In October last the New Quarterly Magazine, in its opening number, had an article entitled “A Spiritualistic Séance;” but which proved to be an account of certain ingenious contrivances by which some of the phenomena usual at séances were imitated, and both Spiritualists and skeptics deceived and confounded. This appears at first sight to be an exposure of Spiritualism, but it is really very favorable to its pretensions; for it goes on the assumption that the marvelous phenomena witnessed do really occur, but are produced by various mechanical contrivances. In this case the rooms above, below, and at the side of that in which the séance was held had to be prepared with specially constructed machinery, with assistants to work it. The apparatus, as described, would cost at least £100, and would then only serve to produce a few fixed phenomena, such as happen frequently in private houses and at the lodgings of mediums who have not exclusive possession of any of the adjoining rooms, or the means of obtaining expensive machinery and hired assistants. The article bears internal evidence of being altogether a fictitious narrative; but it helps to demonstrate, if any demonstration is required, that the phenomena which occur under such protean forms and varied conditions, and in private houses quite as often as at the apartments of the mediums, are in no way produced by machinery. Perhaps the most prominent recent attack on Spiritualism was that in the Quarterly Review for October, 1871, which is known to have been written by an eminent physiologist, and did much to blind the public to the real nature of the movement. This article, after giving a light sketch of the reported phenomena, entered into some details as to planchette-writing and table-lifting—facts on which no Spiritualist depends as evidence to a third party—and then proceeded to define its standpoint as follows: “Our position, then, is that the so-called spiritual communications come from _within_, not from without, the individuals who suppose themselves to be the recipients of them; that they belong to the class termed ‘subjective’ by physiologists and psychologists, and that the movements by which they are expressed, whether the tilting of tables or the writing of planchettes, are really produced by their own muscular action exerted independently of their own wills and quite unconsciously to themselves.”