manifestations, Powers was perhaps not an entirely unbiased estimator of these. He was an eminently sincere, earnest and zealous Swedenborgian, and several of the leading tenets and dogmas of the Swedenborgian faith are calculated to make such communications with the world of spirits as Spiritualists claim to experience much less startling, less strange to the mind and more acceptable, than they usually appear to other people. To a Swedenborgian who is perfectly convinced that the spirits of the departed are ever around him and interested in his welfare, it does not seem a very strange or extraordinary thing that these visitors should under certain circumstances be able to express the interest which they always feel. Powers regarded all the professed manifestations of spiritual communications from that stand-point, and was enabled to accept them therefore somewhat more easily than another person might have done. Yet, despite such predisposing proclivities, and though he was disposed to think a great variety of professed communications from the world of spirits to have been genuinely what they purported to be, the habitual uprightness and truthfulness of Powers's mind led him, as I believe I am justified in saying, to the conclusion that in the case which I am about to mention, at least, there was ground for very strong suspicion of the honesty of the medium. The circumstances of the case were as follows: I had many years previously lost a brother--the same whom I have already had occasion to mention in the earlier part of this letter. Now, at an early stage of the series of sittings that took place at my house it was intimated that the spirit of this brother was present and wishful or willing to communicate with me. He did, as was proposed, communicate very freely upon subjects of all sorts by means of raps under the table and the letters of the alphabet spread upon it--on all subjects save one. To the often-repeated question, where we had last met in life, I could get no reply. It was constantly promised to me that I should be answered this question at the next sitting. Now, it so happened that my wife had conceived, reasonably or unreasonably, doubts as to the medium's honesty in the matter, and she determined to try him in the matter of this unanswered question. Talking one day with him in tête-à-tête, she turned the subject of maladies of the chest, of which they had been speaking, to the special case of her late brother-in-law, discussing the powerful influence of climate, and remarking that she feared Ostend had been a very bad place for him. And there she left the matter without any further remark, and without eliciting any answer from him. This occurred very shortly before the time when Mr. Hume left my house to accept the hospitality of Mr. Powers. The sittings continued with great frequency in the house of the latter, and my mother and myself were very frequently present at them. As before, the