Thus learned men seeking to unravel mysteries, for want of sagacity and full knowledge, may become the apologists of sorcery and witchcraft. Bacon was obliged to be a philosopher for the whole enlightened world; but, in our day, so vast has each branch of science become, that any one of them would be full enough for a Bacon's grasp, and philosophers hardly dare to venture outside of their own boundaries, lest they become, or be considered _philosophists_. We hear men of science abused because they take such obstinate, inexorable positions against these "_fooleries_." This they are bound to do. Familiar with the laws of nature, all real phenomena are alike marvellous to their minds, and those which claim to be miraculous, supernatural, and, _par excellence_, the MARVELLOUS, they repudiate summarily as absurdities, knowing that if they cannot disabuse the popular mind, they can prove their irrationality to their own entire satisfaction, at least. Formerly fortune-tellers were sometimes styled Philomaths, but we think that as fortune-telling has degenerated into such disrepute, the name is unworthily applied, and we propose to transfer it to that class of learned writers of the present day, who seek to trace these tricks of raps and tips to the direct agency of the devil, or evil or good spirits;--supposing these spirits to make the sounds or movements, and to give the communications;--and to that class specially who attribute these phenomena to electricity, magnetism, or to the action of some power or fluid hitherto unknown; in short, to all, who look upon these things as any thing else than impostures and illusions. These are the philomaths of the present day, and while they thus stand in the way of advancement in true knowledge, they are, in effect, fostering error, superstition, and sorcery. We boast in our day of the enlightenment of the masses, the spread of education and the diffusion of knowledge; but for all this, necromancy is not dead nor stifled; and is now like a baleful poison running rife through our land, upon the most preposterous foundations and pretexts. Spirits, rapping upon doors, floors, and tables, upsetting tables and swinging them about the room? Spirits, do you say? Has a "spirit flesh and blood?" Has a spirit _bones, muscles, fingers, heels, toes, and sticks_? DO SPIRITS WEAR PETTICOATS _and long dresses_? A "_new fluid_," says another philomath. A new fluid, forsooth? None other than that old fluid of credulity or gullibity, if we may be allowed the latter term. An "old fluid," says another. "Electricity or magnetism in some shape." This is insufferable. Since the first discoveries in electricity and magnetism, these agents have had to take the paternity of every rare and inexplicable phenomenon. This is much more the case now than when Sir Walter Scott wrote his letters on witchcraft, though he says that the divining-rod, and other remarkable and misconceived phenomena, were