SPIRITUALISM IN EXTREMIS. (From the Saturday Review )

Otago Witness, Issue 685, 14 January 1865, Page 20

SPIRITUALISM IN EXTREMIS. (From the Saturday Review )

One day last week, the Times contained a semi- j official narrative, a 9 '• From a Correspondent," of certain wonderful performance* of two young men called the Brothers Davenport. Warned, probably, by tbe mischance which a year or two ago it suffered in hastily adopting the ' spiritual manifestations" ot a very vulgar performer, who was soon hunted out of the country one F«>rster— the Times was. on the last occasion, sufficiently cautious To be sure, " A Correspondent" has been openly asserted to be the ''gentlemen who is well known to be. the accredited representative of the dramatic department of the Times. 1 " Tbere is certainly nothing to prevent a regular reporter being " A Correspondent ;" but it would have been just as candid ibr a newspaper occupying the position of the Times to undertake some direct responsibility in reporting such a matter. The seance, it seems was a sort of public privat* 1 , one, and the newspaper reporters were invited. Other daily newspapers were represented as well as the Times, and the report was in all cases equally authentic, and was authoritatively adopted, except by the Times. The distinction is not very important, except as illustrating what amounts to a special form of morals. It is not tbe first time that we nave seen the feather cautiously poised, waiting for the impulse of the popular breath, and then a claim put in for rousii'g the wind, when, in fact, opinion was all along folloived rather than led. As to the narrative in the Times, it was fan* enough, and said little enough. Two American lads were shut up in a sort of packing - case, after being tied band and foot with strong cords ; and whilst so enclosed two bodiless bands were seen wiving about (this incident is not mentioned in the Times), musical instruments were played upon, or at least a hideous noise was made with them, and on the doors being opened, after a certain, or uncertain, interval, the lads were found corded up as before. This is the Urst : part of the performance, and occurs in femi-dark-ness as far as the spectators are concerned, the | brothers being shut up in the' cupboard, from which all light is excluded. Act the second takes place in total darkness. The brothers- or rather one brother, and another member of the party, Mr Fay— are, as before, tightly corded and tied to chairs; and the spectators, if the term can be used of people in a room in which there is not the faintest r&y of light, form a circle with joined hands. All sorts Qf so-called musical noises are heard; guitars and violins, balls and trumpets, snd most of the furniture of Nebuchadnezzar's band, fly about the room, and the Times' reporter

