Of course it is (happily for the reader) out of the question for me to attempt to give any detailed record of the proceedings and experiences of those repeated _séances_. I can only select a few facts which appeared to me most striking at the time, and add the general result as to the impression produced on my mind. All our Florentine friends and acquaintances were eager to have an opportunity of passing an evening with the already celebrated medium. We generally limited our number to about eight persons; but pretty regularly had as many as that every evening. The performance usually began by crackings and oscillations of the round table at which we sat. Then would come more distinct raps; then the declaration that a visitor from the spirit world was present, then the demand for whom the said visit was intended, to which a reply was “knocked out,” by raps indicating the letters required to form the desired name as the letters of the alphabet, always on the table, were rapidly run over. Sometimes a mistake was made, and an unintelligible word produced in consequence of too great haste in doing this. And then the process had to be gone through again. The medium never corrected any such mistake at the moment it was made, but seemed to await the completion of the process as the rest did. One or more “spirits” came, to the best of my recollection, every evening. Nor could I detect any sort of favouritism, or motive of any sort for the selection of the parties said to be visited. This is the sort of thing that would occur: There was present a well known and much respected English banker, established in Florence, a hale, robust, cheery sort of man, and a general favourite--the last man in the world one would say to be credited with nervous impressionability. A “spirit” was announced as having “come for him.” Who is it? A name was rapped out in the manner described. The elderly banker declared that he had never had any friend or relative of that name, and had never heard it before. A second time the name was spelled out while the banker sat thrashing out his recollections. Suddenly he struck his forehead with his hand, and exclaimed, “By Heaven! it is true! Nanny ----” (I forget the name.) “She was my nurse in Yorkshire more than half a century ago!” Of course those who do not understand that scepticism is frequently more credulous than faith, say at once that Mr. Hume, in the exercise of his profession, like the gipsies in the exercise of theirs, had made it his business to discover the former existence of Nanny ----, and her connection with the person he was bent on befooling. But taking into consideration the total severance of the old banker’s infancy both as to years and locality from any of his then surroundings; the fact that it was so long since he had heard the name in question mentioned, that he had himself entirely forgotten it; and the further fact that there was nobody in Florence who had any connection with him or his family in his