that "the invisible is the only true," we cannot rely upon our deceptive organs and should disbelieve mesmerism because we see it.

To analyse, in detail, the hypotheses of Mr Townshend would be quite impossible in our limited space. We might, indeed, adopt method sometimes used in controversial writing, and string together a parallel column of minor contradictions. This would however, not only be totally devoid of interest to the reader, but is not the object we have in view. We seek not for critical errors or inconsistencies, but merely to examine if there be any broad lines of truth or probability in his theory. It is summed up as follows:—

"The real nature of vision is as shut to the vulgar as the mesmeric mode of sight is to the learned.

"By the eye we appreciate light and colour only: the rest is an operation of the judgment.

"Viewed metaphysically, seeing is but a particular kind of knowledge: viewed physically, seeing consists in certain nervous motions, responsive to the motions of a medium. That medium, in our ordinary condition, is light, the action of which seems cut off and intercepted in the case of mesmeric vision.

"When, therefore, we hear that a mesmerised person has correctly seen an object through obstacles which to us appear opaque, we, conceiving no means of communication between the person and the object, exclaim that the laws of nature have been violated. But, in all cases where information is conveyed through interrupted spaces, show but the means of communication, and astonishment ceases.

"When we know that there is a medium permeating, in one or other of its forms, all substances whatever, and that this medium is eminently capable of exciting sensations of sight; and when we take this in conjunction with a heightened sensibility in the percipient person, rendering him aware of impulses whereof we are not cognisant, we are no longer inclined to deny a fact or suppose a miracle.

"Finally, all sensation has but one principle. All that is required for its production is, that objects should be brought into a certain relation with us by something intermediate; and this is effected by the impulsions of certain media upon nerves, the last changes in which are the immediate forerunners of completed sensation."—(P. 279.)

In short, we think we do not unfairly express the author's theory in the following query. As the application of the highest human powers (those of Newton, for instance) have resolved the transmission of light to the sensorium into the vibrations of an all-pervading ether, what is more probable than that a similar ethereal medium may convey sensations of objects through other channels? This may be, but another important ingredient is wanting, viz. organization, or definite molecular arrangement. Prick the eye, and, by the resulting morbid derangement, change the molecular arrangement of its particles, and vision is destroyed; pulverise the glass through which you look, and it is no longer transparent. The ether (if there be an ether) in the pores of these substances, can only convey correct impressions when these particles have a definite arrangement; but the mesmeric ether is dependent upon no such necessity. Density and tenacity, opacity and transparency, homogeneous or heterogeneous bodies, are all equally penetrable. And what is more strange, the mesmeric ether conveys correct, and not distorted impressions. The same perception of form which is conveyed through air, is convoyed through the cover of a book, through the bones of the skull, or the muscles of the stomach. And, still more extraordinary, this impression is identical as to the mental idea it conveys with that conveyed in the normal manner through the eye. The mesmeric ether has, therefore, not only the power of conveying impressions, but of preserving their continuity through any impediment. The formal impressions of a chair or table, which are conveyed by ordinary vision in right lines to the retina, if these lines be distorted by any intervening want of uniformity in the matter, are proportionally distorted. Let striæ of glass of different density intervene in an optical lens, and the objects are distorted; increase the number of striæ, the object is more imperfect; and carry the molecular derangement further, opacity is the result. Transparency and opacity, then, viewed apart from all hypotheses, resolve themselves into organization or molecular arrangement. Yet, by the mesmeric medium, a chair or table is conveyed to the recipient in its distinct form, or, what amounts to the same thing for the argument of conformity, they give to the mind distinct ideas of these objects. If, then, there be a mesmeric medium, which, being a purely hypothetic creation, cannot be disproved, its requisites must be so totally at variance with the requisites of ordinary ethereal media, that none of the rules which can be applied to this can be applied to that. The arguments of Mr Townshend depend on analogy, where there is no analogy.

Many of the objects of vision, all indeed by which reading is effected, are purposely constructed to suit the peculiar organization of the eye—they are artifices specially appropriated to given sensations; thus black letters are printed on white paper, because experience has told us that black reflects no light, while white reflects all the incident light. If we wish to read by another sense, we adapt our object to such a sense; thus, for those who read by the finger, raised letters are prepared, differing from the matrix in position but not in colour; if we read by the ear, we address it by sounds and not by forms or colours; and it would be far from impracticable to read by smell or taste, by associating given odours or given tastes with given ideas.

In all this, however, each sense requires a peculiar education and long training—it is only by constant association of the word table with the thing table, that we connect the two ideas; but mesmeric clairvoyance not only conveys things as things in all their proper forms and colours, (p. 164,) without the intervention of the usual senses, but it also dispenses with education or association, or instantly adapts to a new sense the education hitherto specially and only adapted to another.

