After the necessary instruction as to the work of the day, for a few moments pleasant and instructive chat would follow, suggested by some open book upon the table. These never-to-be-forgotten half hours were grave or gay, as befitted the subject. With folded arms and devout manner, it would be a stanza from Pope or Dante repeated unexpectedly in the abandon of the hour, suggested by some reference; or some humorous passage from the Biglow papers would enliven the moment. Underneath that exterior of almost harsh reserve, there was hidden keen appreciation of the grotesque and humorous.

Quite by accident, the morning talk drifted to J. Shelton Mackenzie, and with twinkling eye Bryant related the following: "I met him once upon the boat crossing to Brooklyn. He accosted me by inquiring if I was not Bryant, saying he recognized me by my portrait. As we had been corresponding I replied that I was pleased to meet him. Mackenzie said he was reading 'Ruth Hall' by Fanny Fern, and said: 'How she does pitch into Nat and her father; it is wrong, very wrong to speak of them so. And that Thackeray who reveals the shortcomings of a friend, it is wrong, very wrong.' I answered that as they were great men the temptation to speak of them was very strong. Mackenzie said it reminded him of the story of an Irishman, who was leaning out of his window, with his shillalah, and a bald-headed man passed along, whereupon he rapped him upon the head, and said upon being reproved, The occasion was too tempting-if it had been me own father I couldn't have helped it.' Upon leaving the boat Mackenzie said, 'You must excuse my impudence, but the occasion was too tempting.'"

From this lighter vein, Bryant passed to graver themes, and when the listener deplored her inability to reconcile the disputed facts in history, especially as regards the beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, he answered: "You remember what Horace Walpole said, 'As for history, I know that's a lie." He spoke of the unfairness of Macaulay to William Penn, and his partial apology for Hastings, of Froude's disparagement of Mary Stuart without warrant from contemporary documents, of the recent criticism of the Roman historian Paulus, and added: "People will differ in regard to the events of the past as they do in regard to the interests of the present. Only omniscience can see in an absolutely true light the circumstances of any event, and human narratives of that event must have in them more or less of error. No two witnesses of anything that has happened wholly agree in their representation of it. All that we can do is to adopt what seems most probable."

On one Sabbath afternoon, in the unfinished building which later was given to the poet's older daughter, the Rev. Mr. Waterston who had baptized the poet in Italy, spoke to the neighbors and country people, as the sunset filled the valley below with the radiance of departing day.

It was also the happy privilege of the writer to share with the neighbors and country people in the Sunday services at the little church in West Cummington, on Sept. 2, 1877, where Mr. Bryant recited his poems of "Thanatopsis," "The Water Fowl," and "Waiting by the Gate." As we saw the lithe, quick movement with which he ascended the hill, and heard the clear ringing voice, and saw the bright kindling eye, how could we think that these were his last public words to his native villagers, and that only a few months would pass before, as in the prime of life he had desired, in the month of June,

The sexton's hand my grave to make

The rich, green mountain turf should break.

THE WONDER OF HYPNOTISM AND THE TRANSFER OF SENSITIVENESS FROM MEN TO INERT SUBSTANCES.

BY HENRY GAULLIEUR.*
*

Few of our modern attempts to solve scientifically the great mystery of LIFE have led us to more astonishing results than the discoveries made recently in Paris by Col. A. de Rochas, the well known scientist and director of the Ecole Polytechnique, concerning the "luminous effluvia," or magnetic emanations, from the bodies of living men.

Colonel de Rochas is too well known to the scientific world by his numerous works on hypnotism, and his constant studies of hypnotic phenomena, covering a period of fifteen years, to need an introduction from the writer to the American public. Connected with the great scientific institute where both military and civil engineers of France acquire under the government's direction the highest possible degree of human knowledge in the various branches of their profession, Colonel de Rochas has attained, outside of his official duties as "Administrateur" of that well known institute a world-wide celebrity as a skilled experimentator and conscientious investigator of scientific truths.

The discoveries made lately by him, and confirmed by the experiments of others, in the several hospitals of Paris, can be told in very few words; but simple as they are, so far as the establishment of facts is concerned, these discoveries lead us far away from the current opinion of mankind, and of physiologists in particular, on the nature and extent of our organic sense of feeling; they upset our present knowledge of the territory to which our nerves were said to be confined; they show us conclusively by well-established facts based on strictly scientific experimental methods, that under peculiar conditions our nervous-physical perceptions by the sense of touch extend outside of our skin; and that

Though the author of this paper is a well known writer in France, many of our readers may not be acquainted with his literary and scientific work, hence the following letter from the Hon. Carl Schurz will give an added interest to the paper: "In reply to your letter, it gives me pleasure to say that I have known M. H. Gaullieur for many years as a gentleman of excellent character, and I regard him as a writer of uncommon ability. "Very truly yours,

"B. O. FLOWER, Esq."

