Chapter XI: Conclusion (1)

It is well known in history, that the rising of the Hungarian saved the falling fortunes of Maria Theresa. The enthusiasm of this sensitive and energetic people, once awakened, knew no bounds. All the country nobles, with their followers, took up arms. Croatia alone supplied twelve thousand men. Immense sums of money, to support the army, were offered by the clergy; and, out of the most distant provinces, sprang up, as the soldiers sown by the teeth of Cadmus from the earth, those countless savage hordes, who under the name of Pandours carried terror into every part of Europe. From the moment of the "insurrection," as it is called, of the Hungarian nobility, the aspect of affairs began to change. The Elector of Bavaria, who, to the grief of Maria Theresa, had received the imperial crown of Germany, so long in the possession of the House of Hapsburg, chiefly by the influence of French intrigues, under the name of Charles the Seventh, was driven from his States. England and Holland were won over to the cause of the persecuted Queen; and both, especially the former, lent her large sums. The whole British nation was interested in her favour. The English nobility, instigated by the Duchess of Marlborough, offered her a subscription collected to the amount of a hundred thousand pounds; but this sum Maria Theresa nobly refused, accepting nothing that was not granted to her by the nation in Parliament assembled. By the valour of Hungarian arms, the French were at length driven out of Bohemia; and what still more contributed to the peace shortly after obtained from a great portion of the Queen's enemies, was the result of the bloody field of Hanau, which turned out entirely to the advantage of Maria Theresa and her noble allies, and at which half of the _noblesse_ of France was either killed or wounded.

It was shortly after this great battle, in which so many bold spirits fell on either side, that a catafalk was erected at the upper end of the middle aisle belonging to the glorious Gothic Church of St Stephen's in Vienna. The service for the dead had been performed with pomp. The priests had retired from the aisle. But still, upon the steps, covered with black cloth, and illumined from above by many wax-lights, knelt two personages. The one was a female, dressed in deep mourning, who appeared to be praying fervently. A group of attendants, both male and female, in the attire of the court mourning of the day, stood at a little distance from her. The other was an old man, in a well-worn hussar dress, who had thrown himself forward on to the upper step, upon another side of the catafalk, and had buried his face in his hands. At length the female rose, gave a last look at that dark mass, which concealed a coffin, and, within, a corpse; and then, drawing her veil over her face, moved slowly towards a side-door, followed by her attendants, with a respect paid only to a royal personage. A crowd of beggars surrounded the door, where an Imperial carriage waited; and distributing the contents of a heavy purse among them, the lady said, with broken voice,

"Pray for the soul of Otmar, Baron Bartori, who died in battle for his Queen."

MESMERIC MOUNTEBANKS.

In an age of utilitarian philosophy and materialism, we are proud to stand forth as the champion of he Invisible World. MAGA and MAGIC are words which we cannot dissociate from one another, either in sound or in affection. The first was the mistress of our youth--our literary mother--our guide and instructress in the paths of Toryism, good-fellowship, and honour. Fain would we hope that, in maturer years, we have rendered back to the eldest-born of Buchanan some portion of the deep debt of gratitude which from our childhood upwards we have incurred. We have ever striven to comport ourselves in sublunary matters as beseemeth one who has sat at the feet of Christopher, imbibed the ethical lore of a Tickler, and received the sublimest of peptic precepts and dietetic instruction from the matchless lips of an Odoherty. Her creed is ours, and no other--the bold, the true, and the unwavering--and when we die, bewept, as we trust we shall be by many a youth and maiden of the next generation, we shall ask no better epitaph for our monument than that selected by poor John Keats, though with the alteration of a single word--"HERE LIETH ONE WHOSE NAME IS WRIT IN MAGA."

Magic, however--not Maga--is the theme of our present article; nor do we scruple at the very outset to proclaim ourselves a devout and fervent believer in almost every known kind of diablerie, necromancy, and witchcraft. We are aware that in the present day such confessions are very rare, and that when made by some reluctant follower of the occult faith, they are always accompanied with pusillanimous qualifications, and weak excuses for adherence to opinions which, in one shape or another, pervade the population of Christendom, and pass for current truth throughout the extensive realm of Heathenesse. So much the better. We like a fair field and no auxiliaries; and we are here to do battle for the memory and fair fame of Michael Scott, Doctor Faustus, and the renowned Cornelius Agrippa.

Sooth to say, we were born and bred long before Peter Parley had superseded the Fairy Tales, and poisoned the budding faculties of the infancy of these realms with his confounded philosophical nonsense, and his endless editions of _Copernicus made Easy_. Our nurserymaid, a hizzie from the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire, was a confirmed and noted believer in dreams, omens, tatie-bogles, and sundry other kinds of apparitions. Her mother was, we believe, the most noted spaewife of the district; and it was popularly understood that she had escaped at least three times, in semblance of an enormous hare, from the pursuit of the Laird of Lockhart's grews. Such at least was the explanation which Lizzy Lindsay gave, before being admitted as an inmate of our household, of the malignant persecution which doomed her for three consecutive Sundays to a rather isolated, but prominent seat in the Kirk of Dolphington Parish: nor did our worthy Lady-mother see any reason to doubt the accuracy of the statement. For was it not most natural that the daughter--however comely--and Lizzy was as strapping a lass as ever danced at a kirn--of a woman who had the evil reputation of divining surreptitious fortunes by means of the sediment of a tea-cup--of prophesying future sweethearts in exchange for hoarded sixpences--and of milking dry her neighbours' cows by aid of cantrips and an enchanted hair rope--was it not most natural, we say, that the daughter of the witch should have been looked upon with a suspicious eye by the minister, who used annually to preach four sermons in vituperation of Her of Endor, and by the Elders, whose forefathers had turned out doggedly for the Covenant, and among whom still circulated strange and fantastic tales of bodily apparitions of the Evil One to the fugitives in the muir and the wilderness--of hideous shapes, which disturbed the gathered conventicle by the sides of the lonely burn--of spells, which made the buff-coats of their adversaries impenetrable as adamant to leaden bullet or the sweep of the Cameronian steel?

