Perhaps few people remember the name of the man who really brought animal magnetism into prominence in the middle of the last century. Yet James Braid, the Scotch surgeon, who then lived at Manchester, and pursued with untiring thoroughness and perseverance his studies in the then little- known science, was really the shoulder that pushed hypnotism into our midst. It was Braid, indeed, who caused the name of "hypnotism" to eject that of "mesmerism" in England. He was never properly appreciated during his lifetime. But if he was not, he was only one of numerous examples which are always being brought up before our eyes (among those of our countrymen who have rendered their country signal services), who illustrate the famous English quotation, "Thus angels walked the earth unknown, and _when they flew were recognized_" Braid, however, proved effectually that the mesmeric phenomena depend altogether on the physiological condition of the person operated on, and not on the power of the operator. _Dr. Martineau from Newman._ "7 P.V.E., "_17th Feb._, 1855. "My dear Martineau, "You will believe that the state of your sister's health gives me much concern. She has kindly written twice to me. The second letter tells of formidable fainting fits, which I cannot explain away; yet, as I told her in my reply to her first, her symptoms _in general_ are so similar to my own that I cannot but hope her physician views them too seriously, and _does her harm by it_. I, on the whole, believe that my own heart is unsound organically (distended), but my experience certainly is that the less I attend to it _in detail_ the better, though I must in prudence avoid impure air and other evils. Her second letter tells me as a decisive proof how very bad she is, that every day she feels _shot_ in the head. "Now this is exactly the symptom I have for nine months been struggling to subdue, and as my wife knows, I am, week by week, balancing whether to put myself under a doctor for it.... The spasm which distresses me comes at the crisis when I ought to go to sleep, and so wakes me up. I could not get rid of it even in the summer, on days on which I had least mental effort, and was in all other respects conscious of great vigour.... "I went to a physician to complain of _sleeplessness_ and got the reply that it was my _heart_ that was diseased.... Your sister's body is so subject to her mind that I do not despair that, either through mesmerism restoring sleep or in some other way, she may rally far beyond her present expectation. I know a lady who was dying of brain fever, and could get no sleep until the physician called in a mesmerist; this gained sleep for her, and by that alone she recovered without medicine." Dr. Martineau was one of the founders of the _National Review_ in 1855, and frequently contributed articles to it. This next letter treats mainly of the proposed lines on which the magazine was to be run--its politics, points of view, etc.