imony of a learned American judge,
declaring "the first thing demonstrated to us is that we can commune with
the spirits of the departed; that such communication is through the
instrumentality of persons yet living; that the fact of mediumship is the
result of physical organization; that the kind of communion is effected
by moral causes; and that the power, like our other faculties, is
possessed in different degrees, and is capable of improvement by
cultivation." But the sect did not prosper. Then came grotesque
indications of spiritual presence. Not content with table-rapping, the
spirits had recourse to all kinds of antics, and the subject of
Spiritualism became more and more distasteful to the intelligent, and
more and more popular with that large class of idle wealthy men and women
who have no healthy occupation, and are always in search of excitement.
The climax was reached when the _Cornhill_ told how Mr. Home floated in
the air, how heavy tables would leap from one end of the room to the
other, how music was produced on accordions, "grand at times, at others
pathetical, at others distant and long-drawn," when those accordions were
held by no mortal hands. "I can state," wrote Dr. Gulley, of Malvern,
"that the record made in the article 'Stranger than Fiction' is in every
particular correct; that the phenomena therein related actually took
place, and moreover that no trick-machinery, sleight of hand, or other
artistic contrivance, produced what we heard and beheld. I am quite as
convinced of this last as I am of the facts themselves." Well might the
Spiritualists crow; had not Robert Owen and Lord Lyndhurst also believed?
Was it not uncharitable to say that they were in their dotage? The
testimony of such men settled everything.

In America, Spiritualism is more prosperous than in England. In the
"Plain Guide to Spiritualism" Mr. Clarke tells us there are in that
country 500 public mediums who receive visitors; more than 50,000 private
ones; 500 books and pamphlets on the subject have been published, and
many of them immensely circulated; there are 500 public speakers and
lecturers on it, and more than 1000 occasional ones. There are nearly
2000 places for public circles, conferences, or lectures, and in many
places flourishing public schools. The decided believers are 2,000,000,
the nominal ones nearly 5,000,000; on the globe itself it is calculated
there are 20,000,000 supposed to recognise the fact of