their absence, the clergyman making some question very urgently, I tried the table; and with a slight and wholly imperceptible movement of my wrists, I tipped it quite easily and made it answer exactly in the same way as the medium had done. This I did twice; no one suspecting, no one seeing, not even the friend who was sitting next, me, and who did not believe in spirits. And if I could so easily move the table, and on a first trial, what could not one who had studied its capabilities effect? That table was as easily manipulated as if it had been made of paper, and almost as light; and the slightest movement of the wrists sufficed to tip it. When the medium returned, and the circle closed again, we had a few more "experiences." A spirit announced itself. For whom? Single raps (negative) came; no, no, no, for one and the other; until three affirmative tippings pointed to my friend. Who was the spirit? father? mother? child? brother? Yes: brother. The name? The alphabet was called for, and a name spelt out."Edward." Now, my friend never had a brother who died, and never one at all, living or dead, of the name of Edward. So much for even the common phenomenon of this medium's thought-reading.

pulled the strings of her puppets at her will. Then an old badly-tuned guitar was held by the clergyman, and played under the table. The clergyman sang the Old Hundreth in a low and tremulous voice, and while he sang a few simple chords were struck out, such as would have suited anything; but I deny that there was any attempt at known melody in the music, or that it was anything more than could have been produced by sweeping the hand or foot over the strings at certain intervals. But some of the believers were quite overpowered with this "manifestation," and one or two were deeply affected. To my ears, not perhaps capable of appreciating what to them seemed such heavenly harmony, it was a simple string sound, such as could have been easily effected by drawing the toes over the strings.

The light was now put out, and the spirits rapped us all to another and more commodious part of the room, where they had promised to show the hands. A double circle was formed, and when we were fairly placed, which was not until we had gone through a great deal of trouble and annoyance-for the spirits were suspicious and full of fancies and caprices, and would not have any one too near, but drove one The spirits now promised to do a great deal over-anxious gentleman clean away from the more. The medium, myself, and two others place where they were to show-after many held an oblong piece of paper by the four such shiftings and turnings, the mediums got corners. Immediately there was a scratching settled, and the spirits seemed to be content. and a tapping on the underside of the paper, But they would not show the hands, though close to the mediuni's hand. It was not impos- adjured to do so in the name of God, and also sible for her to have produced those sounds, familiarly scolded and rated for their breach of and I, intently watching her face and move- faith. A small bell was then set running about ments-having been rendered suspicious by my the room-they said it was running through the own easy performances with the table-can dis-air-and ringing as it went. We could not see tinctly affirm that she did produce those sounds; it, but we heard it ringing in different paths, or she and no other. A tray was manipulated in the same way. It was placed upside down on the table, and the medium and ourselves laid our fingers upon it. This tray was of extreme flexibility; it was a lively tray, and somewhat eccentric in its movements. Suddenly, as if tired of being shaken and tapped on, it started up and rapped the knuckles of one of the party -I think of the clergyman, but I am not sure. And here again I distinctly saw the younger medium lift the tray by a sudden pressure of her thumbs, and I saw her rapidly strike the edge against the hand in question. Then the table reared itself up, and sustained itself in the air for some seconds; but again the medium's thumbs were underneath, and her knee was against the top. This I also most distinctly saw-for she is not very accomplished yet in sleight of hand, and a very little careful observation can detect the manner of her tricks. I was then touched underneath the table. My ankle was suddenly grasped by something flexible and springy, but not muscular. Others were grasped too; all but my friend, whose feet were tucked away under the chair, and so were out of the line of the medium's foot. And all the while this was going on I felt the young lady's knee work up and down against mine, as each person cried out he was touched, and she

