may make of himself, and which made him take care not to commit himself a second time. But people, you say, continue to remark, 'If scientific men would but examine these things?' In the first place, I have always asserted that scientific men are not the men to decide such questions. They have their prejudices and their theories which disqualify them. They have no instruments to lay hold of spirits; they mock at all their retorts, their galvanic and electrical batteries, and their chemical tests. In all ages the learned have been the opponents of new ideas. They poisoned Socrates, they crucified Christ, they declared him and St. Paul mad. When Newton promulgated the doctrine of specific gravity, they jeered at it; and his biographer says that at the time of his death not forty persons out of England believed in it. When Solomon de Caus, in France, discovered the power of steam, they shut him up in the Bicêtre as a madman. Columbus was declared a madman by the learned men of Spain for asserting that there was a great continent westward. When Franklin sent the account of his identification of lightning with electricity to the Royal Society of London, it refused to print it; and it was not till Dr. Fothergill published the paper that it reached the community at large. In his turn Franklin treated Mesmer as an impostor; and, in fact, we might run over a whole volume of proofs of the total unfitness of scientific men, as a class, to judge of new facts and ideas. And yet numbers of scientific men have embraced Spiritualism. Dr. Hare, mentioned by you, was a great electrician, rated by the Americans little, if any, inferior to Faraday. He did exactly what people now want scientific men to do. He thought Spiritualism a humbug, and went regularly into an inquiry in order to expose it. But it did as it has done in every case that I have heard of, where scientific men have gone candidly and fairly into the examination-after two years of testing and proving, it convinced him of its truth. Dr. Elliotson, a very scientific man, and for years violently opposed to Spiritualism, so soon as he was willing to inquire, became convinced, and now blesses God for the knowledge of it. Dr. Ashburner, his fellow editor of the Zoist, has also long been an avowed Spiritualist. Mr. Alfred Wallace, a scientific man and excellent naturalist, who was on the Amazon with Mr. Bates, has published his conviction of its truth. Sir Charles Wheatstone, some time ago, on seeing some remarkable phenomena in his own house, declared them real. And just now, on the Home and Lyon trial, the public have seen Mr. Varley, a man of firstrate science, the electrician to the Electric and International and the Atlantic Telegraph Companies, come forward and make affidavit of his having investigated the facts of Spiritualism, and found them real. Now, after such cases, why this continual cry

out for examination by scientific men? Scientific men of the first stamp have examined and reported that it is a great fact. Scientific men by the hundred and the thousand have done it, and yet the crowd go on crying for a scientific man. Why? Simply because it is much easier to open their mouths and bleat as sheep do in a flock than exert their minds and their senses. It is time that all this folly had an end. There are now more Spiritualists than would populate Scotland seven times over at its present scale of population; and surely the testimony of such a multitude, including statesmen, philosophers, historians, and scientific men too, is as absolutely decisive as any mortal matter can be. And pray, my good friend, don't trouble yourself that your neighbours call you mad. You are mad in most excellent company. All the great men of all ages who have introduced or accepted new ideas were mad in the eyes of their contemporaries. As I have said, Socrates and Christ and St. Paul were mad; Galileo was mad; De Caus was mad; Thomas Gray, who first advocated railways, was declared by the Edinburgh Review mad as a March hare. They are the illustrious tribe of madmen by whom the world is propelled, widened as by Columbus, and enlightened as by Bacon, Newton, Des Cartes, and the rest of them, who were all declared mad in their turn. And don't be anxious about Spiritualism. From the first moment of its appearance to this it has moved on totally unconcerned and unharmed amidst every species of opposition, misrepresentation, lying, and obstruction, and yet has daily and hourly grown, and spread, and strengthened, as if no such evil influences were assailing it. Like the sun, it has travelled on its course unconscious of the clouds beneath it. Like the ocean, it has rolled its billows over the slimy creatures at its bottom, and dashed its majestic waves over every proud man who dared to tread within its limits. And whence comes this? Obviously, from the hand which is behind it-the hand of the Great Ruler of the Universe. For my part, 'having long perceived this great fact, I have ceased to care what people say or do against Spiritualism; to care who believes or does not believe; who comes into it or stays out; certain that it is as much a part of God's economy of the universe as the light of the sun, and will, therefore, go on and do its work, without our efforts to oppose or advance it.-Yours faithfully,-WM. HOWITT.

say,

"P.S.-I do not enter into the Home and Lyon question. Whatever may be the real merits of that case, Mr. Home, as you is but one small atom in the great system of Spiritualism. Its truth in no degree depends on the individuals who profess it, any more than does Christianity on its individual professors. "Mr. W. Gray, Weaver, Alva."

OCCASIONAL NOTES.

PREDICTION OF DEATH.-CAPTAIN DE MORGAN.

This was

IN the "Evidences of Spiritualism in Modern Works of History and Literature," in our last number, at page 308, it is said, "In 1778, at the taking of Pondicherry, Captain John Fletcher, Captain De Morgan and Lieutenant Bosanquet, each distinctly foretold his own death on mornings of their fate." taken from the Gentleman's Magazine. We have the authority of Professor De Morgan to say that Captain De Morgan was his grandfather, and that it is true, according to family tradition, that he distinctly foretold his death, shortly before it happened, at the siege of Pondicherry, in 1778, as stated. He saw that the sap was improperly exposed to the fire of the besieged, and he represented that to the Chief Engineer, who, however, could see nothing wrong. They went together to the Commanderin-Chief, who naturally sided with the Chief Engineer. Captain De Morgan said that he had nothing left but to make his will; and his head was taken off by a cannon ball in due course. Professor De Morgan supposes that the other officers, Fletcher and Bosanquet, must have been posted in the same part of the sap, and had the same presentiment, and for the same reason. This explanation certainly shews that those officers were in a very perilous position, calculated to impress upon them pretty strongly that they should get killed; but it does not, perhaps, quite clear up the presentiment that they should be killed on that very day.

