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"Aweel noo, John-the Deuk o' York's debts are no paid-an I canna―as a moaral-an' a releegious mon-asseest to build ony eedefeece to honour his name."

"Bravo!" ejaculated Mr. Walton, so loudly that all the audience in front of him turned round, and among them Harding. The party had only time to exchange tokens of recognition and greeting-Mr. Walton shaking his hand towards him with most cordial gesticulations-when the Lecturer entered the room, and everybody called all the rest of the audience to order. This important personage advanced with a slow and formal pace; ascended to the platform, and placing himself behind the desk, looked with a vaguely courageous eye over the crowd of beads around him.

The Lecturer was a sedate, sallow gentleman, very tall and attenuated, all his clothes appearing too loose and roomy for the frame underneath. He had a long nose, and no chin; and long, weak-looking arms, terminating in large bony fingers. It seemed as if all his strength had gone into his hands.

The Lecturer commenced his discourse with the earliest known history of Mesmerism, and then receded yet further back into its conjectural history, reaching to the time of Moses, whom he was disposed to regard as the first great practitioner of the sublime science. In this way the erudite Lecturer occupied three quarters of an hour; and it was endured by the audience with exemplary stolidity. He next proceeded to speculate upon the nature of the animal-magnetic fluid; and here, even the most attentive of the listeners showed signs of disapproval. Mr. Carl Kohl, though unable to speak English, had studied it at the University in Germany, and could understand pretty well; and he now shook his head.

The audience was, as usual, miscellaneous: a few merchants and government officers with their families; many small tradesmen and shopkeepers; and, in consequence of Harding's exhortations, some score of shipwrights and other artisans. There were also a few merchant-captains and mates. Most of these latterseafaring and Dock-yard men—and indeed a great many among the rest of the audience, now began to utter audible murmurs, to the effect that they came expecting to hear Dr. Bowles lecture on Geology, and not Mr. Bamfield on Mesmerism.

"Order" was frequently called.

Thus admonished, the audience again became quiet, though

watches were often pulled out, till the Lecturer at length taking the hint, commenced a series of curious anecdotes of the effects of Mesmerism, which he felt assured would redeem his lecture from any chance of being accounted heavy, and prove highly interesting both to the educated and "the vulgar." He related several miraculous cures, three of which he had himself performed. The last was the case of a gentleman of Berlin who had lost his sight, being struck blind in a thunder-storm, though the organ itself did not appear injured externally. He had consulted all the first German oculists with no effect, and had also tried the water-cure, but all to no purpose. Eventually this gentleman had been visited by himself—Mr. Bamfield-the humble individual who now stood before them. He had persevered with passes daily for the space of three weeks, without any effect, as he thought, and was about to give up the case as hopeless, when it was one day accidentally discovered by the patient's wife, that although he, Mr. Bamfield, had failed to restore the faculty of vision to the proper organ, yet such was the force of the magnetic fluid, and the volition he had sent through the patient, that it had carried all before it, and actually caused a transference of power, whereby the gentleman was enabled to read with his spinal cord. Any unknown book being opened anywhere, and placed opposite to the small of the patient's back-he read off a page like lightning.

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The Lecturer paused. The room was ominously silent, as if the people were drawing in their breath. He looked round triumphantly.

"Lord, what a lie!" said a loud voice from one side of the room. It was Mr. Downs. The whole audience instantly exploded in a roar of laughter, mingled with half jocose cries of Shame!" "Silence!" "Order!"

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"Dass ist not un-possible!" cried Mr. Carl Kohl, standing up and hastily adjusting his spectacles, in some excitement. "Der

transference of dee senses-oaf dee see sense, namely, more zan any ozer sense is not un-possible. And dee twice sight-second sight, you call him, mine gentle-mans, on princeeples magnetiques, is also perhaps then yet true."

Another burst of laughter rewarded this luminous explanation and defence.

"No witchcraft!

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"Pooh! pooh! "We did not come to hear a lecture on Second Sight!" exclaimed several voices. Mr. Carl Kohl bowed, and sat down.

The discomfited Lecturer, who had retreated a few paces, now cautiously returned to the desk, and again endeavoured to obtain a hearing. His miserable countenance caused some re-action in his favour. He began by relating another little anecdote-one of quite a different kind-showing the powers of the magnetic fluid. A very strong man had been unable to rise from a chair, merely by the magnetizer waving his hands over his head; and the same strong man, on being allowed to rise, and told to stand firm, and upright, was compelled to sit down, in spite of all his efforts, merely by the same waving of the hands thus ! And this might be done with any number of men.

Up stood a man at this!-then three more— -then some fifteen stalwart shipwrights and sun-burnt sea-faring men—and all confronted the Lecturer with faces red and convulsed with restrained merriment.

"Gentle-mans! "exclaimed Mr. Carl Kohl-then stopping short, he bent down his head, and said hurriedly, "I pray you, my sir-Mr. Archer-I begs it of you. It is not right zat we allow an infant science to be strangle, or make a foal in her cradle, becose she haf a disastrous friend, zare!" (pointing to the Lecturer) and a bad pokesman" (pointing to himself) "here!" Archer hesitated. He did not much relish the office.

