jugglers without claim to religious character, is a class of feats which might be regarded as simply inventions, if told by one author only, but which seem to deserve prominent notice from their being recounted by a series of authors, certainly independent of one another, and writing at long intervals of time and place. Our first witness is Ibn Batuta, and it will be necessary to quote him as well as others in full, in order to show how closely their evidence tallies. The Arab traveller was present at a great entertainment at the Court of the Viceroy of Rhansa. "That same night a juggler, who was one of the Kaan's slaves, made his appearance, and the Amir said to him, 'Come and show us some of your marvels.' Upon this he took a wooden ball, with several holes in it through which long thongs were passed, and laying hold of one of them, slung it into the air. It went so high that we lost sight of it altogether. It was the hottest season of the year, and we were outside in the middle of the palace court. There now remained only a little end of a thong in the conjuror's hand, and he desired one of the boys who assisted him to lay hold of it and mount. He did so, clinging by the thong, and we lost sight of him also! The conjuror then called to him three times, but getting no answer he snatched up his knife as if in a great rage, laid hold of the thong, and disappeared likewise! By-and-by, he threw down one of the boys' hands, then a foot, then the other hand, then the other foot, then the trunk, and last of all the head! Then he came down himself, all puffing and panting, and with his clothes all bloody, kissed the ground before the Amir, and said something to him in Chinese. The Amir gave some order in reply, and our friend then took the lad's limbs, laid them together in their places, and gave a kick,-when, presto! there was the boy who got up and stood before us! All this astonished me beyond measure, and I had an attack of palpitation like that which overcame me once before in the presence of the Sultan of India, when he showed me something of the same kind. They gave me a cordial, however, which cured the attack. The Kazi Afkharnddin was next me, and quoth he, ' Wallah! 'tis my opinion there has been neither going up nor coming down, neither marring nor mending; 'tis all hocus-pocus !'" Now let us compare with this, which Ibn Batuta the Moor says he saw in China about the year 1348 (the account of which is given by Edward Melton, an Anglo-Dutch traveller), of the performances of a Chinese gang of conjurors which he witnessed at Batavia, about the year 1670; (I have forgotten to note the year.) After describing very vividly the basket-murder trick, which is well known in India, and now also in Europe, and some feats of bamboo-balancing similar to those which were recently shown by Japanese performers in England, only more wonderful, he proceeds:-" But now I am going to relate a thing which surpasses all belief, and which I should scarcely venture to insert here had it not been witnessed by thousands before my own eyes. One of the same gang took a ball of cord, and grasping one end of the cord slung the other up into the air with such force, that its extremity was beyond reach of our sight. He then immediately climbed up the cord with indescribable swiftness, and got so high that we could no longer see him. I stood full of astonishment, not conceiving what was to come of this; when lo! a leg came tumbling down out of the air. One of the conjuring company instantly snatched it up, and threw it into the basket whereof I have formerly spoken. A moment later a hand came down, and immediately on that another leg; and in short all the members of the body came thus successively tumbling from the air, and were cast together into the basket. The last fragment of all that we saw tumble down was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground, than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them into the basket turned them all out again. Then straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and in short form a whole man, who at once could stand up and go on as just before, without showing the least damage. Never in my life was I so astonished as when I beheld this wonderful performance, and I doubted now no longer that these misguided men did it by help of the devil. For it seems to me totally impossible that such things should be accomplished by natural means. The same performance is spoken of by Valentyn also containing curious notices of the basket-murder trick, the mangotrick, the sitting in the air. Again we have in the memoirs of the Emperor Jahangir a detail of the wonderful performances of seven jugglers from Bengal who exhibited before him. Two facts are thus described: "Ninth-They produced a man whom they divided limb from limb actually severing the head from the body. They scattered these mutilated members along the ground, and in this state they lay for some time; they then extended a sheet or curtain over the spot. One of the men putting himself under the sheet, in a few minutes came from below, followed by the individual supposed to have been cut into joints, in perfect health and condition, and one might have safely sworn that he had never received wound or injury whatsoever. Twentythird-They produced a chain of 50 cubits in length, and in my presence threw one end of it towards the sky, where it remained as if fastened to something in the air. A dog was then brought forward and being placed at the lower end of the chain, imme diately ran up, and reaching the other end immediately disappeared in the air. In the same manner a panther, a lion and a tiger were successively sent up the chain; at last they took down the chain and put it into a bag, no one ever discovering in what way the different animals were made to vanish into the air in the mysterious manner above described." Vol. I., Notes. Book I., p. 280. We will conclude by giving one more extract from the Colonel's notes, as it contains A REVELATION OF THE LAND OF ENLIGHTENMENT. "The charge of irreligion against the Chinese," observes Colonel Yule, "is an old one, yet it is a mistake to suppose that this insensibility has been so universal as it is often represented. To say nothing of the considerable numbers who have adhered faithfully to the Roman-Catholic Church, the large number of Mahomedans in China, of whom many must have been proselytes, indicates an interest in religion; and that Buddhism itself was, in China, once a spiritual power of no small energy will, I think, be plain to any one who reads the very interesting