got a bloody nose from one spiteful fiddle ; rings and watches depart from their owners, and are I,''1 ,' ' found in unconsciously surreptitious possessors' hands. Knees are patted and pinched^ and cheeks slapped or stroked, according to circumstances, or perhaps sex ; } a candle is lighted by a Dr. Ferguson, who is one of the Davenport company, and the young gentleman and Mr Fay are o> cc more discovered manacled and glued, like the Lady in Comus, to 'beir cnairs. Act the third consists of a hii.gle but more imposing scene. One of the Davenports, it. need scarcely be saM in total darknes9, stiil bound band and Knt, is denuded of his own cost and invented wi'h that «>f an. assenting ir'-ntleman — ptrhapf acc ; denta!ly, »nd pe'bap* n % -rpiesent '• These are," says the Times .Reporter, ''thecnief phenomena, which are, or course, referred by the operators to spiritual agency." Next day, however, the Dromio Davenports disavow thia imputation of claims to unearthly powers. ' "We do not a«sert chat our experiment are attributable to spiritual agency. We cannot tell how they are produced. . . . We profess to exercise a power of the nature and extent of which we know nothing beyond the f*ct that we have it." That is, they are mere passive receptivities, ignorant of the natu-e, oonsoious only of the possess-ion, of strange powers. To which it has been very properly replied, that if the Davenport young gentlemen deny the spiritual chaiacttr of their manifestations, it is a pity that they address themselves to a familiar who is known by the name of *' John ; " anil that they adopt the common spiritual technology of *' electrical chains," "positive" and ''negative" conditions, md so forth. But we can say a good deal more thm this. The coming of the «ro I thi>rß Davenport was announced in the Spiritual Magazine; and in that remarkable publication for September last was contained a long report on the American manife-tations of these interesting brethren, drawn up by a Dr Lnomis of Georgetown, who professes himself to be a disbeliever in spiritualism, though a believer in the Davenport phenomena, and indisposed to conn-ct 'hem with spiritualism. But to this conclusion Mr Newton, in the Herald of Progress, a New York spiritual pubio n tion, de nmrs ; and enlarges upon '" the necessity of referring the phenomena to the active p.irtici- \ pancy of invisible intelligences " He claims foi j th* Davenport case. " beyond question, the in terference "f invisible beings" and the Spi ritual Magazine goes on to speak ot ' the mt-dium&hip of the Dayenport Brothers ;" while in. the < ictober number of this truly comic mis cellany, Mr Benjamin Culeraan, the monthly annalist of the progress ot the spiritual cause anuoui)C3S t! c Davenport manifestations as th Inst and crowning triumph of spiritualism. If i« therefore beyond question that, whatever the Davenport Brothers may now think proper to assert about their spiritual claims, their" friends and advocates, an<i the highest authoritifs in " spiritualism," claim them, and <peak of then as they do of Mr Home and the ordinary run of "mediums." Bpt it i» perhaps judicious in persons who hive tlieii bread to get to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare- The brothers Dayenport. having- their money to make are all things to sll men ;. cnuriO'is inquirers with the sceptical, b«t adepts with the initiat'd; candid a- to fact, but hesitating as to theory, in the Times, though accomplishe'l mpd'ums in the congenial pages of the Sp'r^tual Magazine. We will follow the Times' example, an>l present tliepe enterprising a>-t '•ts with an a 'vertieempnt by informing our readers, ou the authority of the Spiritual Magazine, 'hat "ar rang merits for priv-ifr seance? with the Daven port brother* cm be made on application to Mr P lmer 1 Tavi^tock Square"; that is to say, anybody who wishes . . . , to terrify the ladie", May hire at once the horned fiend tor twenty [maravedies, like auyottrr professor of parlour magic at a child's party engaged for the night. sto the phenomena themselves, anTthing so Grotesquely absurd and stupidly meaningless has not yet been produced even in the dreary annals of spiritualism A well known professional conjuror, who gives bis name and address Mr Tolrunque, claims so be able to do the same things, nd asserts that it; is only a very common trioW of charlatanism. Mr Anderson, the Wizard of tbe North, goes further, and says that the Brothers Davenport have been brought over " by a speculator, Mr Palmer, formerly in hi« employment ;" and the thing most remarkable about the whole entertainment seems to be that the Time* should h ye treaten it with so much gravity, if not ere dulity, as to advertise it in thia unusual war. On the face of it what can be more commonplace ? ♦ laree party of Yankees, the country of Barnum, arrives after the usual mysterious announcements and gives a private view. The Brothers Davenport, a Mr Fay, one i"»r Ferguson, and Mr Palmer that is. he three actors, tho entrepreneur Palmer, and '• the thoughtful, philosophical, and spiritual, tall, thin, and American-looking person, Dr Ferguson," who holds tho candle not to the devil in this ' case, but to the clever conjurors with whom he is associated form a strolling company. These I people bring their own apparatus with them — j th*ir cabinet, their fiddles, bells, ano all their i tackle. The binding of the performers is perj formed by somebody accidentally present ; but it is curious to remark that the English narrator speaks of " the volunteer who presented himself for this office as nautical," and that iv the American 'eport we find that the pinioner is " professionally a sea-captain." Then, of course, every manifestation occurs in complete and total darkness The performers are invisible, while the spectators are compelled to be motionless by the formation with linked hands of magnetic circle. Eye must not see, not hand touch, the secrets of the unseen world. If the circle is broken, Dr Fergusson announced that the head of the person breaking the ring would also be broken by a very solid brazen trumpet reserved, at It seems, for special gyrations on on any inquisitive effender'a skull The only possibility of throwing a light on the scene is prevented by Dr. Ferguson keeping posses ion of the one "candle and,lucifer in the room, which he held constantly ready during the performance." All this seems to us rather to indicate a clumsy gang; of wizards and an imperfect acquaintance, with the conjuror's common tricks. Very likely, if it is worth while, anybody might find out tbe trick ; but it is generally not worth a reasonable being's time to detect a conjuror's modus fperandi. Yet this has been already done, and it we are to believe a minute and circumstantial article extracted into the London newspapers from the Toronto Globe a Mr Dobhs confronted thi3 very man Pay at Cleveland ia Canada, peifotmtd every oaa of hte

