Junius, and the Poems of Tennyson, to decide their controversies. No, Spiritualism, like astronomy or geology, must be judged of by its own proper subject matter. Let us study it in the light of its facts and consequences, and by eternal principles; leaving theologians, if they must, to wrangle over the interpretation and application of phrases in ancient records. Christ's rule of judgment" By their fruits ye shall know them," is for me still the highest and truest. Let us thus "try the spirits;" try them by all the lights of reason, conscience, and experience. In that final court of appeal, let Spiritualism be tried and tested to the utmost; I for one am content to abide the issue.

Notices of Books.

GERALD MASSEY ON SPIRITUALISM.*

THE present season so far has been one of considerable literary activity in regard to Spiritualism. The Report of the Dialectical Society's Committee, and the article by Dr. Carpenter in the Quarterly Review, have been followed by five important volumes:-Outlines of Biology. Body, Soul, Mind, Spirit; a volume of 556 pages by Dr. DOHERTY, being the third volume of his Organic Philosophy; the second volume of HOME's Incidents of My Life; Hints on the Evidence of Spiritualism, by M. P.; OWEN'S Debatable Land between this World and the Next; and Concerning Spiritualism by GERALD MASSEY. Each of these books requires a separate notice. Our present notice is of the latter work only.

In this elegant little volume there is much "concerning Spiritualism," which should interest both the Spiritualist and non-Spiritualist reader. The author's remarks on normal and abnormal mediumship are, we think, in the main true; and the legitimate use and province of each are justly discriminated. His exposition of Swedenborg's spiritual philosophy of life is finely rendered, and is well contrasted with views recently put forth by some eminent scientists. Mr. Massey points out what he conceives to be some of the bearings of Spiritualism on Scripture narratives and theological doctrines; and his criticisms on popular orthodoxies, churches, and the so-called religious world are severe and sharp; some will perhaps think a little too much so.

* Concerning Spiritualism. By GERALD MASSEY. London: BURNS.

Here and there we have hints and gleams of peculiar experiences of the writer, extending as he tells us, over fifteen years, and which he intimates may at some time be published. We hope it may be soon: we are not always correct in judging whether or not the world is ripe to receive experiences of this nature; nor in truth should it much concern us. If we sow the seed of truth, we may trust the free winds of God's invisible providence to carry at least some small portion of it to fruitful soil where it will germinate and grow, and in due time bring forth its ripened harvest. But let us hear what Mr. Massey has at present to tell us as to the value of these experiences to himself. He says:

It has been to me, in common with many others, such a lifting of the mental horizon and a letting in of the heavens-such a transformation of faiths into facts that I can only compare life without it to sailing on board ship with hatches battened down, and being kept a prisoner, cribbed, cabined, and confined living by the light of a candle-dark to the glory overhead, and blind to a thousand possibilities of being, and then suddenly on some splendid starry night allowed to go on deck for the first time, to see the stupendous mechanism of the starry heavens all aglow with the glory of God, to feel that vast vision glittering in the eyes, bewilderingly beautiful, and drink in new life with every breath of this wondrous liberty, which makes you dilate almost large enough in soul to fill the immensity that you see around you.

There are many fine gems in this volume we feel tempted to extract, but as they are seen to best advantage in the author's own setting, we recommend the careful perusal of the entire work.

Correspondence.

MR. WALLACE'S DEFINITION OF A MIRACLE.

To the Editor of the "Spiritual Magazine."

SIR, Mr. Wallace's definition of a miracle is certainly a great improvement upon Hume's, but I doubt whether it is all-sufficient. What does Mr. W. mean by the words "implying the existence of?" There are many acts or events which imply the existence of superhuman intelligences, which are not considered miracles; viz. death and dreams.

Is not Mr. Wallace's view rather an explanation than a definition of a miracle, and when a miracle is explained does it not cease to be miraculous? To the philosophic spiritualist are there such things as miracles at all? I am inclined to think that the word miracle is not philosophic, that it is simply invented and used to express a popular idea. May we not then give a definition of a miracle by combining the best parts of Hume's doctrine with Mr. Wallace's criticism on it? Thus:-A MIRACLE is a transgression of a known and established law of nature, by a particular volition of the Deity or by the interposition of some superhuman intelligent agent.

A criticism on the meaning of a word is not necessarily a definition. I shall be glad to receive further enlightenment on this point. Blackheath, 13th March, 1872.

NEWTON CROSLAND.

THE

Spiritual Magazine.

ΜΑΥ, 1872.

THE SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES IN ITALY OF THE LATE NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, AND HIS

แ

REFLECTIONS THEREUPON.*

He

August and September, 1858.-We drove into town, (Florence) yesterday afternoon, to call on Mr. Kirkup, an Englishman, who has resided a great many years in Florence. He is noted as an antiquarian, and has the reputation of being a necromancer, not undeservedly, as he is deeply interested in spirit rappings, and holds converse through a medium with dead poets and emperors. He lives in an old house formerly a residence of the Knights Templars, hanging over the Arno, just as you come upon the Ponte Vecchio; and going up a dark staircase and knocking at a door on one side of the landingplace, we were received by Mr. Kirkup. ushered us through two or three large rooms, dark, dusty, hung with antique-looking pictures, and lined with book-cases, containing, I doubt not, a very curious library. Indeed, he directed my attention to one case, and said he had collected those works in former days, merely for the sake of laughing at them. They were books of magic and the occult sciences. What he seemed really to value, were some manuscript copies of Dante, of which he showed us two; both these books were written early in the fourteenth century. Mr. Kirkup has also a plaster cast of Dante's face, which he believes to be the original one taken from his face after death; and he has likewise his own accurate tracing from Giotto's fresco of Dante in the chapel of the Bargello. The fresco was discovered through Mr. Kirkup's means. Dante has had frequent communications with Mr.

