startled " when told that he had written a work on Spiritualism, and that to Spiritualists his work contained nothing new. He ordered some of the Spiritualist publications, as he says, "to see how they could get hold of the facts I had written about; and in perusing them I was perfectly thunderstruck to find that they had worked out the same truth as myself from an entirely different branch of natural science." This led him to read more deeply on the subject, and to correspond with some of those who had borne public testimony to the facts of Spiritualism. He also received "a large amount of secondary evidence,”— personal testimony of eye and ear witnesses to the facts they related. Finally he resolved to come to London, to see, and hear, and judge for himself. He visited Miss Houghton's Exhibition of Spirit-Drawings, and attended several séances; and he very candidly and circumstantially relates what he heard, what he saw, and his conclusions. For all these particulars we must refer the reader to the pamphlet itself; it is an interesting narrative, particularly suitable for inquirers, and can be had for eightpence.

Correspondence.

ANSWERING SEALED LETTERS.

To the Editor of the "Spiritual Magazine."

SIR,-In The Medium and Daybreak newspaper is an advertisement from a New York test-medium, viz., James V. Mansfield, who professes to answer sealed letters for 21s., of course respecting our relatives deceased who have passed into the next life. Now I think it is only fair when you have proved a fact, to give it publicity.

I wrote seven questions of private nature in presence of a lady visitor, who fastened up the note with silk and sealed it with her own seal, then I put it in an envelope and sealed it with my crest; and I merely wrote a letter accompanying it requesting answers. This Mr. Mansfield returned to me unopened in proof of his power. The questions were not common-place merely, requiring a Yes or No, but requiring a knowledge of my family, which it is impossible for Mr. Mansfield to get at without obtaining it from my "daughter," to whom I wrote the questions. Every answer was pertinent to the question put, and what is singular, she says she should not have known I had written to her had not her uncle John (who is dead also) hurriedly told her I had written and wanted answers. Now I never alluded to her uncle in any way, but merely about her brothers and sisters and mother now living, and how Mr. Mansfield, whom I don't know nor have ever seen, gets at the names with seals unbroken and returns to me answers I can't tell. When the letter arrived here I got a dozen gentlemen from our Exchange to open it, and they all agreed my crest and everything was perfect. So also the silk tyings and seal of my visitor had not been tampered with in the slightest, since it left the lady's hands, who would put it in the post herself. I write this from my own experience, and it only occurred last month and was returned to me by next mail.

25th December, 1871.

CHARLES BLACKBURN.

THE

Spiritual Magazine.

MARCH, 1872.

MR. OWEN'S NEW WORK.*

THIS long expected work fully sustains the high reputation of its author as a philosophical writer, careful alike in his authentication and relation of facts, and in the conclusions he deduces from them. His style is chaste and forcible, free from all exaggeration and tawdry rhetoric. Whilst free and independent in the handling of religious questions, he is also earnest, reverent, and catholic; bold in the expression of what he feels to be the truth regardless of conventional opinion, yet careful to avoid all needless irritation and offence.

It would be difficult to point to any man of our generation better qualified to investigate both the phenomena and the philosophy of Spiritualism than Mr. Owen. He has sounded the heights and depths of sceptical and materialistic philosophy, and has been recognised as one of its foremost champions. As reformer and statesman he has achieved high distinction. It was while United States Minister at Naples, in March, 1856, that the circumstances occurred which led him to enter upon that investigation of Spiritualism some of the results of which are now before the world in this volume, and in his Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. While engaged in these spiritual studies he was appointed military agent of the State of Indiana, and together with Judge Holt was appointed a Government Commissioner of Ordnance and Ordnance Stores, and was the Chairman of the Government Commission charged with the duty of reporting on the condition of the recently emancipated freemen of the United States.

From this brief sketch it will be seen that he is no romantic *The Debatable Land between this World and the Next. With Narrative Illustrations. By ROBERT DALE OWEN, Author of Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. London: TRUBNER & Co.

N.S.-VII.

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visionary, but a man of practical affairs, honoured and trusted for his intelligence, ability, and integrity. This practical tone of mind he has carried into his speculative researches. What he says of another in this volume may be fairly applied to himself:-"This, then, is no dreamer, secluded in his study, shut out from the world, and feeding on his own thoughts: no theorizer with a favourite system to uphold: and though a man of decided convictions, not even an enthusiast."

Such a man, after sixteen years' most careful observation, combined with extended and patient inquiry and deep thought over the store of facts he has thus accumulated, is pre-eminently entitled to a candid and considerate hearing. Nor (if we may judge by the reception of his former work, written twelve years ago, and which has reached a sale of 20,000 copies) is that claim likely to be disregarded, more especially as the present work is of even wider range and more pregnant interest than his former volume.

