poems furnish abundant evidence. A single passage from "In Memoriam" must auswer as an example: "If any vision should reveal Thy likeness, I might count it vain, And though the months, revolving near, appurtenances that make up a perfect identi- A physician, practising in the city of "Last September," writes he, "I was in Rutland, Vermont, in company with a Vermont farmer, an intelligent man and a thorough skeptic. He proposed a visit to the Eddy house. It was an evening séance. In the course of the manifestations, a phantom, never before seen by the spectators present, appeared in full view on the platform. The audience were individually requested to ask, 'Is it for me?' When my companion's turn came, his question was answered by three loud knocks on the wall hard by the phantom, which answered to the name of Dr. C, a brother-in-law. This man had never seen either of the Eddy brothers until he saw them that evening. Can it be that there was not present the essence of Dr. C- -'s spirit, around which this visible and tangible presentation of him, that the farmer declared to be his brother-inlaw to the life, clothed itself? At a séance that occurred here (in Providence) some years since, the medium, an ignorant boy, wrote a message which no person present save a sea-captain could read. The message reported the death of the harbor-master in Havana. The truth of the statement was afterward verified. I am not a believer in spiritualism, but I am unsatisfied with my own experiences and investigations, which have fallen far short of yours. I only wish you would dwell more at length on certain points, remembering that, while they are less important from your point of view than those which you discuss exhaustively, they are the very points that make most popular impression." In considering these strange and occasional incidents of life, the question is whether they shall be regarded as psychological phenomena and as data for scientific analysis, or whether the ordinary construction of spiritualism shall be put upon them. My own observation, as well as my more general studies of the biographies of poets and artists, leads me to the conclusion that most highly-sensitive organizations are subject to experiences of the class that I have described, and they are facts that cannot be neglected in any system of psychology intended to take its place as the last word that science has to say on the deeper questions of life and consciousness. The theory of coincidence breaks down in view of the regularity and minuteness with which presentiments are often verified and presentimental dreams fulfilled. Let me give an instance. When I was a boy of seven or eight years old, an elder brother resided at a village called Hydeville, a few miles from the home farm, and was acquainted and somewhat intimate with a man named Durfy. He came home one Saturday and remained until Monday morning. On Sunday evening, among various topics, he discussed Durfy and their mutual projects. That night I dreamed that my brother and I were standing by the door in front of the old house, when a gentleman passed by in a sleigh. The gentleman nodded to my brother, who told me it was Durfy. I turned and went into the house. By the tall old clock in the east-room it was just eight o'clock to a minute. It must be premised that I did not know Mr. Durfy by sight, and had never been at Hydeville. I did not even think of the dream; but the next morning, after breakfast, it happened that my brother and my self were standing in the yard by the front door, when a gentleman passed in a sleigh-❘tleman declined to have any further transacthe very man, muffled to the eyes, wearing a fur cap; the very sleigh and horse that had passed in my dream the night before. And, on looking at the clock an instant after, it was exactly eight o'clock. The man was Mr. Durfy. I have had many such experiences, but quote this one because nothing hinged upon it, and because, saving the element of presentiment, it was of no importance whatever. But in what manner was it impressed upon me that a gentleman whom I did not know would pass at a given hour and minute, dressed in such and such a manner, in a sleigh of given color and contour, with all the A gentleman, now doing business in Wall Street as a broker, but formerly of the staff of General Sterling Price, gives me the details of an encounter with Foster, a wellknown medium, who is supposed to be the original of Margrave in the "Strange Story," by Bulwer. He attended the séance as a stranger in a strange city, taking a seat some thirty feet from the platform. The medium presently singled him out, and told him that a spirit wished to communicate with him, describing his former general to the life, and giving the name as Sterling Price. The gen tions with his general. "There is another A medical man, now practising in this rator, called on a woman, who was just then exciting considerable interest in a Western city. After sitting a few minutes in ominous silence, a spasm shook the attenuated frame of the medium and she apparently slept. An instant after the supervention of the paroxysm, she commenced to laugh and giggle like a little girl. My companion," says the nar"asked her rather savagely what she was laughing at. 