Upon these testimonials, and a strong affidavit from Lizzy, that in every other earthly matter she was innocent of the slightest peccadillo, the Lily of Lanark was installed as mistress and governante of the Nursery. We were then in the days of teething, and sorely tormented with our gums, which neither for knob of poker, nor handle of kitchen-fork--the ancient Caledonian corals--would surrender their budding ornaments. We believe, therefore, that Lizzy Lindsay erred not materially from the path of truth when she signalized us as "the maist fractious bairn that ever broke a woman's heart." Night and day did we yell, with Satanic energy, from the excruciating molar pain, and little sympathy did our tears awaken in our pillow, as we lay in fevered anguish on the exuberant bosom of our guardian. Fortunately for us, in these days Daffy's Elixir was a thing unknown, else no doubt we should have received an early introduction to dram-drinking by means of the soft carminative. The fertile genius of Lizzy suggested a better spell for allaying our infant sorrows. Whenever we indulged in a more than ordinary implacable fit of screeching, she threatened us with the apparition of "the Boo-man," a hideous spectre which was then supposed to perambulate the nurseries in the shape of Napoleon-Bonaparte. In a very short while, no Saracen child ever became dumber when threatened by its mother with a visit from the Melech-Ric, than we did at the proposed coming of the dark and sanguinary phantom. For many years afterwards we believed as sincerely in the existence of this anthropophagus as in our own; and very nearly became a Bauldy for life, from having been surprised on one occasion, whilst surreptitiously investigating the contents of a jampot, by the descent of a climbing-boy into the nursery, and the terrors of his telegraphic boo! As we grew up, our nascent intellect received still more supernatural services from the legendary lore of Lizzy. She taught us the occult and mysterious meaning of those singular soot-flakes which wave upon the ribs of a remarkably ill-pokered fire--the dark significance which may be drawn from the spluttering and cabbaging of a candle--and the misfortunes sure to follow the mismanagement of the sacred salt. Often, too, her talk was of the boding death-watch--the owl which flapped its wings at the window of the dying--and the White Dove that flitted noiselessly from the room at the fearful, and then to us incomprehensible moment of dissolution. As Hallowe'en approached, she told us of the mystic hempseed, of the figure which stalled behind the enterprising navigator of the stacks, and that awful detention of the worsted clue, which has made the heart of many a rustic maiden leap hurriedly towards her throat, when in the dead of night, and beneath the influence of a waning moon, she has dared to pry into the secrets of futurity, and, lover-seeking, has dropped the ball into the chasm of the deserted kiln.

Such being the groundwork of our mystic education, it is little wonder that we turned our novel knowledge of the alphabet to account, by pouncing with intense eagerness upon every work of supernatural fiction upon which we possibly could lay our hands. We speak not now of Jack the Giant-killer, of the aspiring hero of the Beanstalk, or the appropriator of the Seven-leagued boots. These were well enough in their way; but not, in our diseased opinion, sufficiently practical. We liked the fairies better. For many a day we indulged in the hope that we might yet become possessed of a pot of that miraculous unguent, which, when applied to the eye, has the virtue of disclosing the whole secrets of the Invisible World. We looked with a kind of holy awe upon the emerald rings of the greensward, and would have given worlds to be present at the hour when the sloping side of the mountain is opened, and from a great ball, all sparkling with a thousand prismatic stalactites, ride forth, to the sound of flute and recorder, the squadrons of the Elfin Chivalry. Well do we remember the thrill of horror which pervaded our being when we first read of the Great Spectre of Glenmore, the Headless Fiend that haunts the black solitudes of the Rothemurchus Forest, whom to see is madness, and to meet is inexorable death! Much did we acquire in these days of the natural history of Wraiths and Corpse-candles-of Phantom Funerals encountered on their way to the kirkyard by some belated peasant, who, marveling at the strange array at such an hour, turns aside to let the grim procession pass, and beholds the visionary mourners--his own friends--sweep past, without sound of footfall or glance of recognition, bearing upon their shoulders a melancholy burden, wherein, he knows, is stretched the wan Eidolon of himself! No wonder that he takes to his bed that night, nor leaves it until the final journey.