"CARL SCHURZ."

the faculty of perceiving such sensations, apparently lost in a mesmerized subject, can be transferred for a certain time and at a distance to inanimate substances like water, wax, metals, or cloth.

For the benefit of such readers as may not be familiar with previous discoveries, the knowledge of which is necessary in order to understand the recent investigations of Col. de Rochas, I must translate first here some statements of a celebrated Austrian chemist, the Baron von Reichenbach, who was the first scientist, over forty years ago, who discovered the "luminous effluvia," or phosphorescent-like emanations from animals, plants, and magnets.

Here are Reichenbach's own words ("Lettres Odiques et Magnétiques," Stuttgardt, 1856):

Take a "sensitive" man and put him in a dark room. Take along a cat, a bird, a butterfly, if you have one, or only some flowerpots. After a few hours of such a sitting in the dark, you will hear that man say some very strange things. The flowerpots will appear to him in the darkness and become perceptible. At first they will appear as a grey cloud on a black background; then he will see some lighter spots; finally each flower will become distinct, and all forms will appear more and more clearly. One day I placed one of these flowerpots before M. Endlicher, the well known professor of botany. He was an average sensitive. He exclaimed with fear and surprise: "A blue flower, a glorinia!" It was indeed a Gloxinia speciosa or coerulea which he had seen in the absolute darkness, and which he had recognized by its form and color. . . . Your cat, your bird, your butterfly, will all appear thus in the dark, and some parts of these animals will appear luminous. Then your sensitive man will tell you that he sees you. Tell him to look at your hands. At first he will say that he sees a grey smoke; then the fingers will appear with their own light. He will see a luminous protuberance at each finger, sometimes as long as the finger itself. When the first surprise is past, caused by the luminous appearance of all men, call the attention of your "sensitive" friend to the details of what he sees. You will then probably hear him say with much surprise that the colors of the light are not the same in all parts of the body; that the right hand shows a blue light, and the left hand a yellow-reddish light; that the same difference appears at your feet; and also that all the right side of your body and face is bluish and darker than the left side, which is yellow-reddish and much lighter (Letter 5).

Reichenbach found something else. He discovered that under similar conditions in a dark room a magnet emits a blue light at its north pole, and a yellow-reddish light at the south pole. This light varied, according to the strength of the magnet and the sensitiveness of the seer, from one to three feet in diameter. It appeared like a fiery flow intermingled with sparks. "But," adds Reichenbach, "I advise you not to omit any of the precautions I have indicated as necessary to obtain absolute darkness, and also to train your 'sensitive's' eyes for hours in the dark; otherwise he

will not see anything, and you would lose your time, suspecting me unjustly of making false assertions."

Reichenbach's experiments were repeated in England by Alfred Russel Wallace, Gregory, and other prominent naturalists, and were fully confirmed. Reichenbach contended then that he had discovered a new force, which he called OD. Most scientific men ridiculed the idea and they did not take the trouble to investigate the discovery. Official science, especially in Germany, does not generally admit what is not yet printed in school books.

In France these "luminous effluvia" seen by mesmerized patients had often been reported by the latter to the magnetizing doctors who were trying to cure diseases by magnetic passes. The "magnétiseur" Deleuze had noticed the fact. About 1850, Dr. Despine, at Aix les Bains, and Dr. Charpignon, at Orleans, had confirmed these observations, and they had noticed specially the "effluvia" which some mesmerized persons could see on various metals, gold, silver, etc. But "official" science did not care for such experiments. Magnetism, proclaimed at the end of last century, by the French academy of Sciences, to be a humbug, was hardly recognized yet as a fact worthy of investigation. Such men as Puy Ségur and Deleuze were ridiculed; and we may say that official science never believed seriously in magnetism until Braid christened it hypnotism and Charcot popularized it in Paris.

It is only recently that Reichenbach's discovery was taken out of oblivion by Dr. Durville, Dr. Luys, and Colonel de Rochas, with what extraordinary results we shall now see.

The very first question that arose was whether this luminous coating and these "luminous effluvia" which mesmerized persons declared they could perceive on others, were real and objective or imaginary and subjective? This led to the very wonderful discoveries of which I spoke at the beginning of this paper, and for which Colonel de Rochas deserves due credit.

He hypnotized at different stages two different subjects at the same time and in the same room. Let us call them A and B. A reported that he could see a luminous or phosphorescent coating on B's body; he could see besides that B's eyes, mouth, ears, nostrils, and finger-ends were emitting a flame-like light, blue on one side of the body, yellowreddish on the other. Those openings seemed to act like "escapes" for these flames, which are independent from the coating of the skin. Did A see them because he had a