"Sir Humphrey Davy, on one occasion in early life, was assisting Dr. Beddoes in his experiments on the inhalation of nitrous oxide. Dr. Beddoes having inferred that this agent must be a specific for palsy, a patient was selected for trial, and placed under the care of Davy. Previously to administering the gas, Davy inserted a small thermometer under the tongue of the patient, to ascertain the temperature. The paralytic man, wholly ignorant of the process to which he was to submit, but deeply impressed by Dr. Beddoes with the certainty of its success, no sooner felt the thermometer between his teeth, than he concluded the talisman was in operation, and in a burst of enthusiasm declared that he had already experienced the effects of its benign influence throughout his whole body. The opportunity was too tempting to be lost. Davy did nothing more, but desired his patient to return on the following day. The same ceremony was repeated, the same result followed; and at _the end of a fortnight he was dismissed wholly cured_; no remedy of any kind, except the thermometer, having ever been used." STYLE OF "SUPERNAL" COMPOSITIONS. In the "supernal" productions we are presented with a pedantic display of high-sounding words and phrases. To use the language of inspiration, "they speak great swelling words of vanity." A work has recently been announced with this imposing title: "MACROCOSM and MICROCOSM," containing, among other things, "_The Potential Media_," "_The Diastole and Systole of Nature_." A writer in the Spiritual Telegraph, of October 9, says, "There are very many fancy-captivating, and depravity-flattering publications--some of them filled with indications, the most specious and subtle, of a refined _atheism_. And I have seen a copy or two of a certain 'Journal,' ostensibly advocating the great truths (?) of spiritual manifestations, but containing some articles in which there was a congregation of words _superlatively unmeaning and transcendentally ridiculous_." The same writer says, "I do not believe one half the communications which are said to come from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, John Wesley, and a host of other great names. What affinity can these spirits have with many of the thoughtless, light, and trifling circles, formed to pass off an hour, and perhaps ending with foolish mountebank scenes of psychology, falsely so called?"