Not for worlds would we have left the Grange house, which was then our summer residence, after nightfall, and, skirting the hill by the old deserted burial-ground, venture down the little glen, gloomy with the shade of hazels--cross the burn by the bridge above the Caldron pool--and finally gaze upon the loch all tranquil in the glory of the stars! Not all the fish that ever struggled on a night-line-and there were prime two-pounders, and no end of eels, in the loch--would have tempted us to so terrible a journey. For just below the bridge, where the rocks shot down precipitously into the black water, and the big patches of foam went slowly swirling round--there, we say, in some hideous den, heaven knows how deep, lurked the hateful Water-Kelpy, whose yell might be heard, during a spate, above the roar of the thundering stream, and who, if he did not lure and drown the cat-witted tailor of the district, was, to say the least of it, the most maligned and slandered individual of his race. Even in broad day we never liked that place. It had a mischievous and uncanny look; nor could you ever entirely divest yourself of the idea that there was something at the bottom of the pool. Bad as was the burn, the loch was a great deal worse. For here, at no very remote period, the fiend had emerged from its depths in the shape of a black steed, gentle and mild-eyed to look upon, and pacing up to three children, not ten minutes before dismissed from the thraldom of the dominie, had mutely but irresistibly volunteered the accommodation of an extempore ride. And so, stepping on with his burden across the gowans--which never grew more, and never will grow, where the infernal hoof was planted--the demon horse arrived at the margin of the loch where the bank is broken and the water deep, and with a neigh of triumph bounded in, not from that day to this were the bodies of the victims found. Moreover, yonder at the stunted thorn-trees is the spot where poor Mary Walker drowned herself and her innocent and unchristened bairn; and they say that, at midnight when all is quiet, you will hear the wailing of a female voice, as if the spirit of the murdered infant were bewailing its lost estate; and that a white figure may be seen wringing its hands in agony, as it flits backwards and forwards along the range of the solitary loch. Therefore, though the black beetle is an irresistible bait, we never threw a fly at night on the surface of the Haunted Tarn.

Penny Encyclopaedias, although Lord Brougham had advanced considerably towards manhood, were not then the fashion. Information for the people was not yet collected into hebdomadal tracts; and those who coveted the fruit of the tree of knowledge were left to pursue their horticultural researches at their own free will. In the days of which we write, the two leading weekly serials were the "_Tales of Terror_" and "_The Terrific Register_," to both of which we regularly subscribed. To our present taste--somewhat, we hope, improved since then--the latter seems a vulgar publication. It was neither more nor less than a _rifacciamento_ of the most heinous and exaggerated murders, by steel, fire, and poison, which could be culled from the records of ancient and modern villany. It was, in short, the quintessence of the _Newgate Calendar_, powerful enough to corrupt a nation; as a proof of which--we mention it with regret--the servant lad who ten years ago purloined it from our library, has since been transported for life. We even dare to back it, for pernicious results, against the moral influence which has been since exercised by the authors of Oliver Twist and Jack Sheppard, to both of whom the penal colonies have incurred a debt of lasting gratitude. It is true that, in point of sentiment, these gentlemen have the advantage of the Editor of The Terrific Register, but he beats them hollow in the broad delinquency of his facts. But in the Tales of Terror we possessed a real supernatural treasure. Every horrible legend of demon, ghost, goule, gnome, salamandrine, and fire-king, which the corrupted taste of Germany had hatched, was contained in this precious repository. It was illustrated also, as we well remember, by woodcuts of the most appalling description, which used to haunt us in our sleep long after we had stolen to our bed at half-past eleven punctually, in order that we might be drenched in slumber before the chiming of the midnight hour--at which signal, according to the demonologists, the gates of Hades are opened wide, and the defunct usurer returns to mourn and gibber above the hiding-place of his buried gold.

Gradually, however, we waxed more bold; and by dint of constant study familiarized ourselves so much with the subject, that we not only ceased to fear, but absolutely longed for a personal acquaintance with an apparition. The History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, which shortly afterwards fell into our hands, inspired us with the ambition of becoming a practical magician, and we thirsted for a knowledge of the Cabala. We had already done a little business in the way of turnip lanterns, the favourite necromantic implements of the ingenuous Scottish youth--hideous in the whiteness of their vegetable teeth, and not unappalling when dexterously placed upon the edge of the kirk-yard wall. Electric shocks conveyed by means of the door-handles, phosphoric writings on the wall, and the mystery of spontaneous bells, were our next chemical amusements; nor did we desist from this branch of practice until we had received a most sound castigation, at the recollection of which our bones still ache, from a crusty old tutor whose couch we had strewn, not with roses, but with chopped horse-hair.

We are old enough to recollect the first representation of _Der Freischutz_, and it is an era in our dramatic reminiscences. Previously to that, we had seen a Vampire appear upon the boards of the Edinburgh stage, and after an extravagant consumption of victims throughout the course of three acts, fall thunder-smitten by an indigo bolt through a deep and yawning trap-door. But Zamiel, as then represented by Mr Lynch, completely distanced the Blood-sucker. With feelings of intensest awe, we beheld the mysterious preparations in the Wolf's Glen--the circle of skull and bone--the magic ring of light blue that flickered round it--the brazier with the two kneeling figures beside it--the owl on the blasted tree, which opened its eyes and flapped its wings with true demoniacal perseverance--and the awful shapes that appeared at the casting of every bullet! But when, as the last of them was thrown from the mould, a crash of thunder pealed along the stage, and lurid lightnings glared from either wing--when the cataract was converted into blood, and the ferocious form of Lynch stood forth as the Infernal Hunter, discharging, after the manner of such beings, two rifles at once--our enthusiasm utterly overcame us; we gave vent to an exulting cheer, and were conducted from the boxes in a state of temporary insanity.

We pass over our classical studies. We were no great dab at Virgil, but we relished Apuleius exceedingly, and considerably petrified the Rector, by giving up, as the subject of our private reading, "_Wierus de Proestigiis Demonum_." Our favourite philosopher was Sir Kenelm Digby, whose notions upon sympathy and antipathy we thought remarkably rational; so much so, that up to the present time, we recognise no other treatment for a cut finger than a submersion of the bloody rag in vitriol and water, and a careful unction of the knife. We lost our degree in medicine by citing as a case in point the wonderful cure of Telephus by the application of oxide of iron, which we held to be no specific at all, except as obtained from the spear of Achilles. This dogma, coupled with our obstinate adherence to the occult doctrines of Van Helmont, the only medical writer whose works we ever perused with the slightest satisfaction, was too much for the bigoted examinators. We were recommended to go abroad and study homoeopathy. We did so, and we swear by Hahnemann.

