book, and then hastily quitted the room; not so quickly, however, but that in going down stairs I could plainly hear a loud, hilarious expression of joy at my satisfactory recognition of the worth of the consulting parties.
Lord William was waiting for me on the door-step; I thrust my arm into his, and we walked away together.
For some time, neither of us spoke—I confess I was too much agitated to do so; at length Lord William broke silence:
"Well," said he, "you're the best hand at a mystification that ever I met with."
"Mystification?" I replied; "what do you mean?"
"Why, you made those people fancy that you were taken in with their gammon."
"'Taken in,'—'gammon,'—I don't understand you, my lord."
"You don't mean to say that you didn't see through the trick about your note to me?"
"What possible 'trick' could there be, when the note was in your pocket all the time the rapping was going on?"
"And you didn't see the Medium look at the blotting-book while I went to the window?"
"I saw it open before her, but what of that?"
"'What,' indeed! why, every line that you wrote was transferred to the blotting-paper as legibly as it was left behind. It was only turnings over a single page and there was the whole thing. I could have read it myself, upside-down."
For the credit of human nature I will not believe in this attempt to solve the mystery of the Spirit Manifestations in Doo-street, though Lord William obstinately persists in his theory.
I leave it to the public to decide between us.
THOMAS DE QUINCEY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.[1]
Why, gifted with such powers to send abroad
His spirit, must it lodge in shrines so frail.[2]
as fugitive periodical and magazine? has too often, too long, been our question in respect to the writings of the English Opium-eater. At length he appears in a more fitting form—not, indeed, until twelve volumes of his scattered essays have been published in America—but in the first volume of what we trust may be a series most prolonged (in issue, as it has been in expectation) and most successful. The appearance of this volume being almost synchronous with this of our own June number, we have neither time nor room—albeit mighty inclination—to dilate on its thrice welcome advent. The general title, "Selections,
