Mr. Merton, returning to the city about the time of my being wounded, lost no time, after my removal to my own house, in renewing our former acquaintance. Mr. Winslow, and Mr. Sowerby, and Leila and her admirer, who had become husband and wife, and a sober and sensible couple, were frequently in the sick man’s room. Nobody deserted me; and never in my life have I had occasion to complain of ingratitude, or the loss of a friend. The world is bad enough, but after all not so bad as sometimes represented. I have always been treated infinitely better than my deserts; and I have found good sense, warm hearts, and noble virtues, where least I expected them. I have reproaches only for myself. I have done a world of wrong, and no good; and yet I have found myself, from my childhood, surrounded by generous and disinterested affection. People, speaking generally, are far better individually than they are collectively; and many private virtues may be found, even in bands of revolutionists, robbers, and assassins,—virtues which do not rise above the natural order indeed, and have no promise of reward in heaven, but which nevertheless are virtues. My observation has taught me to distrust the censorious, those who rail in good set terms at all mankind or womankind, although no man living was ever further than I am from believing in the sinlessness of the race, or from joining in the modern worship of woman, prompted too often by an innate pruriency unconscious of itself. As I became able to bear conversation, and to take part in it occasionally, mesmerism and the Spirit-Manifestations were a frequent topic of discourse. Jack sturdily maintained that it was all humbug. There were indeed strange things, some phenomena which he could not explain, but he set his face against the whole movement, had no belief in it, and would have nothing to do with it. There was, though he might be unable to detect it, some cheat or trickery at the bottom. Mr. Winslow held fast to his belief in the connection between mesmerism and all the marvellous, prodigious, or miraculous facts recorded in history. He accepted those facts substantially as related, but did not accept their usual explanation. The miracles of sacred history, and the marvellous facts of profane history, were to be explained on natural principles, by the mesmeric agent, or by whatever other name we might call it. Mr. Merton argued that, if the phenomena usually called Satanic, obsession, possession, witchcraft, black magic, ghosts or apparitions, clairvoyance and second sight, could be explained without resort to the supernatural, the other class of facts, the miracles of sacred history, could be also explained without the supposition of the special intervention of Divine power. He thought, if we could account for the former without Satan, we could for the latter without the supernatural intervention of God.