It is now some years since we received our first inkling of mesmeric revelation. Since then, we have read almost every work which has appeared upon the subject; and we scruple not to say that we are a profound believer in all of its varied mysteries. In it we recognise a natural explanation of all our earlier studies; and we hail with sincere delight the progress of a science which reconciles us to magic without the necessity of interposing a diabolic agency. The miracles of Apollonius of Tyana, as related by Philostratus, become very commonplace performances when viewed by the light of mesmerism. The veriest bungler who ever practised the passes can explain to you the nature of that secret intelligence which enabled the _clair-voyant_ philosopher, then at Ephesus, to communicate the murder of Domitian to his friends at the moment it took place at Rome. Second-sight has ceased to be a marvel: the preternatural powers, long supposed to be confined to Skye, Uist, and Benbecula, are now demonstrated to be universal, and are exhibited on the platform by scores of urchins picked up at random from the gutter. Even the Arabian Nights have become probable. Any perambulating mesmeriser can show you scores of strapping, fellows, reduced by a single wave of his hand to the unhappy condition of the young Prince whose lower extremities were stone. Comus was nothing more than a common Professor of the science; and Hermotimus a silly blockhead, who could not wake himself from his trance in time to prevent his wife from consigning him to the funeral pile.

The practical utility of the science is no less prodigious. Is it nothing, think you, if you have suffered a compound fracture of the leg, so bad that amputation is indispensable, to be relieved from all the horrors of the operation, from the sickening sight of the basins, the bandages, and the saw--to feel yourself sinking into a delicious slumber at the wave of the surgeon's hand, and to wake up ten minutes afterwards an unsuffering uniped, and as fresh as the Marquis of Anglesea? Is it nothing, when that back-grinder of yours gives you such intolerable agony that the very maid-servants in the attics cannot sleep o'nights because of your unmitigated roaring--is it nothing to avoid the terrible necessity of a conscious Tusculan disputation with Nasmith or Spence--to settle down for a few moments into a state of unconsciousness, and to revive with your masticators in such a condition as to defy the resistance of a navy biscuit? Or, if you are a stingy person and repugnant to postage, do you think it is no advantage to get gratis information about your friends in India through the medium of your eldest son, who, though apparently sitting like a senseless booby in your armchair, is at this moment invisibly present in the mess-room at Hyderabad, and will express, if you ask him, his wonder at the extreme voracity with which Uncle David devours his curry? Why, in that boy you possess an inestimable treasure! You may send him to Paris at a moment's notice for a state of the French funds--he will be at St Petersburg and back again in the twinkling of an eye--and if our own sight is failing, you have nothing to do but to clap the last number of the Magazine below him, and he will straightway regale your heart with the contents of the leading article.

There is a great deal of romance about Mesmerism. We have nowhere read a more touching story than that of the two consumptive sisters who were thrown into the Magic trance about the end of autumn, who lay folded in each other's arms--pale lilies--throughout the whole of the dreary winter, and awoke to life and renovated health in the joyous month of May, when the leaves were green, the flowers in bud, and the lambkins frolicking on the meadow! Read you ever any thing in novels so touching and pathetic as this? Nor is the case once recounted to us by a friend of our own, a noted mesmerizer, one whit less marvellous. In the ardent prosecution of his art, he had cast his glamour upon a fair Parisian damsel of the name of Leontine--we believe she was a laundress--and daily held conference with the dormant Delphic girl. On one occasion he left her, wrapt in the profoundest sleep, in his chamber, and proceeded to perambulate the Boulevards on his own secular affairs. On returning, he found poor Leontine suffused in tears; deep and stifling sobs disturbed her utterance, nor was it until the charmer had soothed her with a few additional passes, that she could falter out the tender reproach--"Why did you not bring me some bonbons on the shop where you eat those three ice-creams?" Our friend had not walked alone through Paris. The spirit of the loving Leontine was invisibly clinging to his arm.

Now, although we make it an invariable rule to believe every thing which we read or hear, we were not a little desirous to behold with our own eyes an exhibition of these marvellous phenomena. But somehow or other, whilst the papers told us of Mesmeric miracles performed in every other part of the world, Edinburgh remained without a prophet. Either the Thessalian influence had not extended so far, or the Scottish frame was unsusceptible to the subtle fluid of the conjuror. One or two rumours reached us of young ladies who had become spellbound; but on inquiring more minutely into the circumstances, we found that there was an officer in each case, and we therefore were inclined to think that the symptoms might be naturally accounted for. There was, however, no want of curiosity on the part of the public. The new science had made a great noise in the world, and was the theme of conversation at every tea-table. Various attempts at mesmerization were made, but without success. We ourselves tried it; but after looking steadfastly for about twenty minutes into a pair of laughing blue eyes, we were compelled to own that the power was not in us, and that all the fascination had been exercised on the other side. Nobody had succeeded, if we except a little cousin of ours--rather addicted to fibbing--who averred that she had thrown a cockatoo into a deep and mysterious slumber.

