A story is told of Titus by the rabbis:  he heard a gnawing sound at his brain; it caused him great pain.  He heard a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, and the gnawing ceased.  The blacksmith was paid to go on hammering in Titus’ neighbourhood.  At the end of a few days the “animal” that gnawed at his brain got indifferent to the hammering, went on gnawing, and Titus died.  His brain was opened, and an animal as big as a sparrow with a beak of iron was found in it.  The truth of this story would be, that some magicians, not especially adroit hypnotists, hammered at Titus’ tympanum.  His nerves, tried by climatic fever—­a great facilitator of hypnotism—­and by debauchery, gave way, and Jerusalem was avenged.

The writer once approached a very eminent Catholic cleric on the subject, hoping that some Freemason who had been victimised by tricks played by hypnotists in Italy might have relieved his conscience to the priests; the writer had been given one clue in the following way.

Two English Freemasons in the writer’s presence had briefly mentioned mesmerism in Italian lodges.  One asking a question as to this being true, the other, who objected to his son becoming a Freemason early, turned the question off; it is possible that he suspected it was the case, but preferred holding his tongue.

Now as these scoundrel hypnotists have, unseen but heard, approached three or four people to the writer’s knowledge, under the pretence of being connected with Freemasonry, it is very possible that they may have induced some of their victims to enter a lodge, and then or before tricked them in different ways.  Indeed, one of the people attacked unsuccessfully had, to the writer’s knowledge, an absurd idea of the exclusiveness of Freemasonry, since he objected to the Prince of Wales making over a poor Freemason’s brief (if that be the proper word to use) for inquiry as to his circumstances to gentlemen who were not Freemasons.  The brief of course contained only the man’s name, and a few ornamental figures:  the man was dead and his widow wanted help.  It is to be wished that some scientific Freemason would study the matter; he would see that the secrecy of Freemasonry, however harmless and venial, affords cover for blackguard hypnotists of this particular and doubtless rare kind.  This secrecy is of course entirely conventional, and could doubtless be altered.  As elsewhere, the people who take an interest in it are not always people with broad and scientific minds, and at the close of the eighteenth century Cagliostro misused it, it is said, for his own purposes.

The writer regrets that a want of scientific study of the subject (it must be remembered that books on hypnotism were rare, and research backward eleven years ago) prevented him from introducing the subject properly to the wise and good Lord Carnarvon.  It must be borne in mind that for audible thought-transfers to lead not only to apparent intercourse—­the answers being put into the recipient’s mouth, as in Mrs. Godfrey’s case—­a pretence of something like Freemasonry is needed.