'Have you forgotten, doctor,' giggled the woman, that morning when you dissected me up-garret, and how, when you cut into me, the blood spurted, and then you were frightened and ran away?' The man was astounded, and, on the way home, he confessed that the incident actually occurred when he was a young practitioner; that he had procured the cadaver of a little girl eight or ten years of age, and hidden it in the garret, and that, when he came to dissect it, the blood spurted at the first incision, and frightened him so, there alone in the night, that he ran down-stairs. Afterward, however, he went back and finished the dissection. But,' said he, 'I never told a living soul of that adventure, and how that cursed woman found it out passes my comprehension." " Another gentleman-a man of science, and one thoroughly versed in physical and electrical investigation-contributes to my portfolio the details of a visit of inquiry to Dr. Slade, a well-known medium of this city. He went as a stranger, and left without revealing his name. After a thorough examination of the table, which was of the ordinary type, and was provided with no appurtenances except a folding slate and a pencil tied to it with a cotton string, the investigator announced that he was satisfied. The doctor then bit off a piece of the pencil, placed it between the two slates, and they sat down, the inquirer holding the medium's hands under his own, on the table, from four to six feet from the point where the slate lay. They had sat in this manner perfectly silent for a few seconds, when a kind of paroxysm -a slight secousse of the arms and limbspassed over the doctor. It was a mere shiver something rather less than a shudder and rather more than a tremor. An instant later the pencil between the slates commenced to move, with a grating, rhythmical motion, apparently across and across. Then, with a flourish, it stopped, and the room was again silent. On examination, my informant found a message in the handwriting of his dead father; and the strangest part of it all was that the signature was exact even to a peculiar formation of the initial R. The message was of no consequence-a mere conventional thing, not worth transcribing. I have thus hastily selected from a mass of correspondence, called out by the publication of a volume on the subject, a series of cases that serve to illustrate the whole range of so-called spiritual phenomena. With one or two exceptions they rest upon the veracity of scientific men, and, without exception, they are from the diaries of men who dissent from the theories of spiritualism as totally and un *Ten Years with Spiritual Mediums. New York: D. Appleton & Co. reservedly as I dissent from them, but who are satisfied, as I am, of the genuineness of the phenomena and of the urgent necessity to come to some scientific conclusion as to their etiology. They interest me from two aspects, namely, as respects the sources of the strange and apparently superhuman intelligence associated with them, and as psychological studies. With the accumulated testimony of such observers as Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, scarcely second to Darwin as a naturalist, and Professor Crookes, it is impossible, consistently with scientific candor, to dissent dogmatically from the genuineness of these phenomena. Careful observation is equally decisive as to the fact of their constant association with nervous paroxysms of the epileptic type, and experiments with the magnetic current on mediums in the trancestate have convinced me that they are indubitably morbid nervous phenomena, indebted for their sources of intelligence to a nervous atmosphere acting at considerable distances during the interval of the paroxysm. They call for a deeper science of psychology than that which has descended to English literature from Locke and the two Mills. The day has come to stop babbling about nervous centres, and, as Tennyson expresses it in one of his poems, to seek through all "The springs of life, the depths of awe, And find the law within the law," that is operative in these singular facts of psychical experience-the strangest things in life. FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. AMERICA SEEN WITH FOREIGN EYES. MR. VIII. NEW YORK IN EMBARGO-TIME. R. JOHN LAMBERT was a gentleman who visited this country in 1807. After a few months spent in Canada, he made his way to Albany by the usual Champlain route. It had been his intention to take passage for New York on the "steamboat, which, [he] was told, traveled at the rate of five miles an hour against wind and tide." He describes this boat, built about four years prior to his visit, as one hundred and sixty feet long, and propelled by a twenty-horse-power machine. When the wind was fair, light, square sails were used to increase her speed. Her accommodations included fifty-two berths, besides sofas, and were said to be equal, if not superior, to any vessel that sailed on the river. Her trips were made regularly twice a week, sometimes in the short period of thirty-two hours; fare, seven dollars. Ice, however, obstructed the upper channel, so he staged it to Hudson, and thence took passage on the Experiment, of one hundred and thirty tons, the finest on the river, with a saloon sixty feet by twenty, and fitted up regardless of expense. The fare by this mode of conveyance was five dollars, which gave the passenger three meals a day, including spirits. 