Few men, in this busy age, have leisure to read massive volumes devoted to special subjects. They gain much of their general knowledge, outside the limits of their profession or of any peculiar study, by means of periodical literature; and, as a rule, they are supplied with copious and accurate, though general, information. Some of our best thinkers and workers make known the results of their researches to the readers of magazines and reviews; and it is seldom that a writer whose information is meagre, or obtained at second-hand, is permitted to come before the public in their pages as an authoritative teacher. But as regards the subject we are now about to consider, this rule has not hitherto been followed. Those who have devoted many years to an examination of its phenomena have been, in most cases, refused a hearing; while men who have bestowed on it no adequate attention, and are almost wholly ignorant of the researches of others, have alone supplied the information to which a large proportion of the public have had access. In support of this statement it is necessary to refer, with brief comments, to some of the more prominent articles in which the phenomena and pretensions of Spiritualism have been recently discussed. At the beginning of the present year the readers of this Review were treated to “Experiences of Spiritualism,” by a writer of no mean ability, and of thoroughly advanced views. He assures his readers that he “conscientiously endeavored to qualify himself for speaking on this subject” by attending five séances, the details of several of which he narrates; and he comes to the conclusion that mediums are by no means ingenious deceivers, but “jugglers of the most vulgar order;” that the “spiritualistic mind falls a victim to the most patent frauds,” and greedily “accepts jugglery as manifestations of spirits”; and, lastly, that the mediums are as credulous as their dupes, and fall straightway into any trap that is laid for them. Now, on the evidence before him, and on the assumption that no more or better evidence would have been forthcoming had he devoted fifty instead of five evenings to the inquiry, the conclusions of Lord Amberley are perfectly logical; but, so far from what he witnessed being a “specimen of the kind of manifestations by which Spiritualists are convinced,” a very little acquaintance with the literature of the subject would have shown him that no Spiritualist of any mark was ever convinced by any quantity of such evidence. In an article published since Lord Amberley’s—in London Society for February—the author, a barrister and well-known literary man, says: