"MESSRS. EDITORS: There has been a vast deal of ink shed upon the above-named subject, and much of it to but little purpose, except to demonstrate the willingness of individuals to show up before the world the least attractive features of their intellectual and moral characters. Far the greater number of paragraphists who have essayed to enlighten the world on this subject, and protect this community in particular from _humbug_, as they are pleased to term it, have made up their various articles of exceedingly cheap material. Ridicule, the fool's argument, has formed the chief staple of their lucubrations. Denunciation, unsparingly poured out, has been heaped upon the heads of those most immediately connected with this singular phenomenon, and an unwarrantable and unmanly meanness, which has led the writers, almost without exception, to traduce the character of the Fox family, and has taught us how easy it is for men to forget their manhood and stoop to a point at which they can lay claim to but little of the nobility of human nature. "I, for one, can find an apology for the penny-a-liners who have poured their puerile effusions _at_ the knocking mystery. They do but cater for a public sentiment and public ignorance in this matter; and their bread-and-butter demands of them that they shall not wave their inky wands beyond the line of that opinion. But there are some for whom we cannot make this apology. I notice in your paper of 23d inst. a communication over the signature of C. D. The writer of said article lays claim (and not a groundless one) to the reputation of a man of wisdom. He is known among us as the expounder of laws natural and divine. His picture, so he tells us, hangs from the walls of the Athenæum, and looks down complacently upon its visitors as a teacher of the exact and occult sciences. The community in which he lives has nourished him during a long lapse of years, has accredited to him the prerogatives he has claimed, and has looked up to him, as one clothed with authority, to enlighten it upon all abstruse subjects. And yet, with the knowledge (which he must possess) that if anything be spoken of it must be spoken of understandingly,--that a man in his position utterly disregards the safety of his reputation who rushes to record an opinion without ascertaining that it is tenable, and that he has facts to sustain him; this self-same C. D., this Solon of the closet and pulpit, without a particle of evidence, in the absence of all personal observation, rushes in the hot haste of blind folly to the press, and tells the "good people" that the phenomenon in question is no phenomenon at all, but only a sheer humbug! a miserable delusion, cunningly contrived, but fit only to deceive such fanatical fools as have been chasing shadows from time immemorial, down to the advent of Mormonism.