Great, therefore, was our joy, and great was the public excitement, when at length a genuine professor of the art vouchsafed to favour us with a visit. He was one of those intelligent and patriotic men who go lecturing from town to town, inspired thereto by no other consideration than an ardour for the cause of science. The number of them is absolutely amazing. Throughout the whole winter, which is popularly called the lecturing season, the dead walls of every large city in the empire are covered with placards, announcing that Mr Tomlinson will have the honour of delivering six lectures upon Syria, or that Mr. Whackingham, the famous Timbuctoo traveller, will describe the interior of Africa. They are even clannish in their subjects. The Joneses are generally in pay of the League, and hold forth upon the iniquity of the Corn-duties. The Smiths, with laudable impartiality, are divided between slavery and liberation, and lecture _pro_ or _con_, as the humour or opportunity may serve. The Macgillicuddies support the Seceding interest, and deliver facers in the teeth of all establishments whatsoever. The Robinsons are phrenological, the Browns chemical, and the Bletheringtons are great on the subject of universal education for the people. To each and all of these interesting courses you may obtain admittance for the expenditure of a trifling sum, and imbibe, in exchange for your shilling or half-crown, a considerable allowance of strong and full-flavoured information. Always ardent in the cause of science, we never, if we can help it, miss one of these seducing soirees: and we invariably find, that whatever may have been the heterodoxy of our former opinion, we become a convert through the powerful arguments of these peripatetic apostles of science.

Our new Xavier belonged to what is called the mesmerico-phrenological school. He was a man of bumps as well as passes--a disciple alike of German Spurzheim and of English Elliotson. His placard was a modest one. It set forth, as usual; the disinterested nature of his journey, which was to expound to the intelligent citizens of Edinburgh a few of the great truths of mesmerism, illustrated by a series of experiments. He studiously disclaimed all connexion with preternatural art, and ventured to assure every visitor, that, so far as he was concerned, no advantage should be taken of their attendance at his _Seance_ in any future stage of their existence. This distinct pledge removed from our minds any little scruple which we otherwise might have felt. We became convinced that the lecturer was far too much of a gentleman to take advantage of our weakness, and report us to the Powers of Evil; and accordingly, on the appointed night, after a bottle or so of fortifying port, we took our way to the exhibition-room, where Isis was at last to be revealed to our adoring eyes.

We selected and paid for a front seat, and located ourselves in the neighbourhood of a very smart bonnet, which had mesmerically attracted our eye. Around us were several faces well known in the northern metropolis, some of them wearing an expression of dull credulity, and others with a sneer of marked derision on the lip. On looking at the platform, we were not altogether surprised at the earliness of the latter demonstration. There was no apparatus there beyond a few chairs; but around a sort of semicircular screen were suspended a series of the most singular portraits we ever had the fortune to behold. One head was graced with a mouth big enough to contain a haggis, and a coronal of erected hair like a hearth-brush surmounting it left no doubt in our mind that it was intended for a representation of Terror. It was enough, as a young Indian officer afterwards remarked, to have made a Chimpanzee miscarry. Joy was the exact portraiture of a person undergoing the punishment of death by means of tickling. We should not like to have met Benevolence in a dark lane: he looked confoundedly like a fellow who would have eased you of your last copper, and knocked you down into the bargain. As for Amativeness, he seemed to us the perfect incarnation of hydrophobia. In fact, out of some two dozen passions, the only presentable personage was Self-esteem, a prettyish red-haired girl, with an expression of fun about the eyes.

In a short time the lecturer made his appearance. To do him justice, he did not look at all like a conjuror, nor did he use any of those becoming accessories which threw an air of picturesque dignity around the wizard of the middle ages. We could not say of him as of Lord Gifford,

"His shoes were mark'd with cross and spell,
Upon his breast pentacle;
His zone, of virgin parchment thin,
Or, as some tell, of dead-man's skin,
Bore many a planetary sign,
Combust, and retrograde, and trine."

On the contrary, he was simply attired in a black coat and tweed terminations; and his attendant imps consisted of half a dozen young gentlemen, who might possibly, by dint of active exertion, have been made cleaner, and whose free-and-easy manner, as they scrambled towards their chairs, elicited some hilarious expressions from the more distant portion of the audience.

The introductory portion of the lecture appeared to us a fair specimen of Birmingham rhetoric. There was a great deal in it about mysterious agencies, invisible fluids, connexion of mind and matter, outer and inner man, and suchlike phrases, all of which sounded very deep and unintelligible--so much so indeed, that we suspected certain passages of it to have been culled with little alteration from the emporium of Sartor Resartus. Meanwhile the satellites upon the platform amused themselves by grimacing at each other, and exchanging a series of telegraphic gestures, which proved that they were all deep adepts in the art of masonry as practised by the youth of the Lawnmarket. The exposition might have lasted about a quarter of an hour, when sundry shufflings of the feet gave a hint to the lecturer that he had better stop discoursing, and proceed incontinently to experiment. He therefore turned to the imps, who straightway desisted from mowing, and remained mute and motionless before the eye of the mighty master. Seizing one of them by the hands, the operator looked steadfastly in his face. A dull film seemed to gather over the orbs of the gaping urchin--his jaw fell--his toes quivered--a few spasmodic jerks of the elbows showed that his whole frame was becoming Leyden, jar of animal electricity--his arms dropped fecklessly down--few waves across the forehead, and the Lazarillo of Dunedin was transported to the Invisible World!

