"If you speak of modern spiritualism," said Professor Owlsdarck, "you must allow it to be lamentably inferior to the same mystery of old. For how compare the best ghostly doings of these days, those at Stratford in Connecticut, for example, I will not say to the famous doings at Delphi and Dodona, but even to the Moodus Noises once heard at East Haddam in that State? The ancestors of some of these nervous media testify to roarings in the air, rumblings in the bowels of the mountain, explosions like volleys of musketry, the moving of heavy stones, and the violent shaking of houses. Ah, Sir, you should use effort to have put to type your reverend brother Bradley's memoir on this subject, whereof the sole copy is held by the Historical Society at Hartford." "Every recent quackery is so overlaid with a veneering of science," said the clergyman, "that those who have not had sufficient training to know that they lack scientific methods of thought are often unable to draw the distinction between a fact and an inference. There is much practical shrewdness and intelligence here in Foxden; yet I am constantly surprised to see how few, in relation to any circumstance out of the daily routine of business-life, recognize the difference between possibility, probability, and demonstration. And, indeed, it is no easy matter to impart a sense of their deficiency to those who have only been accustomed to deal with the loose forms of ordinary language." "If we may believe the Padre Clavigero," observed the Professor, "it will not be easy to find a language so fit for metaphysical subjects, and so abounding in abstract terms, as the ancient Mexican." This remark seemed hardly to the purpose; for whatever the excellences of that tongue might have been, there were insuperable objections to its adoption as a vehicle of communication between Mr. Clifton and his parishioners. But the last-named gentleman, with generous tact, allowed the conversation to wander back to those primitive solidities whither it naturally tended. It did not take long to get to the Pharaohs, of whose domestic arrangements the Professor talked with the familiar air of a man who dined with them once a week. From these venerable potentates we soon came upon their irrepressible mummies, and here Owlsdarck was as thoroughly at home as if he had been brought up in a catacomb. Indeed, this singular person appeared fairly alive only when he surrounded himself with the deadest antiquities of the dimmest past. His remarks, as I have before admitted, had that interest which must belong to the careful investigation of anything; but I could not help thinking into how much worthier channels his powers of accurate investigation and indefatigable research might have been directed.