THE SPIRITUAL MAGAZINE. 183 As an appropriate counterpart to the above, we give the following from the last issue of the Scottsville Register: "The Moon Ghost' on last Monday night was more rampant than usual. His thumping and rapping on and around the house kept all of the inmates awake. He, she, or it is no humbug of a ghost. Many of our readers do not believe what has been said of this mysterious affair; but we can assure them that one half of the mysterious and unaccountable movements of the ghost have not been published. We do not believe that the old detective Hays, reputed to be the best in the United States, could detect the intruder, or account for his being willing to give so much labour night after night, through rain, snow and mud, in order to annoy the unoffending occupants of the house. It is evident that he is not a thief for he steals nothing." NOTES AND GLEANING S. A NEW MEDIUM. ON Friday, February 17th, a few friends, including Mr. Chinnery, Mr. Shorter, Mr. Gleadstanes, and Mr. Álsop, met at the house of one of their number to witness manifestations through a new medium, a Mr. Williams, of 61, Lamb's Conduit Street, Holborn. Spirit-voices were heard loud and clear; the pressure of spirithands-soft, firm, and caressingly-was felt by nearly all present; a spirit-form was distinctly seen by one of the company; a cornopean was brought from a distant part of the room and placed in the hand of a gentleman who plays that instrument; and a heavy candelabrum, weighing probably from 12 to 14 pounds, was brought from the end of the room opposite to the medium and placed noiselessly on the table. These were the chief incidents of the séance. PRESENTIMENTS OF DEATH. Asked in his thirty-sixth year to write a requiem, Mozart sadly replied, "It will be my own then ;" and he died as soon as he had finished it. "Did I not tell you truly," he said, musing over the score as he lay dying, "that it was for myself that I composed this death-chant ?" Flechier, the great French divine, dreamt that he was to die, and ordered his tomb. "Begin your work at once," was his final instruction to the sculptor, "for there is no time to lose;" and no sooner was the house of death finished than its intending tenant entered upon possession. "What is to be the subject of your next design ?" asked a merry party of friends of Hogarth.. "The end of all things," was the 184 THE SPIRITUAL MAGAZINE. reply. "In that case," said one, jokingly, "there will be an end of the artist.""There will," rejoined Hogarth, with a depth of solemnity that was strange in him. He set about the plate in hot haste, broke up his tools when he had finished it, entitled the print "Finis," and a short time after its publication lay stretched in death. "Poor Weston," exclaimed Foote, as he stood dejectedly contemplating the portrait of a brother actor recently dead, "Poor Weston! Soon others shall say, 'Poor Foote!" In a few days he was borne out to his burial. Obituary. THE LATE ROBERT CHAMBERS, LL.D. WE deeply regret to hear of the death of this estimable friend. We find the following short notice of him in the daily papers: "We regret to announce the death, on the 17th March, at St. Andrew's, of Dr. Robert Chambers, of the well-known firm of publishers. He had been gradually sinking for some weeks past, so that the melancholy event was not altogether unexpected. The deceased was born at Peebles in 1802. He received a good education, and was intended for the Church; but his tastes did not lie in that direction. He, early in life, commenced a small bookselling business in Edinburgh, and was not long before he appealed to the world as an author. One of his first efforts in literature was a work on the Antiquities of Edinburgh, which attracted favourably the notice of Sir Walter Scott. In 1832 he joined his brother William in establishing the business which, as the firm of "William and Robert Chambers," has attained to considerable eminence. For the journal which bears their name he wrote nearly 400 essays on social, philosophical, and humourous subjects, during the first twelve years of its issue. He also published a work on geology, entitled Ancient Sea-Margins, as illustrative of Changes of the Relative Level of Sea and Land, and several volumes on the romantic portions of Scottish song and story. One on the "Rebellion" of 1745 appeared in Constable's Miscellany upwards of thirty-seven years ago. The Domestic Annals of Scotland was a subject treated by him in another work with great success, and the well-known Book of Days will be long associated with his name. "With his brother, Mr. William Chambers, he is well known as the founder of cheap periodical literature in this country. He was also credited with being the author of THE SPIRITUAL MAGAZINE. 185 Vestiges of Creation, which in its day created a sensation somewhat similar to that with which Mr. Darwin's works have been received in more recent times. Besides Chambers's Journal, his name is also associated with several useful and popular treatises on educational subjects." To this we have to add, that he was for the last twelve or thirteen years of his life an earnest inquirer into, and believer in the marvels of both old and modern Spiritualism. A man with no superstitious reverence, and with all the bent of his mind running counter to such a belief, we could hardly, in the range of our celebrated men, choose one whose opinion, founded on long inquiry, reading, and personal observation, should have greater weight. He received nothing on trust, and was a most careful investigator, and he had the advantage of constant intimacy with Mr. D. D. Home. With him he had repeated sittings, and was well acquainted with the whole range of phenomena which occur in his presence. But he also pursued the inquiry with other mediums, till he had arrived at entire conviction. He had a large and well-selected collection of old and new works on the subject, and was thoroughly acquainted with its literature. Often have we heard him pity the ignorance with which the subject has been assailed in the press and in society, and good-humouredly lament that it should not be inquired into before its unceremonious rejection, and he was well aware of the state of the scientific mind which was the bar to inquiry. Being