“From the manner in which the questions were put, it is very evident that, when a boy is persuaded to see anything, the appearances of the sweeper, the flags, and the sultan, are the result of leading questions. The boy pretends or imagines he sees a man or a shadow, and he is told to order some one to sweep: he is therefore prepared with his answer; and the same continues to the end, the magician always telling him what he is to call for, and consequently what he is to see. The descriptions of persons asked for are almost universally complete failures.” After these and other details, sir Gardiner says, “I am decidedly of opinion that the whole of the first part is done solely by leading questions, and that whenever the descriptions succeed in any point, the success is owing to accident, or to unintentional prompting in the mode of questioning the boys.”[B] A subsequent traveller, lord Nugent, places the state of the case in a new light:-- “It is enough to say, that not one person whom Abd-el-Kader described bore the smallest resemblance to the one named by us; and all those called for were of remarkable appearance. All the preparations, all the ceremony, and all the attempts at description, bore evidences of such a coarse and stupid fraud, as would render any detail of the proceeding, or any argument tending to connect it with any marvellous power, ingenious art, or interesting inquiry, a mere childish waste of time. How, then, does it happen, that respectable and sensitive minds have been staggered by the exhibitions of this impostor? I think that the solution which Mr. Lane himself suggested as probable is quite complete. When the exhibition was over, Mr. Lane had some conversation with the magician, which he afterwards repeated to us. In reply to an observation of Mr. Lane’s to him upon his entire failure, the magician admitted that ‘he had often failed since the death of Osman Effendi;’--the same Osman Effendi that Mr. Lane mentions in his book as having been of the party on every occasion on which he had been witness of the magician’s art, and whose testimony the _Quarterly Review_ cites in support of the marvel, which (searching much too deep for what lies very near, indeed, to the surface,) it endeavours to solve by suggesting the probability of diverse complicated optical combinations.