ew 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.

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 whic