More weight may justly be given to another consideration: to the exaggerations inseparable from enthusiasm, and the inaccuracies into which inexperienced observers must ever fall. As to the necessity of making large allowance for these, I entirely agree with Calmeil and De Gasparin. But let the allowance made for such errors be more or less, it cannot extend to an absolute denial of the chief phenomena, unless we are prepared to follow Hume in his assertion that what is contrary to our experience can be proved by no evidence of testimony whatever,—and that, though we have here nothing, save the marvellous character of the events, to oppose to the cloud of witnesses who attest them, that alone, in the eyes of reasonable people, should be regarded as a sufficient refutation.[64]
The mental and psychological phenomena, only less marvellous than the physical because we have seen more of their like, will, on that account, be more readily received.
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.
III.
It is among the sibylline secrets which lie mysteriously between you and me, O reader, that these papers, besides their public aspect, have a private one proper to the bosom of mine own particular family.
They are not merely an ex post facto protest in regard to that carpet and parlor of celebrated memory, but they are forth-looking towards other homes that may yet arise near us.
For, among my other confidences, you may recollect I stated to you that our Marianne was busy in those interesting cares and details which relate to the preparing and ordering of another dwelling.
Now, when any such matter is going on in a family, I have observed that every feminine instinct is in a state of fluttering vitality,—every woman, old or young, is alive with womanliness to the tips of her fingers; and it becomes us of the other sex, however consciously respected, to walk softly, and put forth our sentiments discreetly and with due reverence for the mysterious powers that reign in the feminine breast.