Muttered exclamations--for the sanctity of the scene was too great to admit of ruffing--were now heard throughout the room. "Did you ever?"--"By Jove, there's a go!"--"Lord save us! but that's fearsome!"--"I say, Bob, d'ye no see him winking?" and other similar ejaculations caught our ear. Presently the operator abandoned his first victim, and advanced towards another, with the look of a rattlesnake, who, having bolted one rabbit, is determined to exterminate the warren. The second gutter-blood succumbed. His resistance to the mesmeric agency was even weaker than the other's: and, indeed, to judge from the rapidity of his execution, the marvellous fluid was now pouring in cataracts from the magic fingers of the adept. In a very few seconds the whole of the lads were as fast asleep as dormice.

Leaving them in their chairs, like so many slumbering Cupids, the lecturer next proceeded to favour us with a dissertation upon the functions of the brain. Cries of "Get on!"--"Gar them speak!"--"We ken a' aboot it!" assured him at once of the temper and the acquired information of the Modem Athenians; so, turning round once more, he pitched upon Lazarillo as a subject. So far as our memory will serve us, the following is a fair report of the colloquy.

"Are you asleep, my little boy?"

"I should think sae!"

"Do you feel comfortable?"

"No that ill. What was ye speering for?"

"Ha! a cautious boy! You observe, ladies and gentlemen, how remarkably the natural character is developed during the operation of the mesmeric trance. An English boy, I assure you, would have given me a very different reply. Let us now proceed to another test. You see, I take him by the hand, and at the same time introduce this piece of lump sugar into my own mouth. Remark how instantaneously the muscles of his face are affected. My little fellow, what is that you are eating?"

"Sweeties."

"Where did you get them?"

"What's yeer bizziness?"

"Well, well--we must not irritate him. Let us now change the experiment--how do you like this?"

"Fich!--proots!--Ye nastie fellie, if ye pit saut in ma mooth, I'll hit ye a duff in the muns!"

"How! I do not understand you!"

"A dad in the haffits."

Here a benevolent gentleman, with a bald head and spectacles, was kind enough to act as interpreter, and explained to the scientific Anglican the meaning of the minatory term.

"Ha! our young friend is becoming a little restive. We must alter his frame of mind. Observe, ladies and gentlemen, I shall now touch the organ of Benevolence."

With an alacrity which utterly dumbfoundered us, the young hope of the Crosscauseway now sprung to his feet. His hands were precipitately plunged into the inmost recesses of his corduroys.

"Puir man! puir man!" he exclaimed with a deep expression of sympathy, "ye're looking far frae weel! Ay, ay! a wife and saxteen weans at hame, and you just oot o' the hospital!--Hech-how! but this is a weary warld. Hae--it's no muckle I can gie ye, but tak it a'--tak it a'!"

So saying, he drew forth from his pockets a miscellaneous handful of slate-pencil, twine, stucco-bowls, and, if we mistake not, gib--a condiment much prized by the rising generation of the metropolis--all of which he deposited, as from a cornucopia, at the feet of the delighted lecturer.

A loud hum of admiration arose from the back-benches. Charity is a popular virtue, as you may learn at the theatre, from the tumultuous applause of the gallery whenever the hero of the melodrama chucks a purse at the head of some unfortunate starveling. Two old ladies in our neighbourhood began to whimper; and one of them publicly expressed her intention of rewarding with half-a-crown the good intentions of the munificent Lazarillo, so soon as the lecture was over. This seemed to inspire him with a fresh accession of benevolence; for, the organ being still excited, he made another desperate attempt, and this time fished up a brass button.

"Let us now," said the magician, "excite the counter organ of Secretiveness; and, in order to give this experiment its full effect, I shall also irritate the kindred organs of Acquisitiveness and Caution."

To our great disgust, Lazarillo instantly threw off the character of Howard, and appeared in that of David Haggart. He was evidently mentally prowling with an associate in the vicinity of a stall bedecked with tempting viands, irresistible to the inner Adam of the boy.

"I say, Tam! did ye ever see sic speldrings? Eh, man--but they'd be grand chowin! What'n rock!--and thae bonnie red-cheekit aipples! Whisht-ye, man--bide back in the close-head, or auld Kirsty will see ye! Na--she's no lookin' now. Gang ye ahint her, and cry oot that ye see a mad dowg, and I'll make a spang at the stall! That's yeer sort! I've gotten a hantle o' them. Stick them into ma pouches for fear they tumble oot, and we'll rin doon to the King's Park and hide them at the auld dyke!"

"This boy," said the operator, "evidently imagines himself to be engaged in an act of larceny. Such is the wonderful power of mesmerism, and such and so varied is the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the human frame. What we call man is a shell of virtue and of vice. In the same brain are contained the virtues of an Aristides, and the coarse malignity of a Nero. I could now, ladies and gentlemen, very easily procure from this lad the restitution of his imaginary spoils, by simply exciting the organ of Justice, which at once would prompt him to a full and candid confession. But I shall prefer to develop the experiment, by slightly awakening the powerful functions of Terror, an organ which we dare not trifle with, as the consequences are sometimes calamitous. I think, however, from the peculiar construction of this boy's head, that we may safely make the attempt. Mark the transition."

The hair of Lazarillo bristled.

"Gosh, Tam! are ye sure naebody seed us! Wha's that wi' the white breeks comin' down the close? Rin, man, rin--as sure's death it's the poliss! O Lord! what will become o' ma puir mither gin they grup me! O man--let's in! let's in! The door's fast steekit--Mercy--mercy--mercy--! Tak' yeer knuckles oot o' ma neck, and I'll gie ye the hale o' them back. It wasna me, it was Tam that did it! Ye're no gaun to tak us up to the office for sic a thing as that?--O dear me--dear me--dear me!" and the voice of Lazarillo died away in almost inarticulate moaning.