tricky m Fay'a own presence, and completely exposed the whole thing as a vulgar puce of sleight-of hand, or, in the very plain spoken words of the Cleveland Herald ot August 28, "as one of the boldest swindles and humi.ucta ever practised upon a confiding community." The performances of Houdin, and Krikell, and Anderson, and. other wasters of t»<e art. are infinitely more clever and inexplicable tlnn those of the !-avenporfc fraternity, ani are done m broa gaslight nt w>>o want* t> find out a co'jurer Volumnun decipi et dctioirur. iro to see tucks, hot to leira s.L'ight (-1 bdnd PiofesEional co<tju-ors assure us that ' the rope rjing tiick bell ringiny ami coat chauping- experiments are exhibited at this m ment. in « m^riea, by Anderson's Bon, and oy natural agency only," and they offer to do every one of the Davenport mysteries " by the science of eonjurincr, mixed up with bo small portion of the conjuror's n ver failing friend — humbug,." And as to the grave and pretentious narrative of " A. Correspondent." we must say that the private exhibition at the house of the well-known literary pentleman is only an ingeiou», though not very ingeniouP, form of advertisement. Unconsciously perhaps, but with little judgment, the Times has plnyed i" to the hands of some rather vulgar prac- 1 " titioners of legerdemain. Merely as an advertisement Anderson has beat it hollow in thai wonderful pjaeard from an inquirer living at No. 934 (which, of cou' - s n , does not exist) in the Portland Soad, suggesting that one of his daughter's tricks, played at this moment every nigut at St. James's Hall, is caused by a mysterious power which he has of expelling her soul from her body. Nor is there anything very recondite in the assumption, by modern conjurors, of scientific and qussi-metaph' sical and spiritualistic jargon. Just a«, some centuries ago, a parchment girdle, a pentagon, a magic crystal, and a cabnlistieal mitre were part of the conjuror's stock-in-trade, so now lie invests in od, flectro-bio os;y, psyeboznetry, mediums, and the luminous aura. It is hard to attempt to deprive any workman of his tools. < i ut of this horrid slang the modern, necromaucer fills his tool-chest. He calls it, as a whole, spiritualism ; and he may as well have that word, which is perfectly meanii'glesa, as any other. And, after all, the world is much the same as it always was. People believed in Uagliostro, who was a very clever fellow ; at>d no doubt there are now plenty of people who will, whei the exhibition is open to the public, run to the Davenport Brothers and gravely wag their heads, and hint that they fully believe in the connexion of these rampageous violins and erratic muffin-bella with the awful realities of .be spirit world. Nothing that we care to say will disabuse them. Only let them consider this, that if anything can effectually lower all consoling conceptions of the great and mysterious world of spirits, and can completely debase, if uot destroy, belief, if not in a future state, afc least in the blessed condition of disembodied spirits delivered from the burden of the flesh. — released, as we trust, from the weaknesses and miseries of this sinful world — it is to take up with spiritualism For if we believe in spiritualism, we must believe that spirit*— beings infinitely above us in intelligence, happiness, and tbe fruition of the Divine love and Divine knowledge —have nothing better to do, and bo holier administrations to discharge, than to dash cracked

violins into people's faces, to pinch their legs in 'he dark, to floit round a room scratching the ceiling with a bit of charcoal, to write execrably bad grammar and portentous ■which. tl>ev call spirit- messages, by fumbling over a. child's toy alphabet, and, last and worst of all, by inspiring such a set of American adventurers a? D'Wrnport, Fay, and Co., and Mr Palmer the speculator, formerly in the employment of the Wizard of the North.

Two Majors in Hrati. — At the Hull Police Court, on Saturday week, a case was heard which caused the greatest merriment, and perfectly upset the gravity of the Court. A woman named Bainbridge summoned a neighbour, Mrs Hyam, for using profane language towards her. Complainant said that a man named had been mayoi" of Gibson street for eleven year?. He had a club, and kept the money of the women residing in the locality from Dry pool Feast to Hull Fair, nine weeks/ He issued summonses for swearing and other improprieties, and if the offenders dared to brave the authority of the tc mayor" he immediately sent his 'chief constable to arrest them, and they were taken to the court of judicature. He had a splendid staff, with the letters " V.R." painted thereon. Complainant had been arrested, but in her case f»he was merely fined. He had leg shackles fixed to a stool in his house, by which he fastened their legs. He had also an arm chair, to which was attached a handcuff. Witness had been fastened in the chair. He had a prison at the end of his garden, in which he incarcerated offenders, and she had been repeatedly confined there, sometimes for obstructing the footpath, and at other, times for using uncomplimentary language. Persons were tried every Sunday at four p m., and had to find bail for their appearance. On week-day evenings women were tried and punished before their husbands returned from work. Another witness deposed that he had heard the " mayor '* threaten to punish a woman severely if she was not quiet until the handcuffs were adjusted. Arnett, it appeared, is a " knocker-up"— ii t c. y a man who calls persons early in the morning. The sequel of the casa was that the defendant was fined Is and costs.

The Dano-Gbrman Question.— The Prussians say the Panes keep them waiting, that in fact they d.o not slow any alacrity in helpingenemies to rob them effectually. The conquerors have consequently resolved to try tie efficacy of tortnre. All communication between Jutland and Copenhagen has bees forbidden, exports have been prohibited, and fifty th-usand men quartered upon the wretched peninsula for the winter In faot the country is to be guttsd, in order that the sufferers may by their cries create consternation at Copenhagen. The robber orders hie victim's wife to oe whipped, in order that he may pay up quickly. Nothing so atrocious has been done in Europe since 1815, and the example will ex-srgerate the obstinacy of every future defence. Bad Jutland one range of mountains, ths Prussians would even now have to face & peasant w^r.— Spectator.

Two Sides to a Speech —Charles Lamb, was sitting next a chattering woman at dinner, who observed he didn't attend to her, " "Sou don't seem," said the lady, "to he at all tha better for what I am saying to you !" " No v ma'am," he answered, " but this gentleman go, the other side of me must, for it all came i&atQaa eat and. west owUttneolhsr."