It has been mentioned that in ordinary trance the mind appears to gain new powers. For a long time we had to trust to the chance turning up of cases of spontaneous trance, in the experience of physicians of observation, for any light we could hope would be thrown on those extraordinary phenomena; now we possess around us, on every side, adequate opportunities for completely elucidating these events, if we please to employ them. The philosopher, when his speculations suggest a new question to be put, can summon the attendance of a trance as easily as the Jupiter of the Iliad summoned a dream; or, looking out for two or three cases to which the induction of trance may be beneficial, the physician may have in his house subjects for perpetual reference and daily experiment. A gentleman, with whom I, have long been well acquainted, for many years chairman of the Quarter Sessions in a northern county, of which during a late year he was high sheriff, has, like M. de Puységur, amused some of his leisure hours, and benevolently done not a little good, by taking the trouble of mesmerizing invalids, whom he has thus restored to health. In constant correspondence with, and occasionally having the pleasure of seeing this gentleman, I have learned from him the common course in which the new powers of the mind, which belong to trance, are developed under its artificial induction. The sketch which I propose to give of this subject will be taken from his descriptions, which, I should observe, tally in all essential points with what I meet with in French and German authors. The little that I have myself seen of the matter, I will mention preliminarily. In some, instead of trance, a common fit of hysterics is produced; in others, slight headache, and a sense of weight on the eyebrows, and difficulty of raising the eyelids, supervene. In one young woman, whom I saw mesmerised for the first time by Dupotet, nothing resulted but a sense of pricking and tingling wherever he pointed with his hand; and her arm, on one or two occasions, jumped in the most natural and conclusive manner when, her eyes being covered, he directed his outstretched finger to it.