Thus the mesmeric medium should, and does, according to Mr Townshend, (pp. 97, 99, 101,) convey to the person accustomed to read by the eye, ideas and perceptions which he has hitherto associated with the sight—to him accustomed to read by touch, ideas associated with touch—and so of the rest, and that not of sight or touch of the object itself, but of a mere arbitrary symbol of the object.

Table of five letters or forms—table of two sounds, bearing no resemblance to these letters or forms, or to the thing—table but a mere conventional substitute for the purpose of human convenience, yet by the all-potent mesmeric medium, for which they have not been previously framed, are definitely conveyed, and produce the require perception and the required association.

We trust we need go no further to show that mesmeric clairvoyance has, at all events, no conformity with general experience; and that, if it be true, the proofs of its truth cannot be based on its analogy with other sensations. To sum up our arguments, we say—1st, That without undervaluing testimony, mesmeric clairvoyance is not sufficiently proved by competent witnesses to be admitted as fact: 2d, The reasoning in support of it is insufficient, and, in most cases, fallacious.

Perhaps the best arguments employed by Mr Townshend in favour of the possibility of clairvoyance, are the authenticated cases of normal sleepwalking; these have been very little examined, but appear, in one respect, strikingly to differ from mesmeric coma. The eyes of the somnambulist are said to be open, and therefore there is every optical power of vision, and an increase of ordinary visual perception is all that is requisite. The acts performed by the sleepwalker are, moreover, generally those to which he is habitually accustomed; and, when this is not the case, he fails, as many disastrous accidents have too fatally testified.

At the close of Mr Townshend's book is a short appendix, containing some testimonials to the verity of mesmeric effects. Several of these are anonymous, and the value of their authority cannot therefore be judged of. Others are testimonies to mesmeric effects produced upon the patients, E—— A—— or Anna M——. None of these are from persons of very high authority; and they are, certainly, not such as would induce us to rest our faith upon them. We grant to them their full right to be convinced; but their testimony is not of sufficient force to produce conviction in others. The two last testimonials, however, are of a very different character. One of these is by Professor Agassiz, and the other by Signor Ranieri of Naples. Both these are testimonials, not to any effect produced upon an accustomed patient, but upon the testifiers themselves; and the former, coming from a man of high distinction, and accustomed to physical research, is undoubtedly of great weight. We therefore give it in full.

"Desirous to know what to think of mesmerism, I for a long time sought for an opportunity of making some experiments in regard to it upon myself, so as to avoid the doubts which might arise on the nature of the sensations which we have heard described by mesmerised persons. M. Desor, yesterday, in a visit which he made to Berne, invited Mr Townshend, who had previously mesmerised him, to accompany him to Neufchatel, and try to mesmerise me. These gentlemen arrived here with the evening courier, and informed me of their arrival. At eight o'clock I went to them. We continued at supper till half past nine o'clock, and about ten o'clock Mr Townshend commenced operating upon me. While we sat opposite to one another, he, in the first place, only took hold of my hands, and looked at me fixedly. I was firmly resolved to arrive at a knowledge of the truth, whatever it might be; and therefore, the moment I saw him endeavouring to exert an action upon me, I silently addressed the Author of all things, beseeching him to give me power to resist the influence, and to be conscientious in regard to myself, as well as in regard to the facts. I then fixed my eyes upon Mr Townshend, attentive to whatever passed. I was in very suitable circumstances; the hour being early, and one at which I was in the habit of studying, was far from disposing me to sleep. I was sufficiently master of myself to experience no emotion, and to repress all flights of imagination, even if I had been less calm; accordingly it was a long time before I felt any effect from the presence of Mr Townshend opposite me. However, after at least a quarter of an hour, I felt a sensation of a current through all my limbs, and from that moment my eyelids grew heavy. I then saw Mr Townshend extend his hands before my eyes, as if he were about to plunge his fingers into them; and then make different circular movements around my eyes, which caused my eyelids to become still heavier. I had the idea that he was endeavouring to make me close my eyes; and yet it was not as if some one had threatened my eyes, and, in the waking state, I had closed them to prevent him. It was an irresistible heaviness of the lids, which compelled me to shut them, and by degrees I found that I had no longer the power of keeping them open; but did not the less retain my consciousness of what was going on around me; so that I heard M. Desor speak to Mr Townshend, understood what they said, and heard what questions they asked me, just as if I had been awake; but I had not the power of answering. I endeavoured in vain several times to do so; and when I succeeded, I perceived that I was passing out of the state of torpor in which I had been, and which was rather agreeable than painful.

