relative. The circumstance made a great excitement. Numbers of
persons rushed to his rooms, and many have found deceased friends
photographed with themselves." (Perhaps Mr. Mumler, too, may become
"endowed with competence" in time. Who knows?) Finally, the true
believers in the gospel according to Howitt, have, besides, but to
pin their faith on "ladies who see spirits habitually", on ladies
who KNOW they have a tendency to soar in the air on sufficient
provocation, and on a few other gnats to be taken after their
camels, and they shall be pronounced by Mr. Howitt not of the
stereotyped class of minds, and not partakers of "the astonishing
ignorance of the press", and shall receive a first-class certificate
of merit.

But before they pass through this portal into the Temple of Serene
Wisdom, we, halting blind and helpless on the steps, beg to suggest
to them what they must at once and for ever disbelieve. They must
disbelieve that in the dark times, when very few were versed in what
are now the mere recreations of Science, and when those few formed a
priesthood-class apart, any marvels were wrought by the aid of
concave mirrors and a knowledge of the properties of certain odours
and gases, although the self-same marvels could be reproduced before
their eyes at the Polytechnic Institution, Regent Street, London,
any day in the year. They must by no means believe that Conjuring
and Ventriloquism are old trades. They must disbelieve all
Philosophical Transactions containing the records of painful and
careful inquiry into now familiar disorders of the senses of seeing
and hearing, and into the wonders of somnambulism, epilepsy,
hysteria, miasmatic influence, vegetable poisons derived by whole
communities from corrupted air, diseased imitation, and moral
infection. They must disbelieve all such awkward leading cases as