MESMERISM. 671 



urge the sense, attainments, and respectability of the believers, 

 who has seen much of human nature, for he must know that the 

 wisest have their weak points, and especially in regard to ex- 

 traordinary things, which they often gloat upon like the most 

 ignorant peasant, and that many who pass for highly informed 

 men possess but partial information, and many who are dis- 

 tinguished for some one kind of discovery and pass for men of 

 talent, possess but a moderate share of high and general intel- 

 lectual power. The chief British advocate of all the miracles 

 of mesmerism believes a thing to have been possible, which 

 was an evident trick, and in which interest was the palpable and 

 only motive. A Scotchman exhibited a boy lately in London, 

 whom he pretended to be gifted with second sight. I went to 

 the exhibition, and the boy told the colour and other qualities 

 of things without seeing them, the names and ages of strangers 

 in the room, &c. &c. But the father very fairly demanded that 

 we should show him the objects, and tell him our names and 

 ages, in short, make him acquainted with the facts, previously, in 

 order that we might not say the boy was wrong when he was 

 right. The boy, on being admitted into the room, without pre- 

 vious conversation with ajiy person in it, invariably gave correct 

 answers. A friend who accompanied me at once pointed out 

 the trick. The father always addressed the boy before the little 

 fellow uttered a word : and he began each successive sentence 

 with a word, the first letter of which went to form the answer. 

 Forinstance, if the object was of SILK, the father might begin 

 " Sec now you answer correctly ; / know you will ; .Look well 

 before you speak ; .ATnow what you are about." Or each letter 

 of a word of ten letters might be agreed upon, each being dif- 

 ferent, to signify a particular number. Thus if the letters of the 

 word Cumberland were settled to signify 1, 2, 3, &c. in the order 

 in which they stood, the father would begin, after a numerical 

 question, with a sentence, the first letter of the first word of 

 which signified the first number ; then next with a sentence 

 beginning with the letter signifying the second number. This 

 was the principle, and of course there might be many variations 

 of its application. 11 Mr. Colquhoun records, that " the father 



h My friend's explanation will be given in a new edition of Dr. Brewster's 

 Letters on Natural Magic, in which numerous deceptions are explained. A more 

 copious work is by Eusebe Salvert. Sur la Magie. 



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