been home long ago, if clairvoyants had not been as blind as buzzards; for they have again and again hazarded the promise. A few years ago some English engineers were employed in raising a sunken vessel at the mouth of the Seine (it had been there many years), which was confidently reported to be the very vessel in which, at the first Revolution, much of the royal plate and treasure had been wrecked. When the operation commenced, so heated were the fancies of some who were interested in its successful accomplishment, that they could not help being tickled with the favourable visions of a celebrated clairvoyant, who plainly saw vases, goblets, salvers of gold and silver, ingots, -goodness knows what! Half unbelieving, his hearers were yet half cajoled by their own hopes. Alas! it turned out to be only a cargo of tallow.

Though your twitting me with a departure from the caution. of the "inductive philosophy," has provoked me to carry the war into the enemies' quarters, and to show that you are the party really chargeable with the fault, I shall not scruple to say that these fantastical "facts" are among the few things that I should think it quite competent to reject on à priori grounds alone. There are two, which I think quite enough to settle the question; but as this letter is already unconscionably long, I shall reserve them for another.

The two things which I deem sufficient to expose your clairvoyant pretensions, are these, 1. You require me to

believe that the laws which so palpably limit and control both the mode and extent of human knowledge are capriciously repealed, every time your Experimenters think proper to demand it, for the most trumpery gratifications of their trumpery curiosity; when, for example, they think proper to see blindfold, or to tell us what is taking place in the back drawing-room of No. 6 Russell Square, the clairvoyant never having been there, and being, at this present, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, or Dublin! If any one thing is obvious as a general law (and plainly necessary it is for the government of the world), it is this, that we are not allowed to look through "stone walls nor into other peoples' breasts; that the heart of our neighbour is to him an inviolable sanctuary, except so far as the language of his tongue or of his actions discloses his thoughts, and that only the eye of Omniscience can pry there. This I say is plainly the law under which we live, and indeed without it, society would be intolerable. Yet you suppose that Omniscience entrusts the key of this lock to every quid nunc of a clairvoyant; and, as far as we can judge from the trifling purposes for which the experiments are usually made, and the equally trifling results in which they usually end, for the mere gratification of an idle curiosity! Nay, you must believe, in effect, that God delegates, for a moment, nothing less than the use of His omniscience to Mr. A. or Mr. B.,who is requested to be pleased to tell instanter what Mr. Smith is doing at the present moment at any house in London; what has become of Sir John Franklin at the North Pole; or what is taking place in the centre of the earth, or the bottom of the ocean; and all, so far as I can discern, all-(proh pudor !) that a set of gaping youths and gossiping dowagers may have an idle hour enlivened and a foolish wonder gratified, as they dawdle over a cup of tea in Professor Slowman's drawing-room! So strongly do I believe that the laws which God has established secure the lock of every man's thoughts from clairvoyant impertinence, that if (which I never had a chance of) I saw any of the wonderful facts to the contrary which you retail, I should certainly believe that God, at least, had nothing to do with them. If after having provided myself, for example,

T

with such questions as I alone could answer, and yet of the same trumpery character as those which your friends, on the 18th ult., put to their oracle, I found really accurate responses, I acknowledge that I should at once agree with you that there was something in it- and a devilish deal too; but, so strong is my à priori view of the extreme improbability of God's systematically infringing His general laws at the beck of your clairvoyants, and for their nonsensical purposes, that I should deem it far more probable that, in the particular case (perhaps to punish silly folks for their credulity, curiosity, and presumption), He had for once permitted a mischievous imp to play the oracle; I should be inclined to say "Monsieur Clairvoyant, or Madame Clairvoyante (as the case may be), I am now perfectly convinced that there is something in you; but being also convinced, as strongly as I can be of anything, that the laws of God are diametrically opposed to this habit of prying into our neighbour's bosom, I am inclined to surmise that your power has rather a suspicious origin, and the less I see of you the better; I beg to decline any further familiarity with your familiar." However, I shall know how to deal with these phenomena, which somehow never come in my way, when I meet with them.

