mesmerically seeing (until the organ-power is given up, or a new vocabulary established, I use the word) the internal structure of the body, and that in all its most intricate parts; the thoughts of persons, or patients, by as intricate a knowledge of their minds, propensities, and dispositions—and hero I purposely exclude from the argument the knowledge of future events. The assumption amounts to a kind of identity; the mesmeriser becomes another, and yet retains himself—at least he partakes of the person with whom he is in rapport. Now, if this be the inalienable, the natural power of mesmerism, to what degree, in what manner, and with what result, as to any intelligence given, or to be required to be given, do the mesmerisers of mad bulls and of savage dogs enter into the animus of the animal they make submit to them? I am not saying that brutes have thoughts, as we have thoughts, but they have intentions, motives, and cognisances, which, if mesmerism be a concurrent congruous consistent power, ought to be perceptively identified in the mesmeriser.
But there is a claim still more astonishing: hitherto, life has been the great condition of its efficacy—life in man and in brute. And here, in passing, I may be allowed to notice an inconsistency. Some life is not subject to its power, or weakly so, and that, as mesmerists say, arising from the sceptical nature of minds—that a certain degree of faith is necessary; yet here, the argument is nil with regard to the bull and the dog, and more so still to that of which I now mean to speak—that is, that inanimate bodies are under its power. This may startle the reader, but so it is. I have seen, as doubtless many hundreds have, doors and floors mesmerised, and the hand of the somnambulist, when pressed against the pannel, apparently incapable of being removed; and, in the case of the floor, (mesmerised only by a wave of the hand over it,) the somnambulist, when desired or led to cross it, suddenly arrested by the power, and unable to lift the foot at that particular part of the floor. Nor were those who tried their own force able therewith to remove it from its position. What is the nature of the sympathy—this material cognisance of mesmeric effect, between the foot and the floor, the door-panel and the hand? I do not say here that there is none; but if there be, the power claimed is over the inanimate and the animate—over matter and over mind, and making for each a new sympathy. The instance I have given, it may be said, is as to surface only, where an essence or effluvia may be supposed to rest. But not so; for, at the exhibition of that phenomenon, the somnambulist pierced in perception the solid floor, and walls, and doors, for she told what was passing, or had immediately taken place, in other rooms in the house—who had entered, what they came for, and what they were doing; nay, she shortly went far beyond the house, was in her own home, some miles off, and said the postman was at the door with letters, the contents of two of which she told; and I remember they related to interesting domestic concerns, which the mesmeriser afterwards asserted, upon inquiry, were found to be as she had spoken of them. I must observe, however, that with this person there was a mixture of childishness, giving an impression of her playing with her power, which took away from its importance by fastening on little facts—such, for instance, as that a man was standing by the fire-place (which was obstructed from her view by many persons) in a particular dress, and holding an umbrella; that there was a person in the room had "such odd thoughts;" and one standing near to me, in the part of the room to which she directed attention, owned to these "odd thoughts." I fancied—though it may have been fancy only—that she was endeavouring to establish a belief in the power by these trifling notices. Another thing struck me as worthy a speculative inquiry. With regard to the floor and door-panels, the power was imparted by simply a wave of the hand over the parts; so, by a wave of the hand over them was it dissipated; but what became of this essence or effluvia, this invisible substance? Seemingly it should have fastened upon something else, for the wave of the hand that took it off was over other parts. Nor did the company appear to partake of any of this floating mes-