* Passages from Hawthorne's Note Books in France and Italy. Vol. II. N.S.-VII.

N

Kirkup through a medium, the poet being described by the medium as wearing the same dress seen in the youthful portrait, but as having more resemblance to the cast taken from his dead face than to the picture from his youthful one. Besides books and works of art, Mr. Kirkup has no end of antique knickknackeries, none of which we had any time to look at. But the greatest curiosity of all, and no antiquity, was a pale large-eyed little girl about four years old, who followed the conjuror's (?) footsteps wherever he went. She was the brightest and merriest little thing in the world, and frisked through those shadowy old chambers, among the dead people's trumpery, as gaily as a butterfly flits among flowers and sunshine. The child's mother was a beautiful girl named Regina, whose portrait Mr. Kirkup showed us on the wall. I never saw a more beautiful and striking face claiming to be a real one. She was a Florentine of low birth and a spirit medium. He showed us a journal kept during her life-time, and read from it his notes of an interveiw with the Czar Alexander, when that potentate communicated to Mr. Kirkup that he had been poisoned. The necromancer (?) set a great value upon Regina, and when she died he received her poor baby into his heart. The child inherits her mother's gift of communication with the spirit-world, so that the conjuror (?) can still talk with Regina through the baby which she left, and not only with her, but with Dante, and any other great spirits who may choose to visit him. It is a very strange story, and this child might be put at once into a romance, with all her history and environment; the ancient Knights-Templar palace, with the Arno flowing under the ironbarred windows, and the Ponte Vecchio, covered with its jewellers' shops, close at hand; the dark lofty chambers with faded frescoes on the ceilings, black pictures hanging on the walls, old books on the shelves, and hundreds of musty antiquities, emitting an odour of past centuries; the white-bearded old man thinking all the time of ghosts, and looking into the child's eyes to seek them; and the child herself springing so freshly out of the soil, so pretty, so intelligent, so playful, with never a playfellow save the conjuror and a kitten. The child looks pale, and no wonder, seldom or never stirring out of that old palace, or away from the river atmosphere.

Still, at Florence, Mr. Hawthorne writes:-" Mr. Powers (the sculptor) related some things that he had witnessed through the agency of Mr. Home (Hume) who had held a session or two at his house. He described the apparition of two mysterious hands from beneath a table round which the party were seated. These hands purported to belong to an aunt of the Countess Cotterel, who was present, and wore a pair of thin, delicate,

aged, ladylike hands and arms, appearing at the edge of the table, and terminating at the elbow in a sort of white mist. One of the hands took up a fan and began to use it. The Countess then said, 'Fan yourself as you used to do, dear aunt' -and forthwith the hands waved the fan back and forth in a peculiar manner, which the Countess recognised as the manner of her dead aunt. The spirit was then requested to fan each member of the party; and, accordingly, each separate individual round the table was fanned in turn, and felt the breeze sensibly upon his face. Finally, the hands sank beneath the table, I believe Mr. Powers said, but I am not quite sure that they did not melt into the air. During this apparition Mr. Home sat at the table, but not in such a position or within such distance that he could have put out, or managed the spectral hands; and of this Mr. Powers satisfied himself, by taking precisely the same position after the party had retired. Mr. Powers did not feel the hands at this time, but he afterwards felt the touch of infant hands, which were at the time invisible. He told of many of the wonders, which seem to have as much right to be set down as facts as anything else that depends on human testimony. For example, Mr. R, one of the party, gave a sudden start and exclamation. He had felt on his knee a certain token, which could have been given him only by a friend long ago in his grave. Mr. Powers inquired what was the last thing that had been given as a present to a deceased child; and suddenly both he and his wife felt a prick as of some sharp instrument on their knees. The present had been a penknife. I have forgotten other incidents quite as striking as these; but with the exception of the spirit-hands, they seemed to be akin to those that have been produced by mesmerism, returning the inquirer's thoughts and veiled recollection to himself, as answers to his queries. The hands are certainly an inexplicable phenomenon. Of course they are not portions of a dead body, nor any other kind of substance; they are impressions on the two senses, sight and touch, but how produced I cannot tell. Even admitting their appearance and certainly I do admit it as freely and fully as if I had seen it myself there is no need of supposing them to come from the world of departed spirits. Powers seems to put entire faith in the verity of spiritual communications, while acknowledging the difficulty of identifying spirits as being what they pretend to be. He is a Swedenborgian, and so far prepared to put faith in these phenomena. But what most

astonishes me is the indifference with which I listen to these marvels. They throw old ghost stories quite into the shade; they bring the whole world of spirits down amongst us, visibly and audibly; they are absolutely proved to be sober facts by evidence