directly over my head. This, and many other incidents, which have happened in my presence, satisfies me that impenetrable as the darkness is to us, we are distinctly visible to the spirits.

the

One of my correspondents says. "Mr. Marshall, it appears, is the real medium in this case," and there is evidently a lingering suspicion that Mr. Marshall has something more than mediumship to do with these oral exhibitions. I believe, as I have been told by the Marshalls themselves, that Mr. Marshall's presence is necessary for obtaining strong and continuous oral power during a sitting, which frequently occupies two hours, but I have now satisfied myself that the voice can be obtained without his presence at all. I have reason, too, from what I hear, to believe that there are other mediums in London who are now obtaining these oral communications, and I am of opinion that every medium for physical manifestations can, under suitable conditions, get the voices with more or less power; but, so far, Marshalls, I believe, are far the best. At a recent visit to them, I asked the elder Mrs. Marshall, who does not like the dark séances, and who had not sat at any at which I had been present, to accompany the younger Mrs. Marshall and me to the dark room. We three only were present. I invited John to speak to me. Within a minute he addressed me with the usual form of greeting, and continued to talk for several minutes. The voice was as strong, at first, and as clear as I ever heard it. It was precisely the same tone-it was, in fact, the very same voice. I expressed to him my surprise at this, and he said, "Oh, Marshall and his mother are the same, you know; but I can do better with him," then dropping his tone, and, as I believe, feigning a weakness to propitiate Mr. Marshall, who appeared piqued at my making this experiment, John said, in a husky voice, "I can't keep up; let Marshall come in."

It is from the result of this experiment that I now think we are entering on a new phase, that spirits speaking will be a common manifestation,-that we shall soon obtain these voices through many mediums, and perhaps to realise the promises which have been made to me several times during the past three or four years, and doubtless to others, by spirit messages through the alphabet, "We will walk with you and talk with you as when on earth."

John King, too, has said that he will give us a surprise some day soon. "We expect to be able," he said, " to shew ourselves and to talk to you." "What prevents you doing so now?" I have asked. "We have not found the exact conditions, but we shall : I am always trying." One evening when 33 persons were present, and John was bouncing about from one to another in a very excited state, he suddenly said, "Strike a light! strike

a light!" I lighted a candle, and then asked him to rap three times when he wished it to be extinguished. In a few minutes he did so, and I enquired why he wanted the light in such haste. "The power," he said, "was becoming too strong for me to control, and I was afraid of mischief."

I tried to get some further information at that time, and could not; but subsequently, when alone with the mediums, I asked John to explain that circumstance. He said, "We gather the electric effusion which passes from persons around us, and form a body, which is invisible to you, but visible to us, and we occupy this body. Sometimes we can only make part of a body, and then the manifestations are not so strong. Now, my object is to make the body visible to you, and I try many experiments, which don't always succeed, and the electric power then becomes too strong for my control." John, as I have before said, is a very erratic sort of personage, and it is almost impossible to hold him to any serious point. He flies off at a tangent, and, instead of giving a direct answer, rallies you in a jocular way with marvellous quickness of repartee, and frequently quotes pertinent passages from Shakespeare. The above is the most connected explanation I have been able to get from him. In answer to the question why other spirits did not speak through these mediums, he said, "All spirits are not mediums! You are not a medium, and cannot receive a message! They are not mediums, and cannot give one!" This, of course, is not a complete and satisfactory answer, as there must be multitudes of spirits who possess this condition, supposing that conditions are as necessary to the spirit as to us. I rather incline to the belief that it is only one class of spirits who can use one class of earthly mediums.

I have long ceased to regard the ordinary messages received through mediums who get powerful physical manifestations, and I never allow such communications to influence my actions in any way. But I see the value and importance of all manifestations, and the necessity of collecting the facts and classifying them; they are evidently tending to very im tant results which the scientific world cannot much longe stand. They prove beyond doubt that there is n yet recognized by natural philosophy, in active around us, and that this force is accompanied which from the evidence we are justified in beli from, and is exercised by, the living denizen world, and that thus the close connection of th is shown. It is vain and foolish to deny the fo is overwhelming, and the student of natural fore must be prepared to accept and deal y

he may. The voices proceeding from invisible intelligent entities is, in my belief, but the introduction to greater unfoldings of this nature. The frequent, now almost daily, evidence that material substances can pass through any material barrier is now known to many. The readers of this Magazine have seen so many statements made by competent witnesses of this seemingly impossible phenomenon, that I feel that further evidence upon the point is unnecessary, for them, at least; but I have witnessed something recently which strengthens my conviction that the law of matter is over-ridden by spirit power, and I think it useful to record the

INCIDENTS AT ANOTHER SEANCE WITH MISS NICHOLL.

Six persons were present, whose names can be given, if necessary. We sat, as usual, round a circular drawing room table, above which a glass chandelier was suspended.

The light being extinguished, the first movement made by the invisible operators was to place a small work-table with three legs, upon the large table; this was done without noise, and without touching any of the party or the chandelier, though there was but a space of five or six inches left between it and the top of this small table.