66 He reached New York the next night tions, elegant and appropriate. The great fault with it was that all the pieces were curtailed, so that the performances might be over by half-past ten. The drama was a favorite in New York before the Revolution. During the time the city was in British possession, during the war, theatrical entertainments were very fashionable; the characters were mostly supported by officers of the army. about ten o'clock. The wharves were crowd-merous; the machinery, dresses, and decora- New York had by this time grown to be beyond doubt the first city in the United States for wealth, commerce, and population; the changes in twenty years had been marvelous. Land, which then sold for fifty dollars, was now worth fifteen hundred dollars; Broadway was upward of two miles in length, but only paved for a mile and a quarter; the remainder of the road consisted of straggling houses, the commencement of new streets already planned out. Much of the space between Broadway and the Bowery Road, and thence to the Hudson and East Rivers, was as yet unbuilt upon, and consisted only of unfinished streets and detached buildings. In the vicinity of the Battery, and for some distance up Broadway, the buildings were nearly all private houses, and occupied by the principal merchants and gentry of New York; after which the street was lined with large, commodious shops of every description, well-stocked with European and East-Indian goods, and "exhibiting as splendid and varied a show in their windows as can be met with in London." The streets were well paved, the footways chiefly of brick. In Robinson Street, Lambert notes with surprise and admiration that the pavement and stoop before one of the houses were composed entirely of marble. Speaking of the park, he says that a court-house (the present City Hall) "is there building in a style of magnificence unequaled in many of the larger cities of Europe." Neither the park nor the Battery was then much resorted to by the fashionable citizens of New York, as they had become too com mon. The genteel lounge was in Broadway from eleven till three o'clock, during which time it was 66 as much crowded as the Bond Street of London; and the carriages, though not so numerous, were driven to and fro with as much velocity." The sidewalks were planted with poplars, which afforded an agreeable shade from the sun. The outside of the Park Theatre was in an unfinished state, but the interior was handsomely decorated and fitted up in as good style as the London theatres. It contained a large coffee-room with good-sized lobbies, and was reckoned to hold about twelve hundred per New York then had its Vauxhall and Ranelagh, but, although pleasant places of recreation, our traveler found them " poor imitations of those near London." Vauxhall Garden was situated in the Bowery, about two miles from the City Hall (a little south of what is now Astor Place). It was a neat plantation with gravel-walks, adorned with shrubs, trees, busts, and statues. In the centre stood a large equestrian statue of General Washington. Light musical pieces, interludes, etc., were performed in a small theatre situated in one corner of the garden; the audience sat, in what was called the pit and boxes, in the open air; the orchestra was built among the trees and a large apparatus constructed for the display of fireworks. The theatrical corps of New York was chiefly engaged at Vauxhall during the On his first visit to New York its business activity particularly astonished him. "All was noise and bustle; carters driving in every direction; merchants and their clerks busily engaged in their counting-houses or upon the piers. The Tontine Coffee-House was filled with underwriters, brokers, merchants, traders, and politicians; its steps and balcony crowded with people bidding or listening to the several auctioneers, who had elevated themselves upon a hogshead of sugar, or a puncheon of rum, or a bale of cotton, and with stentorian voices were exclaiming: Once, twice!' another cent!'' 'thank ye, gentlemen!' or were knocking down the goods, which took up one side of the street, to the best purchasers. Coffee-House Slip, and the corners of Wall and Pearl Streets, were jammed up with carts, drays, and wheelbarrows; the welkin rang with the busy hum," and Lambert came to the conclusion that New York was the Tyre of the New World. Six months later, on his return from a visit to Charleston, he found that all was changed. The port was full of shipping, but the vessels were dismantled and laid up. Not a box, bale, or cask, was to be seen upon the wharves. Many of the counting-houses were shut up, or advertised to be let; and the few solitary merchants, clerks, and porters, that were to be seen, were walking about with their hands in their pockets. The coffee-house was almost empty, save that a few, whose time hung heavy on their hands, called there to inquire after news from Europe or Washington. The streets near the water-side were almost deserted, and grass had begun to grow upon the wharves. Such were the effects of the embargo, which, in the short space of five months, had "deprived the first commercial city in the United States of all its life, bustle, and activity; caused above one hundred and fifty bankruptcies, and completely annihilated its foreign commerce." Lambert says that nervous disorders and debility were very prevalent among the inhabitants of the United States. He attributes this (for every one of these travelers has a theory ready to account for every