repeat them, 'that if there was _anything_ in it, there was _so much_, it became scarcely possible to limit consequences, and the subject grew awful to contemplate.' ... On Saturday I had some copies of my American edition, which dazzle the English one; and one or two reviews, transatlantically transcendental in 'oilie flatterie.' And I heard yesterday from the English publisher Moxon, and he was 'happy to tell me that the work was selling very well,' and this without an inquiry on my part. To say the truth, I was _afraid_ to inquire. It is good news altogether. The 'Westminster Review' won't be out till next month. Wordsworth is so excited about the railroad that his wife persuaded him to go away to recover his serenity, but he has returned raging worse than ever. He says that fifty members of Parliament have promised him their opposition. He is wrong, I think, but I also consider that if the people remembered his genius and his age, and suspended the obnoxious Act for a few years, they would be right.... May God bless you both. Most affectionately yours, BA. [Footnote 118: The _Athenaum_ of November 23 contained the first of a series of articles by Miss Martineau, giving her experiences of mesmerism.] _To James Martin_ December 10, 1844. I have been thinking of you, my dear Mr. Martin, more and more the colder it has been, and had made up my mind to write to-day, let me feel as dull as I might. So, the vane only turns to _you_ instead of to dearest Mrs. Martin in consequence of your letter--your letter makes _that_ difference. I should have written to Dover in any case.... You are to know that Miss Martineau's mesmeric experience is only peculiar as being Harriet Martineau's, otherwise it exhibits the mere commonplaces of the agency. You laugh, I see. I wish I could laugh too. I mean, I seriously wish that I could disbelieve in the reality of the power, which is in every way most repulsive to me.... Mrs. Martin is surprised at me and others on account of our 'horror.' Surely it is a natural feeling, and she would herself be liable to it if she were _more credulous_. The agency seems to me like the shaking of the flood-gates placed by the Divine Creator between the unprepared soul and the unseen world. Then--the subjection of the will and vital powers of one individual to those of another, to the extent of the apparent solution of the very identity, is abhorrent from me. And then (as to the expediency of the matter, and to prove how far believers may be carried) there is even now a religious sect at Cheltenham, of persons who call themselves advocates of the 'third revelation,' and profess to receive their system of theology entirely from patients in the sleep.