The author conclusively shows that his subject is intimately connected with the present attitude of the religious world, and it is therefore very appropriately prefaced by an Address to the Protestant Clergy. This Address occupies nearly one-third of the volume; and we think a more weighty utterance, one presenting graver issues, has never been addressed to them. Let them ponder these broad facts which Mr. Owen brings before them. "Protestanism conquered in the space of forty years an empire reaching from Iceland to the Pyrenees, from Finland down to the summit of the Italian Alps." From this time, however, downward to the present, a space of three hundred years, there has been for Protestantism nothing but retrogression, until now in place of this overwhelming majority there are in Europe three Catholics for every Protestant. Especially has this progress of Romanism been conspicuous within the last half century; and in the very heart of Protestantism. In England the statistics on this subject should alarm the clergy, but in free America it has progressed even more rapidly. Should its present rate of increase there continue, in less than the third of a century the Roman Catholics will form an actual majority of the population of the United States. How is it that for three centuries Protestantism not only has made no progress, but has not even been able to hold its own, and is still steadily and rapidly declining in both hemispheres? That is the problem to which Mr. Owen invites the candid and earnest consideration of the Protestant Clergy. We shall not follow him in his analysis of the causes which have lead to this result, clear and masterly as it is, but must refer the reader to the book itself, which were it on this account alone, would well repay careful perusal. Its discussion

leads the author by gradual and easy stages to the subject which occupies the main body of the work, and that which will doubtless be most attractive to the majority of its readers, the direct evidence of a future life supplied by Modern Spiritualism. The author has here brought together in narrative form some of the more salient and suggestive of those spiritual phenomena, spontaneous and evoked, which have occurred under his own observation, or have come to him in an authentic form, and of which he truly says they are "attested, I venture to affirm, by evidence as strong as that which is daily admitted in our courts of justice to decide the life or death of men," These narratives are also further designed to illustrate in some measure the action of intermundane laws at present but dimly discerned, and which can only be explored in the phenomena they govern.

It would be unjust alike to our readers and to the author to present any of these narratives in the way of abstract; they require to be read at length, and in the words of the author. We can only indicate the general character of the work, refer briefly to some of the more salient experiences related, and present what the author conceives to be some of the more important bearings of Spiritualism, and the leading principles on which he deems all intelligent Spiritualists are united.

As most of our readers are aware, the experimental investigations "into the phenomena alleged to be spiritual," which certain eminent scientists are now prosecuting, and the tests by which they have demonstrated what they are pleased to call a "new force," have long been anticipated by Spiritualists. Mr. Owen, for instance, relates experiments made in 1860 in the presence of himself, the late Dr. Robert Chambers (then on a visit to the United States), and other persons. These experiments included the rising from the floor without contact, and under bright gas light, of a table weighing 121 pounds, and which on several occasions thus remained suspended in the air six or seven seconds, and then gradually settled down without jar or dropping to the floor. The table was also made light and heavy at request; a large steelyard was procured, and the table was suspended by it in exact equipoise, about eight inches from the floor. Mr. Owen

says:

"The table remaining suspended, with the constant weight at the figure 121: we asked that it might be made lighter. In a few seconds the long arm ascended. We moved the weight to the figure 100: it still ascended; then to 80; then to 60. Even at this last figure the smaller arm of the steelyard was somewhat depressed, showing that the table, for the moment, weighed less than 60 pounds. It had lost more than half its weight, namely, upward of 61 pounds: in other words, there

Then we

was a power equal to 61 pounds sustaining it. asked that it might be made heavier; and it was so: first, as the figures indicated, to 130, and finally to 144 pounds. The change of weight continued, in each instance, from three to eight seconds, as we ascertained by our watches."

On another occasion the author was visiting a private family, who a month before had no knowledge of Spiritualism and scant faith in any of its phenomena; but one of the family suddenly found himself possessed of mediumistic powers.

Mr. Owen gives the following as part of a record of what he witnessed at two sessions with this family. The first occurred in the afternoon. The room was darkened with heavy curtains drawn close, but sufficient light came through to enable those present to see the outlines of objects. Mr. Owen says:

"We sat at a heavy deal table, made expressly for the purpose, very thick and strong; the legs more than two inches square; size two feet seven inches by one foot eight inches, and weighing 25 pounds.

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At first there was a trembling motion, then a tilting from side to side, gradually becoming more powerful, and at last so violent that it was snatched from our hands. Then, at our request, the table was made so heavy that I found it scarcely possible, with all my strength, to move it even half an inch from the floor; the apparent weight some 200 pounds. Then, again at our request, it was made so light that we could lift one end of it with a single finger; its weight seeming 10 or 12 pounds only. Then it was laid down on its side; and, no one touching it, I was unable to raise it. Then it was tilted on two legs and all my strength was insufficient to press it down.

"Finally, after being jerked with such sudden violence that we all drew back, fearing injury, and merely reached our fingers on the edge of its top, it was projected into the air so high that when we rose from our chairs we could barely place our fingers on it; and there it swung about, during six or seven seconds. Besides touching it, we could see its motion by the dim light.

"We sat again in the evening at ten o'clock, in the same room, darkened: only three at the table, N -, Charles, and myself.

"Then probably intensified by the darkness-commenced a demonstration exhibiting more physical force than I had ever before witnessed. I do not believe that the strongest man living could, without a handle fixed to pull by, have jerked the table with anything like the violence with which it was now, as it seemed, driven from side to side. We all felt it to be a power, a single stroke from which would have killed any one of us on the spot. Then the table was, as it were, flung upward into