thing he sees) to the constant use of cigars by the young men, even at an early age, which im. paired their constitutions, and created a stimulus beyond what Nature required. The dread of yellow fever had promoted this consumption of tobacco. New York was regularly subjected to this terrible scourge. As soon as it made its appearance, the inhabitants shut up their shops and fled into the country. Those who could not go far on account of business, removed to Greenwich, a small village on the Hudson, about two or three miles from town." Here the merchants and others had their offices, and carried on their business with little danger from the fever. The banks and other public offices also removed their business to this place; and markets were regularly established for the supply of the inhabitants. Upward of twentysix thousand persons removed from the city and the streets near the water-side in 1805. New York society, at the time of his visit, was divided into three distinct classes. The first was composed of the constituted authorities and government officers: divines, lawyers, and physicians of eminence; the principal merchants and people of independent property. The second comprised the small merchants, retail traders, clerks, etc.; the third consisted of the inferior orders of the people. The first set associated together "in a style of splendor little inferior to Europeans. Their houses were fitted with every thing that was useful, agreeable, or ornamental. The dress of the gentlemen was plain, elegant, and fashionable." The ladies were partial to the "light, various, and dashing drapery " of the French, though there were many who preferred the more subdued English costume. In promenading Broadway, Lambert was frequently tempted to believe that there existed a sort of rivalry among the New York beauties, as there did a century before among the ladies of England; and that, instead of a patch on the right or left cheek to denote a Whig or a Tory, he could distinguish a "pretty democrat à la mode Française from a sweet little Federalist à la mode Anglaise." Whether his surmise was correct or not, it was certain that Mrs. Toole and Madame Bouchard, the two rival leaders of fashion in bonnets, dresses, and lace, had each her partisans and admirers; the one because she was an Englishwoman; the other because she was French; and, if the ladies were not really divided as to politics, they were most unequivocally at issue with regard to dress. Lambert found the young ladies of New York generally handsome, though partaking more of the lily than the rose. He saw but very few who used rouge, and vigorously champions them against the charge handed down from traveler to traveler of their having bad teeth. Of dancing they were passionately fond, and in that accomplishment they were said to excel the ladies of every other city in the Union. He visited the City Assembly, which was held at the City Hotel, in Broadway, and considered as the best in New York. As it was the first night of the season, there were but one hundred and fifty persons present. The subscription was two dollars and fifty cents for each night, which included tea, coffee, and cold collation. None but those of the first-class society could become subscribers to this assembly. Another, however, had been recently established, by those leaders of the second class who had been excluded from the first. The subscription to this was made three dollars; its balls, too, were held at the City Hotel, and were so well conducted that many of the subscribers to the old assembly joined the new one, or subscribed to both. Many of the young ladies were accomplished in music and drawing, as well as in dancing; but among the young men these accomplishments were but little cultivated. Billiards and smoking were their favorite amusements. A cigar was in their mouth from morning to night when in the house, and not unfrequently when walking in the street. A cigar-case was always carried in the coat-pocket, and handed occasionally to a friend, "as familiarly," says Lambert, as our dashing youths take out their gold box and offer a pinch of snuff." Sleighing was a favorite amusement with the New-Yorkers. Parties to dinners and dances were frequently made up in the winter-time, when the snow was on the ground. They proceeded in light carioles (cutters) a few miles out of town to some hotel or tav. ern, where the entertainment was kept up till a late hour, and the company returned home by torch-light. Marriages were conducted in splendid style, and formed an important part of the winter's entertainments. The young couple, attended by their nearest connections. and friends, were married at home in magnificent style, and, if they were Episcopalians, the Bishop of New York was always procured, if possible. For three days after the ceremony the newly-married couple saw company in great state, and every genteel person who could procure an introduction paid his respects to the bride and groom; the visitors after their introduction partook of a cup of coffee, and then walked away. Even then New-Yorkers were not remarkable for early rising; little business was done before ten o'clock. Most of the merchants and persons in business dined at two o'clock; others, who were less engaged, about three; but four o'clock was usually the fashionable hour for dining. The gentlemen were partial to the bottle, but not to excess; and at