extracts from Schott's Essay on Buddhism in Upper Asia and China (Berlin, Acad. of Sciences, 1846). There seems to be so little known of this essay, that I will translate two or three passages: 666 In the years Ynan-yen of the Sung (A.D. 1086-1093), a pious matron, with her two servants, lived entirely to the Land of Enlightenment. One of the maids said one day to her companion, "To-night I shall pass over to the realm of Amita." The same night a balsamic odour filled the house, and the maid died without any preceding illness. On the following day the surviving maid said to the lady, "Yesterday my deceased companion appeared to me in a dream, and said to me, "Thanks to the persevering exhortations of our mistress, I am become a partaker of Paradise, and my blessedness is past all expression in words." The matron replied, "If she will appear to me also, then I will believe what you say." Next night the deceased really appeared to her, and saluted her with respect. The lady asked, "May I for once visit the Land of Enlightenment?" "Yes," answered the Blessed Soul, "thou hast but to follow thy handmaiden." The lady followed her in her dream, and soon perceived a lake of immeasurable expanse, overspread with innumerable red and white lotus flowers of various sizes, some blooming, some fading. She asked what the flowers might signify? The maiden replied, "These are all human beings on the earth whose thoughts are turned to the Land of Enlightenment. The very first longing after the Paradise of Amita produces a flower in the Celestial Lake, and this becomes daily larger and more glorious, as the self-improvement of the person whom it represents advances; in the contrary case, it loses in glory and fades away." The matron desired to know the name of an enlightened one who reposed on one of the flowers, clad in waving and wonderously glittering raiment. Her whilhom maiden answered, "That is Yang Kee." Then asked she the name of another, and was answered, "That is Mahn." The lady then said, "At what place shall Í hereafter come into existence ?" Then the Blessed Soul led her a space further and showed her a hill that gleamed with gold and azure. "Here," said she, "is your future abode. You will belong to the first order of the blessed." When the matron awoke she sent to enquire for Yankie and Mahn. The first was already departed; the other still alive and well. And thus the lady learned that the soul of one who advances in holiness and never turns back, may be already a dweller in the Land of Enlightenment, even though the body still sojourns in this transitory world." (p. 55, 56). What a singular counterpart the striking conclusion here forms to Dante's tremendous assault on a still living villain—or enemy!— "Che per sua opra, In anima in Cocito già si bagna, "So vile, Infern.-xxxiii.—155. That in Cocytus is his soul immersed, Although his body roams on earth the while." Wright's Translation of the Inferno. The passages which we have printed in italics will scarcely fail to strike our readers as bearing a remarkable similarity to the information furnished by numerous spiritual communications as to the simultaneous existence of the incarnated soul, both in the earthly life and in the spiritual world. A fact testified to repeatedly by the experiences of Swedenborg. The description also of the red and white lotuses upon the lake in the Paradise of Amita, cannot either fail to remind the Spiritualist-reader of the symbolical spiritual flowers so repeatedly mentioned by seers as appearing in the spiritual spheres, or of those represented in drawings made by "mediums," and invariably asserted by them to be mysteriously connected with the life of the spirit. Similarity of imagery is highly interesting when recognised in spiritual-manifestation belonging to epochs so widely separated in time and place, as are the Spiritualism of China in the eleventh century, and of the Spiritualism of Europe and America in the nineteenth. A. M. H. W. HOW DO SPIRITS MAKE THEMSELVES VISIBLE? MR. THOMAS R. HAZARD publishes in the Banner of Light, a full account of his experience during eleven days at Moravia; and which fully confirms the several accounts cited by us in a former number. The spirits make their hands, faces, and in some instances the entire form visible. They converse audibly with their friends, and sing in distinct natural voices, and give many proofs of identity. Mr. Hazard saw and distinctly recognized his spirit mother, wife and daughter. Speaking of the arm and hand shown at one of the séances, he says: "I could see the natural and most minute movement not only of the fingers, but of the knuckles and sinews on the back of the thin pale hand, as plainly as it is possible to discern like movements of the hand of any mortal in earth life." At first, Mr. Hazard's wife was only able to show herself as she appeared during her last illness, and he had almost despaired of seeing her as she looked when in health and vigour. "It may be imagined then," he says "what my emotions were, just as the last moment of my last séance was about to expire, to see my wife's face suddenly presented before me, as plain and distinct as I ever saw it in our own house-not as it looked in the last hours of her weary life, nor even yet as it was in less mature years, when the colour had partially faded from her cheeks, but in the full bloom of health, and all the glorious beauty that so pre-eminently distinguished her early womanhood. "Before this crowning proof, my experiences had banished all doubts from my mind as regards a future state of existence; but now, even belief that had passed into knowledge was doubly confirmed; the keystone was placed in the arch, from whence I know it never will or can be wrenched away. I had, at last, obtained all I sought for. I had looked upon the resurrected spirit-face of a loved one, the identity of whose features I am not only willing to affirm to, under the pains and penalties of perjury, before any assemblage of mortals or tribunal on earth, but, if need be, swear to it, on peril of my salvation, before the assembled hosts of heaven and the judgment-seat of God." The question naturally arises-How do the spirits do these things? On this point Mr. Hazard says: "On my return from Moravia I passed through Boston, where I learned from Mr. Luther Colby that at a recent private séance given by Mrs. Annie Lord Chamberlain at the rooms of Mrs. J. H. Conant, 76, Waltham Street, Boston, the following answer was received from a spirit-guide of the medium, to the question, 'By what process do the invisibles materialise the |