“I !—I !—a disastrous friend!" ejaculated the Lecturer, who was evidently getting wild with nervousness at the array of men with red faces, standing up in front of him with an air of ludicrous defiance. He endeavoured to proceed, but his voice gurgled and died away, so that he only gave a gasp.

"Poor fellow!" whispered Mary, pressing Archer's hand"he is very foolish; but do try and help him out of this painful position.

Archer rose thoughtfully.

"Order!" said Harding in a deep voice, and with an earnest face. "Allow me a few words, gentlemen, ," said Archer, "and let us not forget that ladies are present. I cannot think you right in acting thus in a room devoted to the acquirement of knowledge; neither do I wish to defend everything that our friend the Lecturer has said. But perhaps we have all been rather hasty."

This was chiefly addressed to the men who were standing up to daunt and challenge the powers of magnetism. They all sat down quietly, subdued by Archer's pacificatory voice and quietude of manner.

"In all ages of the world," continued Archer, "there have been wonders-miraculous things, which were as truly facts as the hardest rocks that are hewed for the temples and palacesyet were as unaccountable to the ordinary learned men of the time, as to the ignorant. The consequence was, that the courtmagicians, the recognised wise men, the bigots, or those in power, threw such men as Roger Bacon and Galileo into prison-burned men at the stake-or hooted them out of their dwelling-places. In modern times the resistance to all new and important things is managed in a less violent way-by laughter chiefly, by denunciation, nicknames, contempt, or utter neglect. Yet the very same deriders will denounce those who acted like themselves in former times concerning things then incredible, but now proved beyond all doubt, and in common knowledge and practice. Let us be careful. We may do great wrong to truth, without knowing it. We may sometimes be too hasty in thinking ourselves wise; and too ready to deny the existence or good of a thing, merely because we do not understand it. Let us recollect how the inventors of steam-boats, and of gas-lamps, were treated-how laughed at, and ruined. Let us also observe the far greater wonders actually going on at this time by means of electricity. What is electricity? Nobody knows. What is magnetism? Nobody knows. It is said to be a fluid. It may be so. It may be a new sense-one that receives and transmits without the intervention of any known organ of contact-it may be the essence of all the senses-a spiritual intoxication. It cannot be nonsense, I think, because its effects (apart from all trick, folly, and imposture) are something wonderful. But what it is we know no more than what electricity is, although the effects of the latter are as palpable as they are miraculous. No one can say they are

not so.

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"I can! " said a voice. 66 They are not so! but the speaker was silenced by a general cry of order. The Lecturer buttoned up his coat-then hastily unbuttoned it.

"Nobody," proceeded Archer, "can truly say that electricity is not wonderful, because he may at any time go and see its effects, and feel the truth, too, by a succession of shocks at five miles' distance, if he pleases. But what this subtle fluid is, no one has any conception." (Again the Lecturer rapidly buttoned and unbuttoned his coat.) "We are surrounded by wonders," said Archer. Why does a seed grow? There is the seed

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the earth-the moisture-and the sun. The rest is all a mystery. Let us be cautious, then, how we attempt to crush any new principle of science or philosophy, which displays any signs of comprising some wonderful reality or truth, merely because the world knows nothing of the means by which these things are effected,and because none of those most learned in the world's best knowledge are able to inform us. Among these I of course include the discoverers and practitioners themselves, who may know no more of the cause of the effects they produce than the most ignorant of us. We should give Nature fair play, and let Man proceed. On the other hand, we should not rush forward too fast, and heedless of all circumspection, because, if animosity be for a long time disastrous to a new principle, an injudicious and unscrupulous advocate is far more so. But all the allowances for sincere

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The Lecturer could bear it no longer. “I, a disastrous friend! a heedless and unscrupulous advocate ! exclaimed he. "Do you mean to say, sir, that I am myself ignorant of what I have so long given up my life to study and comprehend in all its noble relations ?-that I am one of those sincere and foolish practitioners who do injury to a great cause?—I, who have fought the battle of the mighty Mesmer, and been the apostle of his fluid these seven years and a half, through good report and evil report, through golden streams of fame, and through the bitterest and most brackish floods of storm, and have put down - put down, I say, and kept down-with a waive of my hand, crowds of antagonists far more respectable and formidable than the crew of brutal shipwrights, and caulkers, and riggers, who just now stood up to defy me!

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As the Lecturer, now perfectly breathless, gasped out these last words, he seemed quite carried beyond all self-government, and shook his open hands wildly over the heads of the audience in front of the desk, as if to cast some magnetic spell upon them. He probably did not intend this in his mind, but he certainly did intend it in sensation. At all events, the action presented exactly this appearance. In a moment three glazed hats whirled through the air at him. One, which was flung by a shipwright with his left hand, the right being pressed down in the crowd, spun off sideways, and hit the full-length portrait of William the Fourth (dressed like a naval officer); the other two flew straight at the Lecturer's head, and the hard rim of one

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