private dinners they seldom sat more than two hours drinking wine. While making a trip to Boston, Lambert made the acquaintance of a Virginian gentleman, one General Bradley, who was nicknamed "President-making Bradley," because he had summoned a caucus of members of Congress which nominated Madison as JefferThis "proceeding was con son's successor. sidered to be so unconstitutional that even several of his own party condemned it, and refused to attend. They said it was an endeavor to bias the sentiments of the people in their choice of a ruler, a measure highly subversive to the freedom of election." The general instructed our traveler in the nomenclature of Virginian drinks: A gum-tickler was a gill of spirits, generally taken fasting. A phlegm-cutter was a double dose just before breakfast. An antifogmatic was the same when taken before dinner. A gall-breaker was a pint of ardent spirits taken at discretion. "When a man takes to drinking gall breakers," says Lambert, even the Virginians regard him as a lost sheep "-perhaps not unreasonably. With regard to the common charge of familiarity and rudeness so frequently brought against the American people at this time, our author emphatically declares that he experienced the utmost civility and politeness from the inhabitants in every part of the country through which he traveled. Coachmen and tavern-keepers were alike civil and attentive; he hardly ever passed a man on the road who did not give him a nod, which "perhaps to some might seem curt, but was evidently meant in kindness." In fact, he found it as difficult to discover rudeness in the men as it was to detect an ugly face or bad teeth among the women. The people of England are, he thinks, "too apt to hold the character of the Americans in trifling estimation." While he, of course, prefers his own countrymen, he finds much to commend among the new people; and, if his book "succeeds in dispelling some of the prejudices and misconceptions which prevail with regard to them," he will consider his work well done. E. H. L. What if, in caves of ocean deep, She treasured up each precious word, Where fickle waters kiss the land, And I will seek and bind the pearls, What though those days were short and few M. E. W. S. AMONG the events of a hundred years We ago which are entitled to signal commemoration in our centennial celebrations is one which occurred just one hundred years from the date of this week's JOURNAL. The stranger who visits Boston is apt to include within the circle of his sight-seeing the suburban city of Cambridge, with its old college buildings, its homes of poets and men of science and letters, and its venerable tree encircled with an iron railing, and furnished with an epitaph while yet it lives. Upon the granite slab at the base of this tree the stranger reads the statement that here on July 3, 1775, George Washington assumed the command of the Revolutionary army. It is well now, in our historic and retrospective frame of mind, to pause and consider a little the full significance of this event. are of those who believe that ordinarily the influence of single minds upon any age is slight; that marked changes and great events are adequate products of innumerable causes lying deep in the constitution of society, which great leaders represent rather than form or create; but, when we consider all the facts of the American Revolution, it would really seem as if the success of that great effort were due to the peculiar fitness of George Washington for his tremendous task. How vast and formidable the task was, very few of us have ever fully realized. The more we study the history of the war the more marvelous the issue seems, and the more amazing the courage and confidence of those who essayed what must have seemed to many ordinary observers to be a wholly hopeless undertaking. The American rebels ought to have been defeated by all the laws of war, by the laws of force, and by all the conditions that usually determine results. And yet they won under the command of one who was neither a man of genius nor a man of ideas; they won after being defeated in the great majority of their direct encounters in the battle-field; they won under a succession of retreats, and with all the great cities excepting one in possession of the enemy; they won with an empty exchequer, and almost without food, raiment, or ammunition; they won in the face of growing discontent, with depleting numbers, and under nearly every conceivable harassment; and their winning was immensely due to the steadfast and unconquerable will of one man. We may well believe that the success of the American army was rendered possible only by the coöperation of the French, but this coöperation could be secured only by firmly holding the army together, and steadfastly maintaining its position before the English. The condition of things was such that the one supreme quality needed in the commander-in-chief was calm, immovable, un have dazzled, have only misled the world. We may concede numerous deficiencies in Washington's genius, but we can find none in his character-none in his transcendent fitness for the place he occupied. Hence it is that his assumption of the command of the half-clothed and wholly undisciplined army gathered around Boston one hundred years ago was an event of such measureless importance to the cause that we signally fail in our comprehension of the struggle