however, I am more desirous of stating is that towards the end of her life my mother's views on 'spiritual manifestations' were much modified. This change was brought about, in great measure, by the discovery that she had been duped by a friend in whom she had blind faith. The pain of the disillusion was great, but her eyes were opened and she saw clearly."[55] It must be added, that letters written by Mrs Browning six months before her death give no indication of this change of feeling, but she admits that "sublime communications" from the other world are "decidedly absent," and that while no truth can be dangerous, unsettled minds may lose their balance, and may do wisely to avoid altogether the subject of spiritualism. Browning's hostility arose primarily from his conviction that the so-called "manifestations" were, as he says, a cheat and imposture. He had grasped Home's leg under the table while at work in producing "phenomena." He had visited his friend, Seymour Kirkup, had found the old man assisting at the trance of a peasant girl named Mariana; and when Kirkup withdrew for a moment, the entranced Mariana relieved herself from the fatigue of her posturing, at the same time inviting Browning with a wink to be a charitable confederate in the joke by which she profited in admiration and in pelf. Browning, who would have waged immitigable war against the London dog-stealers, and opposed all treaty with such rogues, even at the cost of an unrecovered Flush, could not but oppose the new trade of elaborate deception. But his feeling was intensified by the personal repulsiveness of the professional medium. The vain, sleek, vulgar, emasculated, neurotic type of creature, who became the petted oracle of the dim-lighted room, was loathsome in his eyes. And his respect for his wife's genius made him feel that there was a certain desecration in the neighbourhood to her of men whom he regarded as verminous impostors. Yet he recognised her right to think for herself, and she, on the other hand, regarded his scepticism as rather his misfortune than his crime.