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was not extraordinary, as it was now getting late. When questioned as to what means he had used, the mesmeriser said he had done nothing but stare steadily at the patients, making them also look fixedly at him, and move his hands slowly and in uniform directions, his instructor in these manoeuvres having been Tyrone Power in the farce of His Last Legs. He stated that soon after the commencement of the experiment, he felt an almost irresistible tendency to go on with it; but whether this resulted from a conviction that he was exercising some unknown influence, or from mere experimental curiosity, he would not undertake to say-" this only was the witchcraft he had used."

The result was to all present conclusive as to the production of some effect inexplicable upon received theories. The second case defied simulation, and we believe it was equally removed from hysteria. The patient was a strongminded person, of a temperament neither nervous nor hysterical, to all appearance perfectly calm, except when overcome by a sense of the ridiculous, and before the experiment obstinately incredulous. It was certainly a strong case. Any hypothesis to account for it would be hasty; but one point suggests itself to us as arising from the remark made by the mesmeriser, viz. that the only influence he was conscious of using was that of a fixed determined stare. This may possibly afford some key to a more philosophical examination of these curious phenomena.

The fabled effects of the basilisk, the serpent, and the evil eye, have probably all some facts for their foun.. dation. The effect of the human eye in arresting the attacks of savage animals is better authenticated, and its influence upon domestic animals may be more easily made the subject of experimental proof. Let any one gaze steadily at a dog half dozing at the fireside the animal will, after a short time, become restless, and if the stare be continued, will quit his resting-place, and either shrink into a corner, or come forward and caress the person staring. How much of this may be due to the habitual fixed look of stern command with which censure or punishment is accompanied,

it may be difficult to say; but the fact undoubtedly is, that some influence, either innate or induced, is exercised. Again, those who, in society, habitually converse with an averted glance, we generally consider wanting in moral force. We doubt the man who doubts himself. On the other hand, if, in conversation, the ordinary look of awakened interest be prolonged, and the eyes are kept fixed for a longer period than usual, an embarrassed and somewhat painful feeling is the result; an indistinct impulse makes it difficult to avert the eye, and at the same time a consciousness of that impulse is an inducement to avert it. We lay no undue stress upon these phenomena; but they are phenomena, and fair subjects for scientific investigation. An explanation of mesmerism has been sought in the physical effect of the stare alone; thus it is said that, if a party look intently at a prominent object fixed to his forehead, he will in time be thrown into mesmeric coma. There is more in it, we think, than this; there is an influence exerted by that nearest approach to the intercourse of soul-"the gaze into each other's eyes"-the extent and norme of which are unknown. The schoolboy's experiment of staring out of countenance, is not so bad a test of moral power as it would at first sight be deemed to be.

The second case we shall relate is also one at which we were personally present, but one in which both mesmeriser and mesmerisee were, if we may use the term, adepts-the former a gentleman of fortune and education; the latter a half-educated young man, who had been in service as a footman. We shall designate them as Mr M and G

At this "soirée magnétique" G. was brought in in the sleep-waking state, walking, or rather staggering, and holding the arm of Mr M., his eyes to all appearance perfectly closed, and his gait and gestures those of a drunken man. After some little time he was detached from the mesmeriser, and followed him to different parts of the room. When in proximity Mr M. raised his hand, the patient's hands followed it, his legs the same, while they receded from the hands and legs of any other of the

party present. Some of these effects were certainly curious, and not easy of explanation. The mesmeriser would walk or stand behind the patient, and, waving his hands somewhat after the manner of the cachuca dancer, the hands of the patient followed his with tolerable but not unerring precision. We determined to bear in mind these effects when some other phenomena were exhibiting, and try whether similar results would ensue when the attention of the parties was devoted to other subjects. When the attention of every body present was intently strained upon some experiments which we shall presently mention, we approached, as though watching the experiment, very near to G., and frequently without his at all flinching; at other times we were told by Mr M. not to come too near, and once in particular we observed, that having had one knee and toe in close juxtaposition, almost in contact, with the patient's, we retained it so for several seconds before he withdrew his leg. These facts, which would probably be explained by mesmerists on the ground of the whole power of sensation being concentrated upon one object, rendered, however, the experiments upon mesmeric attraction inconclusive. Passing over several experiments, such as the mesmerisation of water, showing community of taste, in which, after some hesitation, the patient selected from three or four glasses of water one which had been tasted by the mesmeriser, we come to the most important point, viz. the clairvoyance. One of the party stood behind the patient, and he was asked how the former was dressed; his reply, after some hesitation was, "not over nice he has a queerish waistcoat on," (it was a plain white.) A book was then taken off the table one of the annuals. Mr M. held his hands tightly over the eyes of G., and the title-page was presented open opposite the covered eyes of the latter; after struggling and moving his head about for some time, just as if endeavouring to catch a glimpse of the book, he mentioned the place of publication, and afterwards the title. Other experiments were proposed, such as holding a book behind the party, or to different parts of his body; but of these some did

