one listening to us, and that you have at length been fortunate or
unfortunate enough to see him."

"Do not say fortunate," said my brother; "for I feel as though I shall
never recover from last night's shock."

"That is likely enough," Mr. Gaskell answered, coolly; "for as in the
history of the race or individual, increased culture and a finer mental
susceptibility necessarily impair the brute courage and powers of
endurance which we note in savages, so any supernatural vision such
as you have seen must be purchased at the cost of physical reaction.
From the first evening that we played this music, and heard the noises
mimicking so closely the sitting down and rising up of some person, I
have felt convinced that causes other than those which we usually call
natural were at work, and that we were very near the manifestation of
some extraordinary phenomenon."

"I do not quite apprehend your meaning."

"I mean this," he continued, "that this man or spirit of a man has been
sitting here night after night, and that we have not been able to see
him, because our minds are dull and obtuse. Last night the elevating
force of a strong passion, such as that which you have confided to me,
combined with the power of fine music, so exalted your mind that you
became endowed, as it were, with a sixth sense, and suddenly were
enabled to see that which had previously been invisible. To this sixth
sense music gives, I believe, the key. We are at present only on the
threshold of such a knowledge of that art as will enable us to use it
eventually as the greatest of all humanising and educational agents.
Music will prove a ladder to the loftier regions of thought; indeed I