Arthur Colman was so intimate a friend of Mr. Eglinton's, and so much associated with him in my thoughts in the days when I first knew them both, that it seems only natural that I should write of him next. His powers were more confined to materialization than Eglinton's, but in that he excelled. He is the most wonderful materializing medium I ever met in England; but of late years, owing to the injury it did him in his profession, he has been compelled, in justice to himself, to give up sitting for physical manifestations, and, indeed, sitting at all, except to oblige his friends. I cannot but consider this decision on his part as a great public loss; but until the public takes more interest in the next world than they do in this, it will not make it worth the while of such as Mr. Colman to devote their lives, health and strength to their enlightenment. For to be a good physical medium means literally to part, little by little, with one's own life, and no man can be expected to do so much for the love of a set of unbelievers and sceptics, who will use up all his powers, and then go home to call him a rogue and a cheat and a trickster. If, as I am persuaded, each one of us is surrounded by the influences we gather of our own free-will about us--the loving and noble-hearted by angels, the selfish and unbelieving by devils--and we consider how the latter preponderate over the former in this world, is it to be wondered at that most _séances_ are conducted by an assemblage of evil spirits brought there by the sitters themselves? Sceptical, blasphemous and sensual men and women collect together to try and find out the falsehood, _not the truth_, of Spiritualism, and are tricked by the very influences that attend their footsteps and direct their daily lives; and therein lies the danger of Spiritualism as a pursuit, taken up out of curiosity rather than a desire to learn. It gives increased power to the evil that surrounds ourselves, and the devil that goes out of us returns with seven other devils worse than himself. The drunkard, who, by giving rein to a weakness which he knows he should resist, has attracted to him the spirits of drunkards gone before, joins a _séance_, and by the collaboration of forces, as it were, bestows increased power on the guides he has chosen for himself to lead him into greater evil. This dissertation, however, called forth by the never-ceasing wonder I feel at the indifference of the world towards such sights as I have seen, has led me further than I intended from the subject of my chapter.