In “Piccadilly” Oliphant describes a cross appearing to the hero, and the words “live the life” being whispered to him.  He then abandons the young woman he loves to his friend.  Such a course of conduct would certainly be suggested by hypnotists to make a capable man their plaything and tool as was the case with Oliphant.  Obviously a man could live a more beneficial life with a marriage of mutual affection, whilst a poor young woman would, if she married otherwise, be sure to be a sufferer.  Perhaps this fragment was historical.  It would have made the Oliphants’ disaster easier.

A word, a vision, and the mischief is done.  Perhaps poor Captain Lestrange was forced into his unhappy marriage by a similar trick.

The love of power and of bullying is so great, perhaps especially with British and Germans, that this tyranny is not wonderful; were there not an efficient police the Mohawks would soon revive; the infamous cruelty of some brutes is only known to a few doctors.  Envy, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness are shown in these attacks upon people, whose lives were useful and whose characters were high.  Possibly the hope of profit may be sometimes present;—­when this is past and the scoundrels have had their triumph, their persecution is continued, unprofitable though it be; partly to render pursuit more difficult, partly maybe for practice, partly because they have acquired a horrible habit which they cannot get rid of.  Du Potet’s feeling of pride becomes in the bosom of a blackguard wholly evil.  Much interest has been given to Home’s feats:  to his floating outside his window and other extraordinary performances.  His first feat, be it remembered, was to make a rapping stool leap up when it had a Bible on it, and leap all the harder.  Was not this mere tricking action on the observer’s eye and ear?  This was closely paralleled by the rascals about B——­, who made a “work-table, a box on long slender legs,” emit a loud bang.  Home might have done this alone to his aunt, but it possibly was done by a combination of people at B——.

The fact that Home, at least on one occasion, could not do anything when Houdin was near, seems to show that Home relied on an accomplice whom he was unable to conceal from Houdin, and who doubtless was a hypnotist also.

It is a fortunate thing that “spiritualism” and its wonders have invited scientific study.  The tendency to become spiritists is, of course, furthered in many by an uncomfortable belief that without spiritualism a future life is not insured; only the coming again to them of the spirits of the dead assures them that they rise again.

Of course all the heathen ideas of a resurrection were founded on the keen recollection of themselves the defunct have inspired.  Our belief in the Christian revelations is founded on its ethical system, part of which, however, is of course for missionary effort only, but which is the more remarkably connected with previous revelations, not so distinctly reported, to the Jews, and with the history of the world at large.