places, about the room, but always close at hand. Suddenly it seemed to fall over on its side, and then the spirits rapped out their dismissal, and the séance was at an end. One thing I have forgotten: two gentlemen were asked to agree between themselves on a certain moment by the clock, when the spirits would rap as soon as the minute hand reached the spot. They did so, and the raps did come at the very instant. This was the only clever thing in the performance, and, excepting this, the whole affair was a somewhat dull and most barefaced imposition. As I sat and looked at it all, I scarcely knew which filled me with most surprise, the unblushing impudence of the actors, or the marvellous credulity of the spectators. There was not one single thing performed that was not an open and palpable deception; yet here were sane, well-educated English men and women grouped, full of faith and belief, round two illiterate conjurors, whose tricks would have been utterly contemptible but for the painful amount of human trust and reverence given to them. It was something inexpressibly sad to see how these two wretched women were able to play on the holiest and deepest feelings of their audience; how, for the paltry sum which they gained from each as the price of their deceptions, they mocked the most sacred truths,

and cheated the most earnest faith. It was a degrading exhibition, and all the more so because men of cultivated understandings and women of ordinary perceptions gave into it without question or examination, and set aside the precious mental power of critical reason, in favour of blind, headlong, unreasoning credulity.

I know that I shall be met by believers with the argument that all the greatest scientific truths were, when first propounded, scouted and disbelieved: witness Galileo, Harvey, Jenner, and others. But although truth in all such cases has not prevailed at once, and although the beliefs in them have languished, yet, even when weakest, such beliefs have always been strong enough to leave broad marks behind them -broad enough for the wise to stand upon, whence to assert, and eventually to sustain, them beyond dispute. Truth never dies away without leaving some mark." Spiritualism," on the contrary, has burnt its feeble light from the earliest times of the Old Testament; it has flickered, then gone out from sheer exhaustion. It has been forgotten, then " discovered" again; then it has flourished amongst a certain class of weak people, and has made a noise-for your hysterical subjects are always very demonstrative. Then belief has been exhausted, and the sickly flame has been extinguished, to peep out again at some future time, and, in the same way, to die out. This seems to be the difference between the reception and destiny of truth, and imposture.

:

See

to see what some experiments were like.
ing that it is almost impossible to make exami-
nations during the experiments; that if you are
troublesome or avowedly sceptical, the spirits
will rap you out of the circle, and, not content
with that, rap you out of the room-it is not very
easy to detect the manner of the trick it is
less easy, indeed, than with the ordinary con-
juror, who stands confessed to all the world be-
fore him as simply an ingenious mechanist,
with marvellous quickness of hand, and whom
every one is trying to find out. No critical
tests are allowed; no scientific investigation.
Indeed, it would be utterly impossible, at the
table of a friend, or even in the house of a
person of condition, to take satisfactory mea-
sures for the detection and exposure of any
such imposture as might be seen or suspected.
If you go, you must go prepared to be convinced;
and, if you desire to remain to the end, you
must be careful not to express doubt or dis-
satisfaction of anything that you may see. The
spirits have a very summary way of getting rid
of any one they have reason to fear may prove
too inquisitive; and, when the mediums express
their grief at the arrangement which expels you,
and ask you, piteously, "what can they do?
and, how can they help it?" you have no re-
source but to accept your fate. Thus they en-
force the acquiescence of silence while you re-
main, and then write you down a convert the
moment you retire.

THE GRIMGRIBBER RIFLE CORPS.

One of the most provoking peculiarities of WE COMMENCE THE "MOVEMENT." the spiritualists is the definite manner in which Ir was not until long after this grand pathey speak of indefinite things and indefinite triotic volunteer movement had been started sensations. A publication called the Spiritual that we began to talk of it at Grimgribber, and Magazine is especially full of this sort of un- it was much later before we thought of joining blushing assertion. Things, which in the séances it. You see we are rather peculiar at Grimsome people say they see, and others only think gribber-not aristocratic, perhaps, but decidedly they see, and others don't see at all, are set rich, and on that account rather high and standdown as positive, actual, undeniable facts; as un-off-ish. We live in large houses, considerably deniable as this paper on which I write. If, at the distant end of a large room, and in the dark, a medium says he is floated up to the ceiling, it is stoutly asserted that he is so floated up, and that the people present are witnesses of the feat. Not so: the people present are only witnesses of the fact that the medium asserts this, and that he marks the ceiling; they are not witnesses how he got up so high to make his mark. With ottomans, chairs, and darkness, he may have been able to climb, unperceived, so near, as to mark the ceiling otherwise than by being taken up to it by spiritual hands.