This scene had so affected the nerves of our fair neighbour in the bonnet, that, out of common civility, we felt ourselves compelled to offer a little consolation. In the mean time, the stern operator continued to aggravate the terrors of poor Lazarillo, whose cup of agony was full even to the brim, and who now fancied himself in the dock, tried, and found guilty, and awaiting with fear and tribulation the tremendous sentence of the law.

"O, ma lord, will ye no hae mercy on us? As true as I'm stannin' here, it's the first time I ever stealt ony thing. O whaur's mither? Is that her greeting outside? O, ma lord, what are ye puttin' on that black hat for? Ye daurna hang us surely for a wheen wizzened speldrings!--O dear--O dear! Is there naebody will say a word for me? O mercy--mercy! Wae's me--wae's me! To be hangit by the neck till I'm deid, and me no fifteen year auld!"

"We shall now," said the operator, "conduct our young friend to the scaffold"--

"Stop, sir!" cried the benevolent gentleman in the spectacles--"I insist that we shall have no more of this. Are you aware, sir, that you are answerable for the intellects of that unhappy boy? Who knows but that the cruel excitement he has already undergone may have had the effect of rendering him a maniac for life? I protest against any further exhibition of this nature, which is absolutely harrowing to my own feelings and to those of all around me. What if the boy should die?"

"Let alane Jimsy!" cried a voice from the back row. "I ken him fine; he'll dee nane."

"I shall have much pleasure, sir," said the mesmerist, with a polite bow, "in complying with your humane suggestion. At the same time, let me assure you that your apprehensions are without foundation. Never, I trust, in my hands, shall science be perverted from its legitimate object, or the glorious truths I am permitted to display, minister in the slightest degree to the wretchedness of any one individual of the great human family. I shall now awaken this boy from his trance, when you will find him wholly unconscious of every thing which has taken place."

Accordingly, he drew forth his bandana, flapped it a few times before the eyes of Lazarillo, and then breathed lightly on his forehead. The boy yawned, rubbed his eyes, stretched his limbs, sneezed, and then rose up.

"How do you feel?" asked the operator.

"A wee stiff--that's a.'"

"Would you like a glass of water?"

"I'd rather hae yill."

"Do you recollect what you have been doing?"

"I've been sleeping, I think."

"Nothing more?"

"Naething. What else should I hae been doing? I say--I want to gang hame."

"Well, ladies and gentlemen, I think we may dismiss this boy."

Lazarillo, however, did not show any immediate hurry to depart. He lingered for a while near that edge of the platform where the two aged ladies were seated, as though some faint vaticination of the advent of half-a-crown still haunted his bewildered faculties. But the profligacy of his latter conduct had effaced all memory of the liberality with which he first dispensed his earthly treasures. His unhallowed propensity for speldrings had exhibited itself in too glaring colours, and each lady, while she thought of the pilfered Kirsty, clutched her reticule with a firmer grasp, as though she deemed that the contents thereof were not altogether safe in the vicinity of the marvellous boy. At length, finding that delay was fruitless, Lazarillo, _alias_ Jimsy, went his way.

The phrenological organs of the remaining lads were now subjected to similar experiments. These were, we freely admit, remarkably interesting. One youth, being called upon to give a specimen of his imitative powers, took off our friend Frederick Lloyd of the Theatre-Royal to the life; whilst another treated us to a very fair personification of Edmund Glover. Some youths in the back gallery began to whistle and scream, and the sounds were regularly caught up and transmitted by the slumbering mimics. A learned Pundit, who sate on the same bench with ourselves, favoured them with a German sentence, which did certainly appear to us to be repeated with some slight difference of accent. A Highland divinity student went the length of asserting that the reply was conveyed in Gaelic, which, if true, must be allowed to throw some light upon the knotty subject of the origin of languages. Is it possible that, in the mesmeric trance, the mind in some cases rejects as artificial fabric all the educated conventionality of tongues, and resumes unconsciously the original and genuine dialect of the world? We have a great mind, at some future moment of leisure, to indite an article on the subject, and vindicate, in all its antiquity, the speech of Ossian and of Adam.

We shall pass over several of the same class of experiments, such as the display of Adoration, which struck us as bordering very closely upon the limits of profanity. In justice to the operator, we ought to mention that they were all remarkably successful. We admired the dexterity with which two lads, under the savage influence of combativeness, punched and squared at each other; we were pleased with the musical talents of another boy, who varied the words, airs, and style of his singing as the fingers of the mesmerist wandered around the several protuberances of his cranium. In fact, we saw before us a human organ of sound, played upon with as much ease as a mere pianoforte. After such exhibitions as these, it was impossible to remain a sceptic.

A grand chorus by the patients, of "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," under the influence of some bump corresponding to Patriotism, terminated this portion of the evening's entertainments. But all was not yet over. The lecturer informed us that he would now exhibit the power of mesmerism over the body, apart from the enchainment of the mental faculties--that is, that he would produce paralysis in the limbs of a thinking and a sentient being. We are ashamed to say that a cry of "Gammon!" arose from different parts of the hall.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said the undaunted sorcerer, "some incredulous persons seem to doubt my power. You shall see it with your own eyes. I shall now proceed to waken these boys, and submit them to the new experiment."

In the twinkling of a handkerchief they were awake and lively, and beyond a slight complaint from the pugilists of pain in the region of the abdomen, and a very reasonable demand on the part of the musician for lozenges, they did not seem at all the worse in consequence of their recent exercise. One of them was now desired to stretch out his arm. He did so. A few passes were made along it, and he remained in the attitude of a fakeer.

