As the spiritual intercourse extended, and believers multiplied, the somnambulic and rapping mediums ceased to be the only mediums. The artificial somnambulic mediums, or mesmerized mediums, disappeared almost wholly, and to the rapping mediums were added writing mediums and speaking mediums, and in some instances the spirits became actually visible to the seers, and telegraphed their messages by visible symbols, and occasionally in words. Spiritual telegraphing, in some one or all these ways, became, in a few months, common in all parts of the country; and, at the expiration of two years, there were three hundred spiritual circles or clubs in the single city of Philadelphia, and more than half a million of believers in the United States. The epidemic had broken out in the North of England and Wales, had spread all over Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, and Northern and Central Germany, penetrated France in all directions, and made its appearance even at Rome. In France and Italy, where the population is either profoundly Christian or profoundly infidel, the spiritual manifestation had to adopt more discreet and less startling forms than in our own and some other countries, and to give place at first to doubt whether it was not mere trickery, or explicable on recognized scientific principles; and confined itself, to a great extent, to the phenomena of table-turning, which excited curiosity without alarming conscience. In France, in the most polished, fashionable, and, I may almost say, most Catholic society, table-turning became an amusement. The next point to be attended to, was the doctrines, the philosophy or religion, that the spirits were to teach. It would not do to attack the Gospel too openly, and it was necessary to undermine, rather than to bombard it. In some respects even, it was advisable to seem to confirm, as it were by one rising from the dead, some portions of Christian belief,—such as the immortality of the soul, and the reality of an invisible spirit-world. The latter was doubted by the free-thinkers; but it was essential to my project that the free-thinkers, in this respect, should be converted, for their conversion and acknowledgment of belief in God and a spirit-world would do much to commend our spiritualism to a large body of silly and ill-informed Christian believers, who, seeing such apparently good effects resulting from it, would conclude that there could be nothing bad in it. By their fruits shall ye know them.