tinction of the 'spirit-mania.' But in several cases, as in Tom Moore's fable, the extinguishers have caught fire. Were it the absurdity it is often said to be, it would do much good by calling attention to the manifestations' of another absurdity, the philosophy of possibilities and impossibilities, the philosophy of the fourth court. Extremes meet: but the 'meeting' is often for the purpose of mutual exposure, like that of silly gentlemen in the day of pop-and-paragraph duels. This on the supposition that spiritualism is all either imposture or delusion: it cannot be more certainly one or the other than is the philosophy opposed to it. I have no aquaintance either with P or Q; but I feel sure that the decided conviction of all who can see both sides of the shield must be that it is more likely that P has seen a ghost than that Q knows he cannot have seen one. I know that Q says he knows it: on which suprà, passim. I now give place to the author, with the statement that, though generally cognizant of each other's views, both the author and myself had substantially finished before either set eyes on what the other had written. Between us we have, in a certain way, cleared the dish; like that celebrated couple of whom one could eat no fat and the other no lean. July 1863. A. B. |