if we do not give it a worthy place in our centennial rejoicings. A WRITER in an English journal, speaking of the British people in their relation to art, declares that "they seldom know a good picture when they see it, and they seldom like a good picture when it is pointed out to them." Accusations of this sort are very common among writers upon art, and the truth of the charge would seem to have become a received axiom in all art circles. Now, we bluntly assert it to be wholly fallacious. It is an error composed of two parts, one of which mistakes the character of the average intelligence, while the other mistakes the functions and requisites of a truly good picture. That every good picture contains very much that can only be fully appreciated by those who have cultivated art-perceptions is undeniably true. But there are certain essentials of a good picture which every person of average intelligence and culture is quite capable of understandingthese are, the story it has to tell, the facts it attempts to reproduce, and the sentiment it designs to express. If these things cannot be seen in a picture even when pointed out, then we may be sure that the art is in some way radically wrong in its methods. An art that can be understood in its leading manifestations only after a special training for it flinching, unvarying courage-courage of that lect, highly-cultivated persons-is rather too exclusive to be of much importance to the world. But the history of art shows us that paintings have affected very powerfully the imagination of the great mass of people, and that, notwithstanding popular ignorance, great paintings have never failed to secure their appreciation. It is not to be denied that public taste has sanctioned a great many worthless works of art, but has it ever rejected the productions of the great minds? The main difficulty with the public is, that its natural passion for pictures is such that it greedily falls to liking nearly all that is offered to it; but education in this matter is very rapid. There is nothing recondite in art. It deals with sensibilities and emotions common to the whole of mankind. The love of the beautiful and fondness for color are active principles with all classes; sentiment and the passions are possessed by all grades alike; and people who like flowers and natural scenery, who are affected by moods in Nature, who are moved by sympathy for fellow-beings, can never be insensible to an art that appeals to their natural tastes and sentiments. All, therefore, that is open and true in painting can be appreciated by the average mind. But this average taste does not know all the technical deficiencies or the technical excellences of a picture. It may not be able to judge fully of its composition, of its treatment of parts, of its tone, of a hundred things that the expert can point out and descant upon. But this is common to every art, to every handicraft even. It is not to be assumed that men cannot tell good pictures from bad, or are wholly insensible to excellence in the arts, because they are not learned in its academic laws. A man may be a very fair judge of a poem without knowing any thing about the rules of versification; he may have a sound opinion of a drama or a melody, without special training in musical composition or in the art of the playwright. It would seem as if the critics were continually exacting from the public, in regard to painting, an erudition which no other art requires; and because these critics become enamored of one man's erratic performances, another man's eccentric vagaries, in which there is probably often more or less of genuine talent turned awry into crooked pathsbecause the public does not possess this artificial taste for strangely-flavored dishes, it is assumed that it has no ability to understand art at all. Amateurs and connoisseurs are prone in every art to exalt technical skill above the soul or the sentiment of the performance to find their pleasure in the skill with which difficulties are overcome rather than in the success of the essential story, with which alone the average taste is concerned. True art is catholic. It deals with large, open truths; it has no mysteries, nor vagaries, nor dillettant notions, nor petty scholacisms, nor pedantic exclusiveness; its function is to reach and charm the great heart of humanity either by some form of beauty or story of human passion; and hence how preposterous it is to assume that this great force is something incomprehensible to all save those who have studied pigments and measured proportions! IN the article entitled "The Strangest Things in Life," printed in this week's JOURNAL, Mr. Fairfield makes a few fresh contributions to the literature of the mysterious. The remarkable statements in this paper are not given in support of the doctrine of spiritualism. It is probably known that Mr. Fairfield has recently advanced a theory in explanation of the alleged phenomena of spiritualism. This publication has naturally brought to his hands a good many curious statements from persons interested in the study of the subject, and these narratives are given to the public in the present paper. For our part, we must confess to considera ble distrust of the accuracy of all the marvelous stories in regard to what are called spiritualism and clairvoyance now so numer ous. We are aware how well many of these narratives are supported by the