largely embarked with his firm in literary business, he did not hold himself at liberty to make public his belief, for fear of injuring their prospects; and it says little which the world should take credit for, that a man of his mark should be deterred by its frowns from stating what he knew as a great truth. Let it be known that a great and good man may be prevented by the besotted ignorance of his fellows from telling them an unwelcome truth. Besides the works above enumerated, Dr. Robert Chambers was the author of an Essay on Testimony, which was reviewed in our pages at the time, and which he intended as a protest against the illogical treatment of the subject of Spiritualism, and at the same time as the promulgation of the true nature of evidence and the best method of inquiry. He was also the author of the preface to Mr. D. D. Home's book, called Incidents in my Life, the title of which he selected, and the proof sheets of which all passed under his careful revision. Besides this, he contributed the appendix of phenomena to the same work; and to the last he maintained his friendship for and confidence in Mr. Home, and he made an affidavit in his favour in the suit of "Lyon v. Home." In his Book of Days, he gathered together 186 THE SPIRITUAL MAGAZINE, a number of records of spiritual phenomena, which he had collected in his varied reading of the annals of Scotland, and which it was his object there to preserve for future use when the time should come for them. He was to the last a consistent and munificent supporter of the several movements in favour of Spiritualism, and the Harley Street meetings, just concluded, were subscribed to by him. With all his learning, and the calls upon his time, we have heard him say on several occasions that the Spiritual Magazine was the only periodical which he always read from cover to cover. This is no small honour, and should be no small encouragement to us to persevere. In him we have lost one of our best and ablest friends and coadjutors; and in closing this short tribute to his memory, we can only repeat our grief at his loss, and the hope that he is now reaping the reward of a honourable and useful life. PROFESSOR AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. THE ink of the preceding notice was not dry when the tidings arrived of the departure of another great spirit. At one o'clock on Saturday afternoon, 18th March, Augustus De Morgan died at his residence, 6, Merton Road, Primrose Hill. How frequently do such events occur in pairs, and sometimes in trios! Mr. De Morgan was born in 1806 in Madura, a small island to the north-east of Java. His father was an officer in the British army. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was Fourth Wrangler in 1827; but retired from further honours owing to aversion to subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles. He was qualifying himself for the Bar, but the institution of the London University in 1828 opened for him a more congenial career. He was appointed Professor of Mathematics, which office he resigned in 1831, resumed in 1836, and retained till 1866. He was singularly successful as a teacher, and a host of pupils will reverence his memory. It would be superfluous in this place to recount Mr. De Morgan's achievements as a mathematician and logician, or his multifarious labours as a writer in general science and letters. Suffice it to say that wherever his handiwork appeared it received the respect of all whose respect was best worth having. As was once observed by a generous antagonist, "On whatever subject Professor De Morgan advances an opinion it is original and commonly beyond appeal." If genius be the faculty of seeing with one's own eyes instead of with other people's eyes, Mr. De Morgan was emphatically a man of genius. The commonest matters and driest themes acquired freshness and life THE SPIRITUAL MAGAZINE. 187 under his touch. To fools and charlatans he was a terror: humourously and without ferocity he handled pretentious absurdities, but so handled them that they rarely stirred again. He was liberal, but earnest as liberal, and where his convictions were clear, inexorable. When, in 1866, the chair of Moral Philosophy in University College was vacant, he promoted the election of the Rev. James Martineau as beyond question the best man in the empire for the post; and when the authorities preferred in his stead a representative of mere physiological psychology, he did not hesitate to give the strongest proof of disapprobation by the resignation of his own professorship. To Spiritualism he rendered eminent service by the wellknown preface to Mrs. De Morgan's admirable volume, From Matter to Spirit. It is a piece of writing that will not soon be forgotten, and is highly characteristic of its author. He was unable to yield full adhesion to our common belief that physical manifestations are effected by unseen intelligences; but his hesitation, we often thought, was due rather to a sense of inability to maintain a case against all objectors, after his usual fashion in other matters, than to actual scepticism. His conviction was, at any rate, as decided as that of Robert Chambers himself, that the manifestations were veritable signs and wonders worthy of the most serious attention. And when we consider that two men of the calibre of De Morgan and Chambers united in bearing such testimony, we can easily disregard the opposition and derision of those who either know nothing or will know nothing of the phenomena whereof they speak so recklessly. Notices of Books. MOUNTFORD ON MIRACLES.* "THE age of miracles is past" has long been a dismal commonplace; and not only so dismal, but so irrational, that it is scarcely surprising that it should begin to be superseded by the bolder assertion, that "There never was an age of miracles; for the laws of Nature are invariable and inviolable, and a miracle is therefore an impossibility. The age of miracles was nothing but an age of ignorance and credulity." Many who say, "The age of miracles is past," inwardly or practically accept the second assertion. They outwardly profess to believe the miracles of the Bible, but resolutely ascribe to * Miracles Past and Present. By WILLIAM MOUNTFORD. Boston: FIELDS, OSGOOD & Co., 1870. |