2. My second reason, wholly unconnected with any experiments, is, that I do not find that man makes any application of these wonderful powers; which I think he would do, if there were anything in them. There is one thing which can infallibly be depended on, if nothing else can; and that is, that men are surpris ingly 'cute, as Sam Slick says, in discovering their own interest "that's a fact." When the steam engine When the steam engine the railway- the illuminating power of gas- the electric telegraph, are placed at man's disposal, they are not permitted to remain idle toys; they are instantly welcomed, and applied to the most comprehensive uses. And yet what are any of these or all of them together, compared with the power, both for good and evil, of the faculty of clairvoyance, if there were any such thing? Would either man's cupidity or benevolence be blind to such a marvellous agent? What a means of detecting criminals, of tracing "lost, stolen, and strayed!" What a reinforcement of Bow Street! What a

happy supplement would it afford to evidence when a prisoner does not make confession or, for the matter of that, how easy to take a peep into his bosom and make the confession for him ! What a help to the doctor, and surely no less to the patient, whose entrails might thus be subjected, not to a lamentable post mortem, but a salutary ante mortem examination! What an instrument for diplomatists what an invaluable picklock to open hostile cabinets! What a pleasant, painless rack for worming out political secrets! What an instrument, above all, in war! How cheaply the newspapers might keep "our own correspondent" in every quarter of the world who yet need never go beyond the sound of Bow Bells! How priceless, in all these cases, would be a genuine clairvoyant !

You will say, perhaps, that there are those who consult this oracle. Well, I believe some credulous persons do so now and then, just as some go to the vulgar fortune-teller: but if it were found to answer, everybody would. No such discovery will human interest and human cupidity, or even human philanthropy, allow to remain unfruitful. You will say, perhaps, that it would be ă dreadful thing if clairvoyance were thus resorted to; that men would be secretly circumventing one another, to the utter ruin of the world! That is a very good reason, à priori, against the existence of such a power, and an excellent reason, if it did exist, why men should not employ it; but no reason alas! why they would not; for when was there any lack of men ready to use any instrument, good or evil, that answered their purpose? And in this case, if any did use it and found it effectual, all must, if only in self-defence; just as, if bad men draw swords, good men must draw them too.

Till I see the sharp wit of man thus turning your clairvoyance (as everything else that can be so turned) to practical purposes, I shall continue to rank it with so many kindred delusions, which in every age, for a few months or years, amuse those whose fancy is stronger than their reason, and then pass away for ever.

I am, yours,
R. E. H. G.

My dear Friend,

LETTER LXXVI.

To Rev. C. Ellis.

Dec. 1854.

Has it never struck you that many of the events of life occur in such a serio-comic manner (as one may say), involving so much transient vexation, yet so barren, as far as we can see, of any results, that if we did not believe all things under the control of a superintending wisdom, one might refer them to that sort of playful, sportive malice which schoolboys certainly have, and fairies were formerly supposed to have; malice, which enjoyed the exquisite momentary distress, the comic perplexity of mortals, yet without any serious intention of doing any great mischief? I do not wonder that our forefathers should have resorted to Puck, Robin Goodfellow, and their company, to account for these contre-temps.

I have just had a specimen of this sort of practical joke. On a recent journey I had had a small box of important documents intrusted to me by a friend; I willingly took charge of it, and as it was to be under my own eye, I scrawled on it in joke, "John Smith, passenger." On entering the Babel-like station of one of the great centres of railway traffic, the box intrusted to me was set down for a moment with my portmanteau; and while I was settling with the cabman, an officious porter, concluding that it was going by a train just loading, carried it away, and by the time I turned to take it, he and the treasure had vanished. My train, by which I was to go, was within five minutes of starting, and in a state of the greatest possible excitement I raced up and down the chaos of stairs and platforms in search of the box. Almost at the last moment, I found it in a distant corner just opposite a train going in a totally different direction; in five minutes it would have been whirled off, and in three hours snatched half the length of the kingdom from its negligent