to certain phenomena, which, under whatever aspect we may consider them, are, beyond doubt, exceedingly interesting and curious; while, if the view many persons are disposed to take of them be the correct one, they are much more than this. I wish, also, to make the English public acquainted with the ideas entertained on these subjects by a large proportion of German minds of the highest order. It is a distinctive characteristic of the thinkers of that country, that, in the first place, they do think independently and courageously; and, in the second, that they never shrink from promulgating the opinions they have been led to form, however new, strange, heterodox, or even absurd, they may appear to others. They do not succumb, as people do in this country, to the fear of ridicule; nor are they in danger of the odium that here pursues those who deviate from established notions; and the consequence is, that, though many fallacious theories and untenable propositions may be advanced, a great deal of new truth is struck out from the collision; and in the result, as must always be the case, what is true lives and is established, and what is false dies and is forgotten. But here, in Britain, our critics and colleges are in such haste to strangle and put down every new discovery that does not emanate from themselves, or which is not a fulfilling of the ideas of the day, but which, being somewhat opposed to them, promises to be troublesome from requiring new thought to render it intelligible, that one might be induced to suppose them divested of all confidence in this inviolable law; while the more important and the higher the results involved may be, the more angry they are with those who advocate them. They do not quarrel with a new metal or a new plant, and even a new comet or a new island stands a fair chance of being well received; the introduction of a planet appears, from late events, to be more difficult; while phrenology and mesmerism testify that any discovery tending to throw light on what most deeply concerns us, namely, our own being, must be prepared to encounter a storm of angry persecution. And one of the evils of this hasty and precipitate opposition is, that the passions and interests of the opposers become involved in the dispute: instead of investigators, they become partisans; having declared against it in the outset, it is important to their petty interests that the thing shall not be true; and they determine that it _shall_ not, if they can help it. Hence, these hasty, angry investigations of new facts, and the triumph with which failures are recorded; and hence the wilful overlooking of the axiom that a thousand negatives can not overthrow the evidence of one affirmative experiment. I always distrust those who have declared themselves strongly in the beginning of a controversy. Opinions which, however rashly avowed, may have been honest at first, may have been changed for many a long day before they are retracted. In the meantime,