seized by spirit influence, and rapid communications written out, of a
surprising character to those to whom they were addressed”. That at his
bidding, “spirit hands have appeared which have been seen, felt, and
recognised frequently, by persons present, as those of deceased friends”.
That he has been frequently lifted up and carried, floating “as it were”
through a room, near the ceiling. That in America, “all these phenomena
have displayed themselves in greater force than here”—which we have not
the slightest doubt of. That he is “the planter of spiritualism all over
Europe”. That “by circumstances that no man could have devised, he
became the guest of the Emperor of the French, of the King of Holland, of
the Czar of Russia, and of many lesser princes”. That he returned from
“this unpremeditated missionary tour”, “endowed with competence”; but not
before, “at the Tuileries, on one occasion when the emperor, empress, a
distinguished lady, and himself only were sitting at table, a hand
appeared, took up a pen, and wrote, in a strong and well-known character,
the word Napoleon. The hand was then successively presented to the
several personages of the party to kiss.” The stout believer, having
disposed of Mr. Home, and rested a little, will then proceed to believe
in Andrew Davis Jackson, or Andrew Jackson Davis (Mr. Howitt, having no
Medium at hand to settle this difference and reveal the right name of the
seer, calls him by both names), who merely “beheld all the essential
natures of things, saw the interior of men and animals, as perfectly as
their exterior; and described them in language so correct, that the most
able technologists could not surpass him. He pointed out the proper
remedies for all the complaints, and the shops where they were to be
obtained”;—in the latter respect appearing to hail from an advertising
circle, as we conceive. It was also in this gentleman’s limited
department to “see the metals in the earth”, and to have “the most
distant regions and their various productions present before him”.
Having despatched this tough case, the believer will pass on to Thomas L.
Harris, and will swallow _him_ easily, together with “whole epics” of his
composition; a certain work “of scarcely less than Miltonic grandeur”,
called The Lyric of the Golden Age—a lyric pretty nigh as long as one of
Mr. Howitt’s volumes—dictated by Mr. (not Mrs.) Harris to the publisher
in ninety-four hours; and several extempore sermons, possessing the
remarkably lucid property of being “full, unforced, out-gushing,
unstinted, and absorbing”. The candidate for examination in pure belief,
will then pass on to the spirit-photography department; this, again, will
be found in so-favoured America, under the superintendence of Medium
Mumler, a photographer of Boston: who was “astonished” (though, on Mr.
Howitt’s showing, he surely ought not to have been) “on taking a
photograph of himself, to find also by his side the figure of a young
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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