1875.] Human Levitation. 41 
eleven cases already recorded, as witnessed by the Editor of this 
Journal, and probably of more individuals now living, and bya 
greater mass of respectable testimony than it ever was in any 
single past age; though there were examples in every age of 
which civilisedrecordsremain. Nowthemost striking point is 
the close correspondence of minor details in the old accounts 
with those noted by modern witnesses, who evidently never 
saw nor received any tradition of those accounts, and, in- 
deed, are generally under the error that the whole is as new 
a discovery of this age as galvanism or photography. 
As Newton is held to have proved that gravitation and 
inertia in every mass are proportional, we might expect 
that whatever overbears the former would be equally capable 
of neutralising the latter; and, in fact, the elder records 
hardly speak of visible suspensions like those of Mr. Home, 
but mainly of sudden unseen transfers of the person to a 
distance ; like that alleged of Dr. Monck last year, from his 
own residence at Bristol to the garden of his friend, Mr. 
Young, at Swindon ; or the earlier but better attested one of 
Mrs. Guppy, from her house at Holloway to a circle of her 
friends assembled at No. 61, Lamb’s Conduit Street; or, 
a few months ago, that of Mr. Henderson, a well-known 
photographer of London, for a smaller distance, but attested 
by eighteen persons besides himself—the nine assembled 
with him at Mr. Guppy’s, and the whole Stokes family, at 
Highbury, where he was unexpectedly found. It is easy to 
see that two or three such transfers occurring to one man, 
as Abaris the Scythian, in the time of Pythagoras, could 
not fail to procure him the surname of ‘‘ 4throbat,” or air- 
walker ; and in the next age the story that Apollo, of whom 
he was a priest, had bestowed on him a golden arrow, 
whereby to be conveyed wherever he desired. But this 
most natural error, that the adepts can be levitated at will, 
and in what direction they please, does not tinge the older, 
yet more sober, record of our earliest historic zthrobat, him 
of the Old Testament. ‘‘ And behold,” expostulates the 
courtier to whom Elijah (vainly sought for three years) had 
first reappeared, ‘‘thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, 
Elijah is here; and it shall come to pass, as soon as I am 
gone from thee, that the spirit of Yahveh shall carry thee 
whither I know not; and so when I come and tell Ahab, 
and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me.” Then he re- 
counts his piety (1 Kings, xvii., 11), ‘‘ And now thou sayest, 
Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here; and he shall 
slay me.” He dares not go till the prophet has sworn, “I 
will surely show myself to him this day.” Like all our 
VOL. V. (N. S.) G 