given to portico; we carpet our halls, and therein do a good deal in the proof-before-letter prints and stags'-horn and foxes'-foot hat-rail line; we have very large gardens, with graperies and pineries, and everything that can cost money; but we are decidedly not sociable. To tell truth, Grimgribber is, perhaps, a thought overdone with Quakerdom, having been selected as the favoured spot in which some of the choicest spirits of the Peace Society have pitched their mortal tents, and the consequence is, that it requires the greatest exertions to prevent our general notions from becoming too drab-coloured. So that when we read in the

*

Again, is an audience necessarily a collection of converts ? If I go merely to see these things, have the exhibitors a right to He is represented in the publication in question, parade me as a voucher for their truth? A with the utmost hardihood, as telling his father that certain nobleman, who took especial pains to he (his father) “has been mistaken throughout. Good guard against such an assumption, is ranked as a and heard them, father." It is absolutely impossible faith all these things can be, and are, for I have seen convert; and the unbelieving son of the conductor that any statement could be more untrue than this of this journal figures (when he is well on his way to China) in two numbers of the Spiritual Magazine as a believer, for no worse indiscretion than the dangerous one of having gone

is. He told his father that what he had seen and heard was very absurd, and he gave his father a highly ludicrous detail of the proceedings!-Editor's Note.

be to the surviving relations of any unfortunate person who might be thus killed, to think that the cause of the accident had been made to pay for his carelessness. And then an old gentleman, long resident in the village, and reputed to have been the author of some very spirited verses on the Prince Regent's coronation which actually found their way into print, rose, and recited some poetry which he had forged for the occasion, in which Britannia was represented as bestowing crowns of laurel to each of her "commercial sons,' " and this brought the meeting to a close with a storm of triumph.

OUR COUNCIL AND ITS FUNCTIONS.

On a convenient desk outside the meeting

newspapers of the formation of the various corps, we merely shrugged our shoulders, and said, "Ah!" in rather an admonitory tone; and it was not until the announcement that the Queen would probably receive the officers and review the troops, that the possibility of there being a Grimgribber regiment dawned upon us. I am bound to confess that the idea did not originate with me, but with Jack Heatly, a young stockbroker, who was always looked upon as a dangerous character, and who, when at a very early stage of affairs he joined a metropolitan rifle corps, was considered as having booked himself for perdition. Under cover of the darkness of night, and with extraordinary mystery (for even his bold spirit quailed at the audacity of his plan), Jack paid me a visit one evening last December, and im-room we had placed a large broad sheet, to parted to me his ideas for the formation of the which each intending "effective" member was Grimgribber volunteers. The first of his large- to sign his name, and before the lecture-hall was souled propositions was that he should be made closed we had seventy signatures. The seventy captain; the second, that I should undertake pledged ones met the next day and elected all the work; the third, that I should men- their officers Jack Heatly, of course, being tion the scheme to all likely persons, in my own chosen captain; his brother, lieutenant; and I name at first, but, if it met with approval, in myself receiving the distinguished post of ensign. To any gentleman content with moderate exercise and a good position, I recommend the ensign's berth; his lungs are left intact, for he never has to shout the word of command; he is never in that awful doubt which seizes upon the other officers as to whether they are "on the right flank," as he has simply to walk behind the rear rank in the centre of the company; he is not liable to be shot by the enemy, or by his own men; and he can gain a character for smartness with little trouble, by merely occasionally uttering the caution, "Steady, now!" "Easy in the centre!" " Keep your fours in the wheel!" and such-like mandates delivered in an admonitory voice. He is, in fact, the Lord Burleigh of the company, and best comports himself by grave silence and stern military aspect.

his.