"In this state I heard the watchman cry ten o'clock; then I heard it strike a quarter past; but afterwards I fell into a deeper sleep, although I never entirely lost my consciousness. It appeared to me that Mr Townshend was endeavouring to put me into a sound sleep; my movements seemed under his control, for I wished several times to change the position of my arms, but had not sufficient power to do it, or even really to will it; while I felt my head carried to the right or left shoulder, and backwards or forwards, without wishing it; and, indeed, in spite of the resistance which I endeavoured to oppose, and this happened several times.

"I experienced at the same time a feeling of great pleasure in giving way to the attraction, which dragged me sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other; then a kind of surprise on feeling my head fall into Mr Townshend's hand, who appeared to me from that time to be the cause of the attraction. To his enquiry if I were well, and what I felt? I found I could not answer, but I smiled; I felt that my features expanded in spite of my resistance; I was inwardly confused at experiencing pleasure from an influence which was mysterious to me. From this moment I wished to wake, and was less at my ease; and yet on Mr Townshend asking me, whether I wished to be awakened, I made a hesitating movement with my shoulders. Mr Townshend then repeated some frictions, which increased my sleep; yet I was always conscious of what was passing around me. He then asked me, if I wished to become lucid, at the same time continuing, as I felt, the frictions from the face to the arms. I then experienced an indescribable sensation of delight, and for an instant saw before me rays of dazzling light, which instantly disappeared. I was then inwardly sorrowful at this state being prolonged—it appeared to me that enough had been done with me; I wished to awake, but could not, yet when Mr Townshend and M. Desor spoke, I heard them. I also heard the clock, and the watchman cry, but I did not know what hour he cried. Mr Townshend then presented his watch to me, and asked if I could see the time, and if I saw him; but I could distinguish nothing. I heard the clock strike the quarter, but could not get out of my sleepy state. Mr Townshend then woke me with some rapid transverse movements from the middle of the face outwards, which instantly caused my eyes to open, and at the same time I got up, saying to him, 'I thank you.' It was a quarter past eleven. He then told me, and M. Desor repeated the same thing, that the only fact which had satisfied them that I was in a state of mesmeric sleep, was the facility with which my head followed all the movements of his hand, although he did not touch me, and the pleasure which I appeared to feel at the moment when, after several repetitions of friction, he thus moved my head at pleasure in all directions."—(P. 385 to 388.)

This we think a most interesting and valuable document, and the best key we have ever seen to the facts of mesmerism. It is the production of a resolute, religious, and philosophic mind, and bears all the impress of truth; it proves that there are facts worthy of the most careful investigation—it proves a power of inducing a comatose or sleep-waking state—an influence exercised by one mind over another—and it goes far to prove a physical attraction subsisting between two persons in mesmeric relation. But, on the other hand, how strikingly do the phenomena here described differ from those exhibited by the other patients. In those cases, to use the general proposition of Mr Townshend, "the sleep-waker seems incapable of analysing his new sensations while they last, still more of remembering them when they are over. The state of mesmerism is to him as death."—(P. 156.) Here, on the other hand, the patient analyses all the sensations he experienced, and recollects them when they are over; here, notwithstanding the efforts of the mesmeriser, the production of the mesmeric effect, and no resistance on the part of the mesmerisee, the latter does not become clairvoyant; "je ne distinguais rien," are the emphatic words of Professor Agassiz.

Precisely similar is the testimony of Signor Ranieri, the historian—

Having been mesmerised by my honourable friend Mr Hare Townshend, I will simply describe the phenomena which I experienced before, during, and after my mesmerisation. Mr Townshend commenced by making me sit upon a sofa, he sat upon a chair opposite me, and keeping my hands in his, placed them on my knees. He looked at me fixedly, and from time to time let go my hands, and placed the points of his fingers in a straight line opposite my eyes, at an inch, I should think, from my pupils; then, describing a kind of ellipse, he brought his hands down again upon mine. After he had moved his hands thus alternately from my eyes to my knees for ten minutes, I felt an irresistible desire to close my eyelids. I continued, nevertheless, to hear his voice, and that of my sister, who was in the same room. Whenever they put questions to me, I always answered him correctly; but the whole of my muscular system was in a state of peculiar weakness, and of almost perfect disobedience to my will; and, consequently, the pronunciation of the words with which I wished to answer had become extremely difficult.

"Whilst I experienced to a certain point the effects of sleep, not only was I not a stranger to all that was passing around me, but I even took more than usual interest in it. All my conceptions were more rapid; I experienced nervous startings to which I am not accustomed; in short, my whole nervous system was in a state of perfect exaltation, and appeared to have acquired all the superabundance of power which the muscular system had lost.