not succeed, others were not tried. To obviate the doubt of the book having been previously seen, we were requested to write, in large letters, a word on a card, such as a slightly educated person could read, and to present it, looking at the same time as closely as we wished at the eyes of G., the lids of which were, as before, apparently tightly held down by Mr M. We did so the word was Peru; and, after some struggles, the word was read certainly without an exposure of any part of the eye to us. We now proposed, as likely to be more satisfactory, to write another word on a similar card, and, instead of the hands of the mesmeriser being held over the eyes, to place a piece of thin paper over the card. This, it was said, was useless and would not succeed, as the influence would not be transmitted through the person of the mesmeriser; we then proposed that he (the mesmeriser) should place his hand over the card; in short, that the card should be blinded and not the eye. Our reason will be obvious. According to the known laws of vision, viz. the convergence of all the rays of light to a focus in the eye, were the least part of this exposed, vision, though imperfect, of every object within the visual angle, would follow; but, were the object covered, a partial opening would assist vision but little, and only quoad the part exposed. The experiment thus performed would have been optically conclusive; and we cannot see, according to any of the mesmeric hypotheses, any mesmeric reason why it should not have succeeded: it was, however, declined. We are obliged to omit many other points in this evening's proceedings to avoid prolixity. Though many facts were curious, and certainly not easy of explanation by ordinary means, there was nothing which defied it; every experimentum crucis failed, and we, of course, remained unconvinced.

The third case which we shall instance, was one at which we were also personally present. Having been invited to view the mesmeric experiments of Dr B., we arrived at his house, with a friend, at about ten in the morning, and having been duly introduced to the Doctor in one room, were instantly ushered into another,

when a scene presented itself certainly one of the most extraordinary we have ever witnessed. There were seven females in the room, and not one man. On a sofa near the fireplace, a young girl sat upright, supported by cushions, her eyes were fixed, and opposite her stood a middle-aged woman, slowly moving her hands before the eyes of the patient. On the hearth-rug near this lay a woman covered with a coarse blanket. She appeared sound asleep, was breathing heavily, and looked deadly pale. A third patient was seated on a chair, also undergoing the mesmeric passes from another woman; and on the opposite side of the room from the fire-place, two others were seated on chairs, with their heads hanging on their shoulders, and eyes closed. Description cannot convey the mystic and fearful appearance of this room and its inmates to the first glance of the unexpectant spectator. Not a word was spoken; the solemn silence, the immobility and deathlike pallor of the objects, was awful-they were as breathing corpses. The clay-cold nuns evoked from their tombs, presented not a more unearthly spectacle to Robert of Normandy. The free-and easy expressions of Dr B., however, which first broke the silence, instantly dissolved the spell. "That woman," he said, pointing to her on the floor, "has a disease of the liver, and her left lung is somewhat affected. I think we shall do her good. She is now getting into the clairvoyant state. She can see into the next room." He then stooped over her, and said, "How are you, Mary?" She replied, "I have the pain in my side very bad." He approached his hand to the part affected, and again withdrew it several times, opening the fingers as it neared, and closing them as it receded, as though he would gently extract the pain. He again asked her how she felt; she said better. He then pointed to the girl on the sofa, and said, "She is deaf and dumb. We cannot get her asleep." He subsequently pointed out other of the patients, and mentioned their ailments. These, and the sombre darkness of the room, accounted to us for the unnatural paleness of the patients. Dr B. next asked one of two sleeping patients to

follow him into another room. We accompanied him, and his experiments upon the female, whom we shall call S., commenced. First of all, he placed her hands with the palms together, and making with his fingers motions the converse of those made in the former case, asked us to endeavour to separate them. We did, and instantly succeeded, with no more effort than would be expected were any woman of average strength purposely to hold her hands together. "Ah!" said the Doctor, "not an easy matter, is it?" We made no reply. He then walked, having on a pair of loudlycreaking boots, to the other end of the room, and looked sternly at the patient. She, after a second or two, followed him, and sat on the same chair. He then said, "I willed her to come to me."

