The fashionable quest of the unseen world took no new forms in the 'seventies and 'eighties. We hear much less of Spiritualism under that name. This was no doubt in part due to the success of Maskelyne and Cook in outdoing the "manifestations" of mediums, a success so remarkable that they were actually claimed as spiritualists by some of the fraternity. In 1874 _Punch_ waxes facetious at the statement that additional help had been obtained in the working of certain mines by ghostly assistants. Later on there are references to the activities of palmists and Society Sibyls, but the study of the Unseen and the Occult in the 'eighties entered on a new and formidable phase with the advent of thought-readers, theosophists and psychical researchers. _Punch_ devotes a good deal of space to an exhibition of his powers by Irving Bishop, a well-known thought-reader of the time, at which politicians were impressed and sceptics--represented by Ray Lankester--were unconvinced. The pin-finding business was certainly much less impressive than the exploits of the Zancigs some thirty years later. The invasion of the drawing-room by pseudo-science met with little sympathy from _Punch_, who summed up his view in the phrase, "modish science is a sciolist"; and in 1891 he expressed his resentment against the new mysticism and the jargon of Theosophy in a comprehensive denunciation of "useless knowledge." The verses are worth quoting, not for their poetic quality but for the list of names quoted:-- OUR REAL DESIDERATUM (_By a "Well-informed" Fool_) Ah! I was fogged by the Materialistic, By Huxley and by Zola, Koch and Moore; And now there comes a Maëlstrom of the Mystic To whirl me further yet from sense's shore. Microbes were much too much for me, bacilli Bewildered me, and phagocytes did daze, But now the author 'cute of _Piccadilly_, Harris the Prophet, the Blavatsky craze, Thibet, Theosophy, and Bounding Brothers-- No, Mystic Ones--Mahatmas I should say, But really they seem so much like the others In slippery agility!--day by day Mystify me yet more. Those germs were bad enough, But what are they compared with Astral Bodies? Of Useless Knowledge I have almost had enough, I really envy uninquiring noddies. I would not be a Chela if I could. I have a horror of the Esoterical. Besant and Olcott may be wise and good, They seem to me pursuing the chimerical. Maddened by mysteries of "Precipitation," The Occult Dream and the Bacillus-Dance; We need Societies for the propagation Of Useful--Ignorance!