"That lad's arm," said he of the mysterious art, "is now as fixed as marble. He cannot take it down. Can you, O'Shaughnessy?"

"The divil a bit!" replied the Hibernian, a stout and brawny villain of some two and twenty.

"Would any gentleman like to try it?" inquired the operator.

"It's myself has no manner of objections at all!" exclaimed a stalwart medical student, springing upon the platform, amidst a shout of general exultation. "Hould yerself tight, Pat, my boy; for, by the powers, I'll twist ye like an ounce of pig-tail!"

"Tear and owns!"--replied O'Shaughnessy, looking somewhat dismayed, for the volunteer was about as stout a Connaughter as it ever was our fortune to behold. "Tear and owns! it isn't after breaking my arm you'd be at? Och wirra! Would ye take a dirty advantage of a decent lad, and him as stiff as a poker?"

"I protest against this exhibition!" said the benevolent gentleman, in whom we now recognised a Vice-President of the Fogie Club. "The shoulder of the man may be dislocated--or there may be a fracture of the ulna--or some other horrid catastrophe may happen, and we shall all be prosecuted for murder!"

"And am I not here to set the bone!" demanded the student indignantly "Give us a hould of ye, Pat, and stand firm on your pins, for I'll work ye like a pump-handle."

So saying, he closed with O'Shaughnessy. But that wary individual, whilst he abandoned his arm to the student, evidently considered himself under no obligation to forego the use of his legs. He spun round and round like a teetotum, and stooped whenever an attempt was made to draw him down, but still the arm remained extended.

"You see, ladies and gentlemen!" said the operator, after the scuffle was over--"You see how the power of the mesmeric fluid operates above the exertion of physical force. This amazingly powerful young gentleman has totally failed to move the arm one inch from its place."

"I'd move it fast enough, if he'd only stand still," replied the student. "I'll tell you what. I look upon the whole thing as egregious humbug. There's my own arm out, and I defy either you or Pat to bring it down!"

"Excuse me, sir," replied the mesmerist with dignity--"We do not meet here to practise feats of strength, but to discuss a scientific question. I appeal to this intelligent individual, who has taken so distinguished a part in the interesting proceedings of this evening, whether I am in any way bound to accept such a challenge."

"Certainly not--certainly not!" said the Vice-President, delighted with this appeal to his understanding.

"You hear the remark of the gentleman, sir," said the mesmerist. "May I now beg you will retire, and permit me to go on with the experiments?"

"Take it all your own way, then," replied the student, reluctantly retiring from the platform; "but as sure's I am out of purgatory, that lad's arm was no more fixed than your tongue!"

This slight episode over, the work went on accordingly. Paralysis flourished in all its shapes. One lad was spellbound to the floor, and could not move a yard from the spot, though encouraged to do so by an offer of twenty pounds from the liberal and daring artist. What effect the superadded security of the Vice-President might have had upon the patient's powers of locomotion, we really cannot say. Another, as he assured us, was utterly deprived of sight by a few cross passes of the operator--a third was charmed into dumbness--whilst a fourth declared his readiness to be converted into a pin-cushion; but was, at the intreaty of some ladies and our benevolent acquaintance, exempted from that metamorphosis, and merely endured, without murmuring, a few nips from the fingers of the lecturer.

This closed the _seance_. We moved a vote of thanks to the Mesmerist for his gratifying exertions, and then retired to our Club to meditate upon the subject over a comfortable board of pandores. A few days afterwards, we met our friend the young Indian officer in Prince's Street.

"I say, old fellow," quoth the Jemadar, "that was a confounded take-in the other night."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, that magnetizing nonsense. Not a soul of then was asleep after all."

"Do you wish me to disbelieve the evidence of my own senses?"

"You may believe whatever you like; I only wish you had been with us last Tuesday at a meeting we held in the Cafe. If you've got any tin about you, and don't mind standing an ice or so at Mrs Stewart's, I'll tell you all about it."

Our desire for truth overcame our habitual parsimony. We led the way into the back saloon, and at a moderate expenditure became possessed of the following particulars:--

"You see," said the Jemadar, sipping his cherry bounce, "there were a lot of clever fellows sitting near me the other night, and I made out from what they said that they were by no means satisfied with the whole proceeding. Now, as I have seen a thing or two in India, where, by Jove, a native will make a mango-tree grow out of a flowerpot before your eyes, and bear fruit enough in a few months to keep a large family for a year in pickles--and as I knew all about snake-charming, the singeing of tiger's whiskers, and so forth, I thought I might be of some use to the scientific birds; so, when the meeting broke up, I proposed an adjournment and a tumbler. I looked about for you, but you seemed more agreeably occupied."

"You never were in a greater mistake in your life."

"Well--that's all one; but I thought so. They were quite agreeable, and we passed a very pleasant evening. There were two or three young advocates who went the pace in regular style, a fair sprinkling of medicos, and that Irish student who handled the humbug on the platform; and who, let me tell you, is little short of a perfect trump. We reviewed the whole experiments, quite impartially, over a moderate allowance of alcohol, and were unanimously of opinion that it was necessary, for the interests of science, to examine into the matter more closely. One of the company undertook to procure the attendance of some of those lads whom you saw upon the platform; and another, who believes in mesmerism, but scouts the idea of phrenology, was acquainted with a creditable magnetizer, who, he said, would be sure to attend. We fixed our meeting for the second evening afterwards, and then adjourned.