And now, by some abnormal mode of cerebral activity, the trance-speaker won strange sympathies from his auditors. Certain faculties in Clifton had reached an expansion not permitted to the healthy man. A plastic power came from him and took the impress of other minds. Old experiences groped out of forgotten corners and haunted the discourse. At one time it seemed as if all that was potential in the culture of the medium or his audience might be stimulated into specious blossom. Phenomena were exhibited which transcended the conscious powers of the human soul,--nay, which testified of its latent ability to work without organic conditions. Our unemployed brain-organs, as Hamilton and others have clearly proved, are always employing themselves. And from this self-employment--or was it demon-employment?--there swept through the consciousness a vague delirium of excitement. In all that assembly a single pulse beat feverish measures. The climax was reached. Without was the soft spring night veiling the scarcely touched range of knowledge and beauty offered to the healthy energies of man; within were dazed wanderers in a region of morbid emotion, seeking to intensify the colors of Nature, willing to waste precious vitality in conjurations of the dead. The wretched thraldom was over,--and what had it left? An exquisite sensitiveness of the nerves of sense, imagination exalted, memory goaded, reason and judgment overthrown. III. In his Fast-Day sermon Dr. Burge delivered himself of much weighty testimony against those thaumaturgical incantations of heathenism which had been revived among us. With his splendor of clerical pause and emphasis he read the denunciations against a sinful nation to which the prophet Isaiah has affixed the awful words,--"Saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts." "And they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbor, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom." Here the preacher's dark eyes left the sacred volume, and seemed to gaze upon some coming struggle in which the sins of the people would meet a bloody retribution. Then, referring to the page, he pronounced with bitterness of holy indignation the prophetic curse which was that day fulfilled in our cherished New England. "And they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards." The sermon made no more visible impression upon the sinful portion of the congregation than homilies against novel and pleasant indulgences are wont to do. "The Apostle was right, after all," said Colonel Prowley, quoting the text upon the meeting-house steps; "we _should_ 'try the spirits.'" "No objection to that," said the post-master; "but here's Dr. Burge tells us to keep out of their way, and call them all humbugs, without trying them at all." The gentleman referred to joined our party upon the meeting-house green, and accompanied us home.