The communications generally through Miss Nicholl's mediumship are made by rapping sounds, which, however, with her are comparatively feeble, and this table it appeared was placed in that position to make the raps with more distinctness. It tilted, no one touching it, and rapped with one of its legs to the letters of the alphabet. Seated, as I was, opposite to Miss Nicholl, the small table formed a barrier to that extent between us. I said to the spirits, "Please to give me something substantial that I can carry away with me, will you?" The leg rapped three times, signifying "Yes." Miss Nicholl added, "Give him one of the most precious things in life."

In an instant, a thick round of a fresh loaf of bread was put into my hands. There was no bread in the room, as far as any of us, knew before we sat to the table, and, of course, no one moved from their seats. I pressed for something more. The light was called for immediately, and we found a fine apple, of a very unusual size in the centre of the table, and something was seen to fall, as if from the ceiling, just behind my chair. proved to be a remarkably beautiful specimen of pink heather in full flower, thirteen inches long, quite fresh, and the stem showed that it had been but that moment gathered by breaking, not by cutting it off.

It

We all examined the apple, and when the light was again extinguished, I placed it on the table, and said, "Now that apple

is large enough for all of us; suppose you cut it up in six equal parts, and give a piece to each. Can you cut it up?" "Yes."

We then heard a crisp cut as if a sharp knife had passed quickly through the apple, then a second, and a third cut, and a piece of it was given to each of five of the party. Upon collecting and examining the pieces, we found that my request had not been literally complied with; it was not cut into six equal parts, but into five unequal parts, presenting the appearance of the blocks of a Chinese puzzle. It required a good deal of ingenuity to put them together again, which we only effected after several trials. Now I ask any sceptic to ponder these facts, and, more especially, the production and the cutting of the apple.

No one knew that I should ask for the apple to be cut up. It is possible that had there been a knife in the room, which there was not, and, had we all fallen asleep for a minute or two, the apple might have been cut up without detection by an expert hand into six pieces, as I had requested; but I am satisfied that no living man could have cut up an apple in the dark in the ingenious way this was cut. It was an optical delusion; we were all psychologized; the thing did not really occur, though we believed it did; will be among the foolish attempts at explaining this and similar phenomena. But the answer in this case is, that I carried the apple away with me, and, together with the heather, placed it under a glass shade, where it still remains.

Many other equally strange facts which have recently occurred through Miss Nicholl's mediumship have been related to me, and one by a gentleman who sat next to me on the evening when the incident I have just alluded to took place. This gentleman said he had up to within a few days been a great sceptic. "I had been present," he said, "at two séances when fruit and flowers had been brought to us, but I found it impossible to accept the evidence. There were persons present whom I did not know, and I was sure there must be collusion among some of them. On the third evening, I became greatly excited, and I said I would forfeit 100 guineas if Miss Nicholl could prove to me the genuineness of the phenomena upon my own conditions, which were that she should accompany me alone into the small room adjoining, and allow me to hold her hands. She consented, (though she would not hear of any forfeit) and, taking our seats at a small table, I took her hands in mine, and then challenged the invisibles to produce any kind of fruit. In an instant or two I heard something fall upon the table, as if it had come from the ceiling, and there, to my astonishment, I found a bunch of grapes! This was conclusive-the test was complete-and I am now a confirmed believer in the manifestations."

NEW SPIRIT MANIFESTATIONS.

WE have had within the last few weeks some very remarkable manifestations of spiritual presence and power, and I will render the account of what occurred as briefly as the recording of a series of truly characteristic phenomena will permit. The medium present at the séances was Mr. D. D. Home.

At

The first group of the manifestations (I use the term "group" to mark the characteristic difference of the phenomena on each occasion) occurred at a friend's house at Great Malvern. Those present had only incidentally met, and owing to a prohibition being laid upon Mr. Home by his medical man against trying his strength, no séance was attemped. I name this as characteristic. Raps in different parts of the room, and the movement of the furniture, however, soon told of the presence of the invisibles. The library in which the party had met communicated with the hall, and the door having been left half open, a broad stream of light from the burners of the gas lamp lit up the room. the suggestion of one of the party, the candles were removed. The rapping which had till then been heard in different parts of the room, suddenly made a pause, and then the unusual phenomenon of the appearance of spirit-forms manifested itself. The opening of the half-closed door was suddenly darkened by an invisible agency, the room becoming pitch dark. Then the wall opposite became illumined, the library being now lit up by a luminous element, for it cannot be described otherwise. Between those present and the opposite and now illumined wall two spirit-forms were seen, their shadowy outline on the wall well defined. The forms moved to and fro. They made an effort to speak; the articulation, however, was too imperfect to permit of the meaning of the words being understood. The darkening which had obscured the half-closed door was then removed, and the broad light from the hall lamp reappeared, looking quite dim in comparison with the luminous brilliancy of the light that had passed away. Again the room became darkened, then illumined, and a colossal head and shoulders appeared to rise from the floor, visible only by the shadow it cast upon the illumined wall. What added to the interest was the apparent darkening and lighting up of the room at will, and that repeatedly, the library door remaining half open all the while. The time occupied by these phenomena was perhaps five to ten minutes, the manifestations terminating quite abruptly.