Among the media of our day, Home is naturally _facile princeps_. A Scotchman by birth, he claims that his mother already possessed the gift of Second Sight, and that in their home near Edinburgh similar endowments were frequent among their neighbors. At the age of three years he saw the death of a cousin, who lived in a distant town, and named the persons who were standing around her couch; he conversed constantly in his childish way with spirits and heard heavenly music; his cradle was rocked by invisible hands, and his toys came unaided into his hands. When ten years old he was taken to an aunt in America, in whose house he had no sooner been installed than chairs and tables, beds and utensils, began to move about in wild disorder, till the terrified lady sent the unlucky boy away. Attending once an exhibition of table-moving he fell into fits and suddenly became cataleptic; during the paroxysm he heard a summoning, then the spirits announced the wrecking of two sailors, the table began to rock as in a storm, the whistling of the wind through the tackle, the creaking of the vessel, and the dull, heavy thud of the waves against her bows, all were distinctly heard, and finally the table was upset, while the spirits announced the name and the age of the perishing seamen. From that day Home carefully cultivated his strange gifts, and developed what he considered a decided talent for reading the future. As a young man he returned to Europe and soon became famous. Florence was, for a time, the principal stage of his successes; here he not only summoned the spirits of the departed, but was raised by invisible powers from the ground and hovered for some time above the heads of his visitors. The superstitious Italians finally became excited and threatened him with death, from which a Count Branichi saved him at great personal peril. In Naples the spirits suddenly declared their intention to leave him on February 10, 1856, and to remain absent for a whole year; they did so, and during the interval Home enjoyed better health than ever in his life! In Rome he became a Catholic, and good Pio Nono himself offered him his crucifix to kiss, with the words: "That is the only true magic wand!"--unfortunately this was not Home's view always; at least we find him in 1864 in the same city in conflict with the papal police, who ordered him to cease all intercourse "with higher as well as with lower spirits," and finally compelled him to leave the Eternal City. He then claimed publicly, what, it must not be forgotten, he had consistently maintained from the beginning of his marvelous career, that he was the unwilling agent of higher powers, which affected him at irregular times, independent of his will, and often contrary to his dearest wishes. It must be added that he gave the strongest proof of his sincerity by never accepting from the public pecuniary compensation for the exhibition of peculiar powers.