"The following are the principal phenomena which I was able to feel distinctly. Mr Townshend did not fail to ask me occasionally if I could see him or my sister without opening my eyelids; but this was always impossible, and all that I could say I had seen was a glimmering of light, interrupted by the black and confused images of the objects presented to me; a light which appeared to me a little less clear than that which we commonly see when we shut the eyelids opposite the sun or a candle.

"Mr Townshend at last determined to demesmerise me. He began to make elliptical movements with his hands, the reverse of those which he had made at the commencement; I could now open my eyes without any kind of effort, my whole muscular system became perfectly obedient to my will; I was able to get up, and was perfectly awake; but I remained nearly an hour in a kind of stupefaction very similar to that which sometimes attacks me in the mornings, if I rise two or three hours later than usual."—(P. 388 to 390.)

Similar, as to the general conclusions, are the reports of the French Academy and the testimonies of all rigorous and well-conducted scientific examination. These testimonies apply to facts which it is the duty of those experimentalists and physiologists, who have time and opportunity at their disposal, fairly to investigate.

The insensibility to pain, and to the effects of the galvanic shock, are also within the limits of the credible—and the latter is the more easy of proof, as being incapable of simulation. As we stated at the commencement, so we repeat here; mesmerism has been too little investigated by competent persons, and is too much mystified by charlatanism, to enable us accurately to define the limits of the true and false, far less to predict what may be the discoveries to which it may lead. With regard to the facts of clairvoyance, we are at present entirely incredulous. Mr Townshend says, p. 91—

"Let, then, body after body of learned men deny the phenomena of mesmerism, and logically disprove their existence; an appeal may ever, and at any moment, be made to the proof by experiment; and even should experiment itself fail a thousand times, the success of the thousandth and first trial would justify further examination. Till the authority of observation can be wholly set aside, the subject of our enquiry can never be said to have undergone its final ostracism."

This is certainly a strong proposition; nevertheless it is with the hope that observation may be directed to the facts of mesmerism, that we have written the preceding pages. In reasoning on a subject, we can use only those lights which experience has given us. The efficacy of logical disproof, somewhat contemptuously treated by Mr Townshend in the above passage, is yet fully vindicated by the latter half of the book itself, which is an endeavour, logically, to bring home mesmerism to the understanding of men of experience. It is vain to make light of logic, when the parties who set it at nought are themselves obliged to use it to prove its own worthlessness. You must not exalt reason, and we will give you the reason why—this cuts their own ground from under them. We so far agree with the last quoted sentence, as to admit that, when experiments fairly tried by competent parties have and do succeed, mesmerism will be established—hitherto they have not succeeded. The alleged proofs are not brought home to the observation of cautious, thinking men; and reason, thus at once derided and appealed to, is unsatisfied. Time "may bring in its revenges," may show things which would be to us marvellous; and we deny no future possibilities. At present, we admit some very curious phenomena, which we would willingly see further examined; but we are unconvinced of those facts of mesmerism enounced by its professors, which wholly contradict our previous experience. Upon what we consider the only safe grounds for the general admission of newly asserted facts, the evidence in support of these should more than counterpoise the evidence for their rejection. Up to the present time, balancing, as we have endeavoured to do, impartially, the evidence in favour of clairvoyance, and the preternatural powers of mesmerism, against those of an opposite tendency, the former seems to us inordinately outweighed. On the other hand, the production, by external influence, either of absolute coma or of sleep-waking, whether resulting from imagination in the patient, or from an effort of the will on the part of the mesmeriser, or from both conjointly, has been too lightly estimated and too little examined. This alone is in itself an effect so novel, so mysterious, and apparently so connected with the mainsprings of sentient existence, as to deserve and demand a rigorous, impartial, and persevering scrutiny.

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Since this article was written, the letters of Miss Martineau have appeared. Had these been published earlier, we should undoubtedly have noticed them at some length; they have not, however, induced us to alter any thing we have written; they have, indeed, confirmed one remark made above. The effects described by Miss Martineau as produced upon herself, are credible and not preternatural, while the second-sight of the girl J—— is preternatural and not credible; i. e. not credible as preternatural, otherwise easily explicable.

In this, as in every mesmeric case, the marvellous effects are developed by the uneducated—the most easily deceived, and the most ready to be deceivers.

The clairvoyant writers have greatly the advantage of the sceptics in one respect, viz. the public interest of their communications. Every one reads the description of new marvels, few care to examine the arguments in contravention of them.

"Pol, me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait, cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error."

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ÆSTHETICS OF DRESS.