I was struck with Jack's magnanimity, and fell into his views; so likely persons were seen, and agreed at once to the rough outline of the scheme-Grimgribber should have a rifle corps; that was decided on; all detail could be entered into at a public meeting which should be forthwith advertised and held in the lecture-room of our Literary Institute. The consternation into which the drab-coloured portion of our population received this announcement cannot be described; the head-shakings, the hand-upliftings were awful, and the accusative case of the second person singular was joined to every verb of monition and reproach, and applied to us rigorously. But we managed to make way even against this, and we held our meeting. One of the county members had promised to preside, and at eight o'clock the room was crammed and beginning to grow noisy, but the county member had not arrived; then I, as secretary, explained this to the meeting, and proposed that some one else should take the chair, and some one else accordingly took it and had just reached a triumphant point in his peroration, when the door was burst open and the county member walked in, in a white waistcoat and a rage, and we had to begin all over again. But still we had a very great success. I had drawn up a set of rules based on those of Jack Heatly's former rules, and these met with great approval; an enemy had obtained admission, and he caused some disturbance by uttering a very loud and sarcastic" Hear, hear!" after one of them which inflicted a fine of five shillings for discharging the rifle by accident; and when I sat down, he rose and proceeded to comment on this rule, declaring it absurd to punish a person for an offence committed accidentally. But Jack got up, and in an oration of unexampled eloquence, completely demolished our adversary, by proving to him what a consolation it would

When the selection of officers had been made, we set to work and chose certain gentlemen to be members of council. We had seen that other corps had a council, and it was therefore necessary that we should have one; but, beyond checking the expenses of the regiment, we were not at all clear as to what were the council's functions. We soon found out. The members of the council were exclusively privates, and it appeared that their first and most urgent duties were to oppose every arrangement made by the officers, and to endeavour in every possible manner to set the corps by the ears. Did Jack Heatly, as captain commanding, issue an order, the council was down upon him like a shot, had him up like Othello before the Senate, and harangued him with Old Bailey-like politeness and Central Criminal Court etiquette; did the lieutenant, a shy and retiring young man, make a mistake in his word of command, he was summoned the next day before the Vehmgericht, had his error pointed out to him, was told to make himself immediate master of the few instructions contained in very small type in a fat red-covered quarto volume of some eight hundred pages,

and was dismissed with a rather more severe re-about our Queen, our country, our national primand than if he had stolen a watch; did I en- defences, and the patriotic body of men now deavour to come to the rescue, I was received coming forward, in a way that made my ears with bland smiles and disbelieving shoulder tingle; but he declined to subscribe. On prinshrugs, and with pleasant hints that "the ciple, on principle alone; in any other possible subaltern officers had really better not expose manner that he could aid us, he would, but_he themselves." Now this was trying to all, could not give us money, as he thought such a especially to Jack Heatly, who is as explosive as proceeding would deprive the movement of its a volcano, and who used to make a light meal purely voluntary character! I was so staggered off his lips and tongue in endeavouring to main- that I paused for a moment, overcome: then I tain his reticence; but as the members of the suggested that this feeling might not prevent council were indefatigable in their zeal at drill, his helping us in another way we wanted a punctual in their attendance, and showed large space to drill in-would he lend us his thoroughly that they had the welfare of the field? He hesitated for a minute, and then corps at heart, we put up with it all, and got asked if I meant his field in Grimgribber, at rapidly under weigh. the back of his house? On my replying in the Of course it was necessary that we should affirmative, his face expressed the deepest conaccumulate as ample funds as possible, besides cern; "he could not spare a blade of that the subscription of the members; and with this grass-not a blade-he required it all for view the council determined that a select few of grazing purposes, and it must not be trampled us should call upon the inhabitants and ask for upon; but he had considerable property in donations. The list of names was divided into South Wales, and if that had been any use three portions, and I as junior officer had the to us he could have put hundreds of acres most implacable enemies of the movement at our disposal." However, notwithstanding allotted to me to visit. Now, it has been my these rebuffs, we collected a very respectable fate to have been placed in many humiliating sum of money, and thought ourselves juspositions during my life. I have been com-tified in really commencing operations. Of pelled to act a knight in a charade with a tinpot course the first and most important operation on my head for a helmet and a towel-horse for was: my charger, and in this guise to make love to a very stout old lady before the grinning faces of deriding friends. I have been asked to "do" an He to whom our military education was conorange nicely" for a young lady at dessert, fided was a sergeant in the Welsh Bombardier and, owing to my having blind eyes and utterly Guards, and he brought with him a corporal of immobile stiff fingers, have bungled thereat in a the same regiment as his assistant. The sermanner contemptible to behold. On the King's-geant was short and stout; the corporal tall and road, at Brighton, I have ridden a flea-bitten thin; both had hair greased to the point of grey horse formerly a member of a circus, perfection, and parted with mathematical corwhich, in the presence of hundreds of the aristocracy then and there assembled, persisted in waltzing to the music of a German band; but never was I so thoroughly ashamed of myself as on the errand of requesting donations for the Grimgribber volunteers. In ten places they told me plainly they would not give anything and next to those who gave willingly, I liked these best; in others, they shook their heads and sighed, and said it did not augur well for any movement which commenced by sending round the begging-box; some were virtuously indignant, and denounced us as openly in citing foreign attack by our braggadocio; some declined to give because they were comfortably persuaded that the end of the world was so close at hand that our services would never be required; one old farmer, known to be enormously rich and horribly penurious, offered us a threepenny piece, a brass tobacco-box, and a four-bladed knife with a corkscrew in the handle.