He next asked our friend to hold the patient's hands, and ask her a question mentally, without expressing it.

After some little time she frowned, and endeavoured to withdraw her hands.

Dr. "Ah, she does not like your question! Ask her another." After some time she burst out into a fit of laughter.

Dr. "Ah, you have tickled her fancy now!"

What the question asked by our friend was, did not transpire. This experiment having been so successful, we were asked to do the same. Not without a feeling of shame we complied; and, taking hold of the patient's hands, we mentally asked her the question-" Are you single or married?" which question did not appear to us to involve any metaphysical subtilty. However, after struggling and frowning for some time, she said, with a sort of hysteric gasp, "He's a funny man!"

Dr B. " Ah, she can't make you out!"

We are not aware to what feature in our character the epithet funny will apply; but probably our selfesteem will not permit us justly to appreciate the appositeness of this somewhat ambiguous epithet. So much, however, for the power of divination, with which the mesmeriser seemed perfectly satisfied. Dr B. now show

ed us a camomile flower, put it in his mouth, and chewed it. The patient made a face as if tasting something disagreeable, and, in answer to his questions, said it was bitter. He then did the same with a lozenge; and after some time, required, according to the doctor, for the removal of the bitter taste, she said she tasted lozenges.

Dr B. "There you see the community of taste." Dr B. now touched her forehead a little above and outside of the eyebrows; she burst out laughing.

Dr B. "I touched the organ of gaiety." He then did the same with the organs of music; she set up an old English ditty. Then touching these organs with one hand, and placing the other on the top of her head, she instantly changed the ballad to a doleful psalm-tune. Affection, philoprogenitiveness, were in turn touched, the doctor stating aloud beforehand what organ he was going to excite. We should weary our readers with a detail of the platitudes which ensued.

She was asked what was going on in the next room, and said, "Ah, Sophy may try, but cannot get the girl asleep!" A few other experiments, such as suspending chairs on her arms, &c., followed, and we returned to the next room, where the deaf and dumb girl was found fast asleep. Upon being asked how long she had been so, the female mesmeriser replied, "Just after you left the room." No comment was made upon the answer of the clairvoyante patient above given, which appeared to have been forgotten by all but ourselves.

Had we been anxious to give a factitious interest to our narrative, we should certainly have avoided a description of the above cases, which could not at the same time be made to possess graphic interest, and to relate accurately the real facts as presented; but we have selected them as having happened to ourselves, and as being shown not by public exhibitors, but by parties both holding a highly respectable station in life, and being, as we believe, among the best examples to be found of English mesmerisers. Although invited as sceptical spectators, and the experiments being in nowise

confidential, we feel that the exhibition not being public, we have no right to mention the names of the parties.

It will be obvious that the three exhibitions we have selected differed much in character. The first, as we have stated, to our minds defied collusion or self-deception. The second was open to either construction, though, from the character of the parties, we should think collusion was, in the highest degree, improbable; and the experiments, although not conclusive, were very curious, and some of them not easy of explanation. In the third case, transparent and absurd as the experiments seemed to us, and as the account of them will probably appear to our readers, the doctor, from his position and practice, must have been seriously injured by his mesmeric experiments; and therefore there is fair reason to believe, that he was not a party to a fraud which must have been objectless, and professionally injurious to him; but how a man of experience could be carried away by such flimsy devices, is a psychological curiosity, almost as marvellous as the asserted phenomena of mesmerism.

