de Leon, in his Travels, translated by Mr. Markham for the Hakluyt
Society, brings a similar anecdote from early Peru, in 1549. {100b}
Miss Nancy Wesley's case is vouched for (she and the bed she sat on
both rose from the floor) by a letter from one of her family to her
brother Samuel, printed in Southey's Life of Wesley. Finally, Lord
Lindsay and Lord Adare published a statement that they saw Home
float out of one window and in at another, in Ashley Place, S.W., on
December 16, 1868. Captain Wynne, who was also there, 'wrote to the
Medium, to say I was present as a witness'. {101} We need not heap
up more examples, drawn from classic Greece, as in the instances of
Abaris and Iamblichus. We merely stand speechless in the presence
of the wildest of all fables, when it meets us, as identical myths
and customs do--not among savages alone, but everywhere, practically
speaking, and in connection with barbarous sorcery, with English
witchcraft, with the saintliest of mediaeval devotees, with African
warriors, with Hindoo fakirs, with a little English girl in a quiet
old country parsonage, and with an enigmatic American gentleman.
Many living witnesses, of good authority, sign statements about
Home's levitation. In one case, a large table, on which stood a man
of twelve stone weight rose from the floor, and an eye-witness, a
doctor, felt under the castors with his hands.

Of all persons subject to 'levitation,' Saint Joseph of Cupertino
(1603-1663) was the most notable. The evidence is partly derived
from testimonies collected with a view to his canonisation, within
two years after his death. There is a full account of his life and
adventures in Acta Sanctorum. {102} St. Joseph died, as we saw, in
1663, but the earliest biography of him, in Italian, was not
published till fifteen years later, in 1678. Unluckily the compiler
of his legend in the Acta Sanctorum was unable to procure this work,