OUR DRILL.

rectness; perched on the extreme right verge of his head, the corporal accurately balanced a little cap. Off duty the sergeant was occasionally human in his appearance and manners, but the corporal never; in his mildest aspect he resembled a toy soldier; but when, either in giving command, or taking it from his sergeant, he threw up his head, stiffened his body, closed his heels, and stuck out his hands like the signs at a French glove-shop reversed, I can find no word to describe his wooden nonentity. I think we all felt a little awkward at our first introduction to our instructors; they surveyed us, as we were drawn up in line, grimly and depreciatingly; in obedience to a look from his superior, the corporal then fell a pace or two back and assumed the statuesque attitude, while the sergeant rapped his cane against his leg and exclaimed, Now, genl'men, FALL IN!" the first two words being uttered in his natural voice, the last two in an awful sepulchral tone, and sounding like a double rap on a bass kettledrum.

But perhaps my noblest interview was with Mr. Alumby, our senior churchwarden, who We "fell in" as we best could-that is, we lives at The Hassocks, close outside the vil- huddled together in a long line-and were then lage, and who has the credit of being the best" sized" by the sergeant, who walked gravely hand at an excuse, of any man in the county. down the rank, and inspected us as though we Overwhelmingly polite was Alumby, offered me had been slaves in the market of Tripoli, and he a chair with the greatest hospitality, spoke the Dey's emissary, with a large commission to

buy; and then commenced our preliminary instruction. The first manoeuvre imparted to us was to "stand at ease”—a useful lesson, teaching us not only the knowledge of a strategic evolution, but giving us quite a new insight into the meaning of the English language. In our former benighted ignorance we might possibly have imagined that to stand at ease meant to put our hands in our pockets, to lean against the wall, or to lounge in any easy and comfortable manner; but we now learned that, in order to stand really at ease, we should strike the palm of our left hand very smartly with the palm of our right, then fold the right over the back of the left in front of us, protrude our left foot, throwing the weight of the body on the right, and, in fact, place ourselves as nearly as possible in the attitude of Pantaloon when he is first changed by the fairy, minus his stick. It is an elegant and telling manœuvre this, when properly executed, and, possibly, not very difficult of acquirement; but we did not fall into it all at once; there was a diversity of opinion among us as to which was the proper foot to be advanced, and when that was settled, we were at variance as to which was our right foot and which our left, so that it was not until the sergeant had many times sarcastically assured us that "he couldn't hear them hands come smartly together as he'd wished-not like a row of corks a-poppin' one after the other, but all at once;" nor until the stiff corporal had paraded up and down behind us, muttering, in a low tone, "Them left feet advanced-no! no! them left feet advanced," that we were considered sufficiently perfect in this respect, and allowed to pass on to grander evolutions. The same difficulty was attendant upon these. On being told to "right face," two gentlemen, of diametrically opposed views on the subject, would find themselves face to face instead of being one behind the other, and neither would give way until they were set right by the sergeant.