We are aware that, in giving the above accounts of experiments which we have personally witnessed, our authority, being anonymous, is of no great weight. We state them to avoid the charge of writing on what we have not seen, and to show that we do not attempt unfairly to decry mesmerism without seeing it fairly tried; if we felt justified in giving the names of the parties, these instances would be much more conclusive. Nearly all the cases in Mr Townshend's book are given without the names of parties, probably for similar reasons to those which have induced us to withhold them.

The above cases supply instances of all the phenomena included in our categories, except those of insensibility to pain, powers of prediction, and the curative effects. Having never personally seen cases of this description, we shall select examples of them from the book of Mr Townshend and others; but before we give these instances, we will extract from Mr Townshend's book his account of the first mesmeric sitting at which he was

present. This will give the reader a fair idea of his attractive style, and of his state of mind previously to witnessing, for the first time, mesmeric effects.

"If to have been an unbeliever in the very existence of the state in question, can add weight to my testimony, my reader, should he also be a heretic on the subject, may be assured that his incredulity in this respect can scarcely be greater than mine was, up to the winter of 1836. That, at the time I mention, I should be both ignorant and prejudiced on the score of mesmerism, will not surprise those who are aware of its long proscription in England, and the want of information upon it, which, till very lately, prevailed there.

"In the course of a residence at Antwerp, a valued friend detailed to me some extraordinary results of mesmerism, to which he had been an eyewitness. I could not altogether discredit the evidence of one whom I knew to be both observant and incapable of falsehood; but I took refuge in the supposition that he had been ingeniously deceived. Reflecting, however, that to condemn before I had examined was as unjust to others as it was unsatisfactory to myself, I accepted readily the proposition of my friend to introduce me to an acquaintance of his in Antwerp, who had learned the practice of the mesmeric art from a German physician. We waited together on Mr K- the mesmeriser, (an agreeable and well-informed person,) and stated to him that the object of our visit was to prevail on him to exhibit to us a specimen of his mysterious talent. To this he at first replied, that he was rather seeking to abjure a renown that had become troublesomehalf the world viewing him as a conjurer, and the other half as a getter-up of strange comedies; 'but,' he kindly added, if you will promise me a strictly private meeting, I will, this evening, do all in my power to convince you that mesmerism is no delusion.' This being agreed upon, with a stipulation that the members of my own family should be present on the occasion, I, to remove all doubt of complicity from every mind, proposed that Mr K- should mesmerise a person who should be a perfect stranger to him. To this he readily acceded; and now the only difficulty was to find a subject for our experiment. At length we thought of a young person in the middling class of life, who

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had often done fine work for the ladies of our family, and of whose character we had the most favourable knowledge. Her mother was Irish; her father, who had been dead some time, had been a Belgian, and she spoke English, Flemish, and French, with perfect facility. Her widowed parent was chiefly supported by her industry: and, in the midst of trying circumstances, her temper was gay and cheerful, and her health excellent. That she had never seen Mr we were sure; and of her probity and incapacity for feigning we had every reason to be convinced. With our request, conveyed to her through one of the ladies of our family, for whom she had conceived a warm affection, she complied without hesitation. Not being of a nervous, though of an excitable temperament, she had no fears whatever about what she was to undergo. On the contrary, she had rather a desire to know what the sensation of being mesmerised might be. Of the phenomena which were to be developed in the mesmeric state, she knew absolutely nothing; thus all deceptive imitation of them, on her part, was rendered impossible.

"About nine o'clock in the evening, our party assembled for what, in foreign phrase, is called 'une séance magnétique.' Anna M-, our mesmerisee, was already with us. Mr Karrived soon after, and was introduced to his young patient, whose name we had purposely avoided mentioning to him in the morning; not that we feared imposition on either hand, but that we were determined, by every precaution, to prevent any one from alleging that imposition had been practised. Utterly unknown as the parties were to each other, a game played by two confederates was plainly out of the question. Almost immediately after the entrance of Mr K- we proceeded to the business of the evening. By his directions Mademoiselle M- placed herself in an arm-chair at one end of the apartment, while he occupied a seat directly facing hers. He then took each of her hands in one of his, and sat in such a manner as that the knees and feet of both should be in contact. In this position he remained for some time motionless, attentively regarding her with eyes as unwinking as the lidless orbs which Coleridge has attributed to the Genius of destruction. We had been told previously to keep utter silence, and none of our circle-composed of

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