testimony of intelligent people, but it has also been shown how often really capable persons have been deceived. The remarkable fact is, that these marvels fall for the most part solely within the experience of believers, and disappear when confronted with downright skepticism. Mr. Lecky, in his "History of Rationalism," tells us that the phenomena of witchcraft continued just so long as a wide-spre faith in them existed, and ceased when a general skepticism of their truth began to take possession of the popular mind. He asserts that the phenomena never were and have not been to this day disproved; that all the evidence goes to support their authenticity; that the people eventually ceased to believe in them not because any facts were elicited or any revelation made calculated to throw doubt upon them, but simply because a disbelief, based not on evidence but on rationalistic reasoning, gradually took possession of the public mind. It would be well if some philosopher, prompted by the current mysteries, should make a searching study of the natural credulity of man-of the deeplygrounded tendency of many people to rest upon and believe in the marvelous. These persons believe in the mysterious because the whole tenor of their mental organization is in that direction. They either do not know how to investigate phenomena or are indisposed to do so. They like to believe. They have no sympathy with doubters. They are thrilled and captivated by every thing of a mystic character, and eagerly surrender their whole natures to its influence. People of this tendency of mind are simply incapable of analyzing phenomena like those of spiritualism. No man of a thoroughly skeptical mind, we may be assured, would have been deceived by the recent Katie King frauds. He might have been unable to detect the trick, but his inability to discover the cause of the manifestations would never for a moment have led him into the tremendous blunder of accepting them for what they were alleged to be. His rationalism would have asserted the impossibility of their truth, regardless of all the plausible circumstances under which they were exhibited. The skeptical person disbelieves in despite of what he sees, because he feels assured that somewhere, by some means, there is to be found an adequate explanation of the marvel before him; the unskeptical person believes in despite of his reason, or rather seduces his reason from its path by the force of his imagination, and believes because he is quite willing to accept the most superficial testimony as trustworthy. In all ages and with all people the marvelous has abounded when the spirit of credulity has prevailed; and at all times the marvelous has filed before the spirit of incredulity. For this reason the reader may derive entertainment from the strange narratives in Mr. Fairfield's paper, but it would be wise for him to keep his faith in them in reserve, simply classifying them among the unexplained. A NOTEWORTHY social change has been taking place in England within the past quarter of a century. It is illustrated in one way in the region of art. Formerly the patronage of art, not only of painting and sculpture, but of all ornamental and antique objects, was pretty much confined to the nobility, and the indefinite class just below the nobility sweepingly designated in England as "gentlemen." The class of merchants, manufacturers, bankers, men of trade, while rivaling the aristocracy in wealth, did not compete with them to any great degree in the aesthetic elegancies, though no doubt they did in the material luxuries of life. The great manufacturer of Birmingham or Bolton aspired to become a landed proprietor, and was quick to purchase the hoary castles and vast acres of bankrupt lords; he was fain, too, to have his imposing mansion in town, his stud of horses, and his game-preserves. But as yet he rather spent money on downright, palpable luxuries; the refinement of artistic rarity and ornamentation did not appeal to his uncultivated ambition. In these days it is evident that the rich men of trade have learned the value of such things. There is a rage in England for antique articles. Old plate, old clocks, finely-carved old furniture, venerable salvers, beakers, and punch-bowls, historic Sèvres, relics of the elegance of extinct royalty, are eagerly sought for, and bring great prices. It is found that in the competition both for antique articles of vertu, for the most fashionable paintings, and the most conspicuous sculptural works, the class of manufacturers and merchants is eager, and often bears away the choicest specimens. The houses of this class are beginning to be as tastefully and artistically, as well as luxuriously, adorned as are the houses of the Grosvenors and Egertons of old descent. There is a decadence of the somewhat vulgar ostentation of former days; the presence of far more refinement and culture. Thus there has been a leveling up in matters of taste; and herein may be found one of the reasons why art in England is so much more prosperous and flourishing than it was even in the days of Turner and Sir Thomas Lawrence, since the wealth of another great and important class is now seeking its prod ucts. WHAT Worn college graduate, world-tired, does not feel something of the old, fresh, youthful spirit come over him, when reminded that "commencement season" has come? How vividly the festival brings to the mind |