This lady began the modern ‘spiritualism’ when scarcely older than Mr. Mompesson’s ‘two modest little girls,’ and was accompanied by phenomena like those of Tedworth.  But, in Mrs. Sidgwick’s presence the phenomena were of the most meagre; and the reasoning faculties of the mind decline to accept them as other than perfectly normal.  The society tried Mr. Eglinton, who once was ‘levitated’ in the presence of Mr. Kellar, the American conjurer, who has publicly described feats like those of the gentleman’s butler. {108b} But, after his dealings with the society, Mr. Eglinton has left the scene. {108c} The late Mr. Davey also produced results like Mr. Eglinton’s by confessed conjuring.

Mr. Myers concludes that ’it does not seem worth while, as a rule, to examine the testimony to physical marvels occurring in the presence of professional mediums’.  He therefore collects evidence in the article quoted, for physical marvels occurring where there is no paid medium.  Here, as in the business of levitation, the interest of the anthropologist and mythologist lies in the uniformity and identity of narratives from all countries, climates, and ages.  Among the earliest rappings with which we chance to be familiar are those reported by Froissart in the case of the spirit Orthon, in the fourteenth century.  The tale had become almost a fabliau, but any one who reads the amusing chapter will see that it is based on a belief in disturbances like those familiar to Glanvill and the Misses Fox.  Cieza de Leon (1549) in the passage already quoted, where he describes the levitated Cacique of Pirza in Popyan, adds that ‘the Christians saw stones falling from the air’ (as in the Greatrakes tale of the Youghal witch), and declares that, ’when the chief was sitting with a glass of liquor before him, the Christians saw the glass raised up in the air and put down empty, and a short time afterwards the wine was again poured into the cup from the air’.  Mr. Home once equalled this marvel, {109a} and Ibn Batuta reports similar occurrences, earlier, at the court of the King of Delhi.  There is another case in Histoire Prodigieuse d’une jeune Fille agitee d’un Esprit fantastique et invisible. {109b} A bourgeois of Bonneval was beset by a rapping rattle of a sprite.  ’At dinner, when he would lay his hand on a trencher, it was carried off elsewhere, and the wineglass, when he was about drinking, was snatched from his hand.’  So Mr. Wesley’s trencher was set spinning on the table, when nobody touched it!  In such affairs we may have the origin of the story of the Harpies at the court of Phineus.

In China, Mr. Dennys tells how ’food placed on the table vanished mysteriously, and many of the curious phenomena attributed to ghostly interference took place,’ so that the householder was driven from house to house, and finally into a temple, in 1874, and all this after the death of a favourite but aggrieved monkey! {110a} ’Throwing down crockery, trampling on the floor, etc.—­such pranks as have attracted attention at home, are not unknown. . . .  I must confess that in China, as elsewhere, these occurrences leave a bona fide impression of the marvellous which can neither be explained nor rejected’. {110b}