terrifying effect, the other intensifying the terror. In attempting to
weaken a person to whom speech has been made intelligible at a distance,
a sensation would be transferred after the speech, so that he might
believe it affected him, and cease jeering at and despising the operator.
A man with some knowledge of mesmerism, and living a life with good
interests in it, could defy them: such a case has happened. For nearly
fifty years a gentleman was tormented at times, and died and lived sane.

The attack has perhaps been more developed in the last twenty or thirty
years, the influence of above-board hypnotism acted upon that practised
by criminal scoundrels. A combination possible is, for instance, one
rascal showing a faint image of a fiend, and another transmitting a sound
like a scratching at a window; this was a failure, the percipient
believing that the devil acted under the authority of the Almighty, and
had no business with innocent people. It was given to a person in a
semi-sleeping condition. Pain combined was efficient. The pain is partly
by affection of cutaneous nerves--partly by affection of the ear; but no
one on the watch would be driven into lunatic acts by it. Of course after
exhaustion (and pain makes this easier) the victim may be in a stupefied
condition and obey: this is the post-hypnotic state, which will not come
off with people who have been instructed against this villainous game.
Miss Freer's admirable nerve was doubtless due to the habit of studying
phenomena. The worn features at breakfast, mentioned before, included
those of two secular priests. Miss Freer had failed to get permission
for three well--known priests belonging to societies (perhaps Jesuits) to
come. The gentleman already mentioned who had first told Lord Bute of the
haunting of B---- was among these.

An interesting light on the effect of prayer would probably be brought
out by struggles against witchcraft, struggles doubtless very common