THACKERAY A SPIRITUALIST.
§5
I whispered the rest in his ear. The man looked aghast, and,
drawing me aside, said, ‘There should be no human being but
myself who knows a word of that affair. Say no more. You
have said enough.’ This man subsequently became one of my
best friends.”
As these are comparatively very slight manifestations of
power, we will not pause to anticipate the obvious objections
which skepticism might raise to the uncorroborated form in
which they are here put.
From the numerous published accounts, amounting now to
several hundred, by many different witnesses, of the phenomena
produced through the mediumship of Home, we select the
account, which we slightly abridge, by the late Robert Bell, con¬
tributed to the “ Cornhill Magazine” (London, August, i860),
when the late Mr. Thackeray — so justly celebrated for his writ¬
ings— was the editor.
In introducing the account, Mr. Thackeray says, “ I can vouch
for the good faith and honorable character of our correspondent,
a friend of twenty-five years’ standing.”
Of Mr. Thackeray’s own convictions on the subject we have
the following record, which we extract from Weld’s “Last Win¬
ter in Rome ” (1865) : —
“ I remember well meeting the late Mr. Thackeray, at a large
dinner-party, shortly after the publication in the ‘Cornhill
Magazine,’ then edited by him, of the paper entitled £ Stranger
than Fiction.’ In this paper, as will be remembered by many
readers, a detailed account was given of a spiritual séance, at
which Mr. Home performed, or caused to be performed, many
surprising things, the most astounding being his floating in
the air above the heads of persons in the room. There were
several scientific men at the dinner-party, all of whom availed
themselves of the earliest opportunity to reproach Mr. Thacke¬
ray with having permitted the paper in question to appear in a
periodical of which he was editor, holding, as he did, the high¬
est rank in the world of letters. Mr. Thackeray, with that
imperturbable calmness which he could so well assume, heard