very slight exercise of this educated intelligence will suffice for most of the evolutions.

66

When the command has been received upon the tympanum, act upon it at once, without pausing to reflect. You will see many intelligent men bring upon themselves the wrath of their sergeant, simply because, in analysing and pondering on his instructions, they have missed the right time for action, and are half a minute or so behind the rest of their company. For instance, the command is given-" At the word 'Fours' the rear-rank will step smartly off with the left foot, taking a pace to the rear-Fours!" Or, in the sergeant's language, Squad! 'shun! at th'wud Foz' the rer-rank will stepsma't lyoffwi' th' leffut, tekkinapesstoth' rare-Fo-o-o-res !" the last word being uttered in a prolonged and discordant bellow. A reflective gentleman in the rear-rank, first translates this dialect into the ordinary language of civilised life, and then proceeds to ponder on its meaning; and when he has discovered it, he probably finds himself deserted by his comrades, who have taken up a position a pace behind him, and an object of disgust to the sergeant, who, looking at him more in pity than in anger, says, in a hoarse whisper, "Now, Number Three-what, wrong agin!"

When I remember the unique series of performances that inaugurated our first lessons in marching, I cannot imagine that we were then the same set of Grimgribber volunteers who defiled so steadily before her Majesty the other day, amidst the bravos of enthusiastic crowds. I think our original evolutions were even sufficient to astonish our sergeant, a man not easily overcome; for, at the conclusion of the first lesson, I observed him retreat to a distant corner of the parade-ground, strike himself a heavy blow on the chest, and ejaculate, "Well, if hever!" three distinct times. I recollect that two thirds of our number had peculiar theories of their own, and that each trying his own plan It was not until after some time that we led to confusion. For instance, the gentleman who hit upon the golden principle of drill, which is would step off with his right foot, at the third step NEVER TO THINK AT ALL! Listen, pay attention found his leg firmly wedged between the ankles to the word of command as it is given, and then of his precursor, and utterly lost the use of that follow your first impulse; it will generally be the limb; the light and swinging gait which was adright one. But the recruit who hesitates, is lost. mirably adapted for the pursuit of a country Under the present system, the simplest move- postman, was found scarcely to tally with the ments are taught-not by example, but in direc-sober, slodgy walk of two-thirds of the corps, tions composed of long sentences abounding in who were accordingly trodden down from the technical expressions, listening to which the un-calf to the heel, and who did not view the happy learner, long before the sergeant has come to the middle of his direction, is oblivious of the first part, ignorant of the meaning of the last, and in a thorough fog as to the whole. These directions are learnt parrot-wise by the sergeants, and repeated in a monotonous and unintelligible tone; the men who make use of them know no more what they are saying than those who are addressed, and an example two minutes long does more good than an hour's precept. It is perfectly true that to the educated intelligence of the volunteers is due the superiority which, so far as rapidity of progress is concerned, they have shown over the ordinary recruits; but a

matter with all the equanimity which good fellowship should engender. A third step, of a remedial tendency, consisting of a wide straddling of the legs, and an encircling of the feet of the person immediately in front of you by your own, was not agreeably received by the sergeant, and had to be abandoned: so it was some time before we presented that unanimity of action which is necessary to satisfactory marching.

But we stuck to it manfully and progressed well. The sergeant, who at first seemed disposed to give us up in despair, because he could not swear at us as was his custom, began to take an