THE DAVENPORT BROTHERS AND THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL
SOCIETY.

There has been a long correspondence between the secretary of the society and Mr. Cooper, with respect to "a scientific investigation" of the Davenport and Fay phenomena. It ended in a meeting at which a committee was present, who reported that "they had seen nothing which was not capable of easy explanation." We are informed that the séance was decidedly a poor one, and which the Davenports attributed to the extremely zealous scepticism of the committee who clustered round the cabinet, destroying the condition of insulation, to secure which alone the cabinet is used; and worst of all, that they tied the mediums so tightly as to produce considerable pain-the system adopted being to tie the wrists together, and then to wind the cord between the wrists, so as to increase the tension. The committee did not feel the pain, and so they decided the

Davenports did not feel any, and they did not see fit to slacken the cords. These scientific investigations appear to us to be very unscientific, and self-destructive. We hope there will be no more of them.

THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT AND MR. FAY.

These gentlemen are now returning to America after several years' sojourn in Europe, and after having performed some thousands of times in the principal countries of Europe, and having submitted to the strictest investigation by all classes of persons, from Emperors down to conjurors, and roughs of the lowest kind. But all this goes for nothing, whenever some person chooses to awake from his lethargy, and to ask for a scientific investigation." A scientific investigation means generally the insisting upon preliminary conditions, which would render it impossible to do anything. This was made pretty clear by the Faraday-Tyndall manifestoes. The last instance of the kind is furnished by a Mr. Hopley, who has published a pamphlet of his correspondence with Mr. Cooper requesting such an investigation, and which came to nothing, as we hope all such will do. We have before us a letter of Mr. Paget, the eminent surgeon, who was to have been on the committee, and we remember to have seen a former letter of his, in which he said he would decline to investigate anything that occurred in the dark. Seeing that the most wonderful phenomena of the Davenports and Mr. Fay occur in the dark séances, he would not have made a first-rate investigator. How would he have shown the phosphorus lights flying about the room in the light? We wonder he does not object to the stars, for not being visible in the daytime; or like the negro, wonder why the moon only shines on the light nights, when it would be so much more useful in the dark nights. It is a pity Mr. Hopley went to the expense of printing his futile correspondence.

RECENT ALLEGED CASE OF CURE BY DR. NEWTON.

The Reverend Frederic Rowland Young, Unitarian minister of Swindon, Wilts, has for years been a severe sufferer from neuralgia in the head: the effects of it have been so prostrating as to incapacitate him frequently for the discharge of his ministerial duties. At one period, he was obliged to retire from them for a whole year. At times the attacks threw him into a state of utter insensibility, in which he would frequently continue for many hours. Finding all medical aid useless he, this spring, sailed for the United States, to try what Dr. Newton could do

for him, by laying on of hands. He has written to his friends, assuring them that he finds himself quite cured; that he has witnessed extraordinary cases of cure in other persons, by Dr. Newton, and that he believes he has himself acquired considerable healing power, which he means to test on his return. We have seen his letter containing these particulars; and we have just received a letter also from Dr. Newton, in which he says, he believes that "Mr. Young is cured of his neuralgia." That "Mr. Young witnessed a good cure of a young lady brought here on a bed-not having walked for three years. By a few minutes' treatment she was restored to health, and walked a full mile. This case influenced many others from the same place. I was sent for thither, to see a man so low with paralysis that he was given over by the physicians, who said that he could not live 24 hours. By a few minutes' treatment he was perfectly restored to health. I have seen him since, and he is as well as any man."

Dr. Newton adds, "I write these things knowing the interest which you take in the law of healing, the greatest of all powers for the establishment of our faith in communication and influence from the spirit-world."

Mr. Young intends to publish the particulars of his cure on his return, with other facts witnessed by him amongst the American Spiritualists. This brief announcement may prepare the way for still more interesting information.

HOME AND LYON.

We are informed that Mr. Home has entered his appeal to the Lord Chancellor against the recent decision of the ViceChancellor Giffard. Mrs. Lyon having refused to return the valuable jewellery and other articles lent her by Mr. Home, he has brought an action against her for the return of them, and it was to have been tried at the next assizes for Guildford, but she has since offered to return the jewellery.

(6
THE PALL MALL GAZETTE" AND MR. TYNDALL.

We have had forwarded to us the copy of a letter addressed by Mr. Jencken to the Pall Mall Gazette, during the controversy raised by Mr. Tyndall. It did not suit the Pall Mall Gazette to give it insertion; and we hear also of letters addressed to it by other persons of eminence and repute, of whom Mr. A. R. Wallace was one, but which, being in favour of Spiritualism, were refused insertion. This is the paper which says of itself, that it is written by gentlemen for gentlemen. If this be so, we are glad they have mentioned it; for otherwise we should certainly