When a Committee of the French Academy investigated the claims of the wonderful Medium, Angelique Cottin, she utterly failed to meet the tests of science. Chairs and tables which had frisked about the room in the presence of a common class of spectators, became suddenly decorous when the Committee proposed to scrutinize their movements. The needle that had vibrated to her invisible magnetism, refused to stir. A like result appeared upon the scientific investigation of Spiritualism in Cambridge. In well-attested instances persons have feigned a leaden sleep, and by sheer force of will have endured without a sign of sensation the test of ammonia applied to the nostrils, and the surgeon's probe puncturing the hand. Such well-sustained impostures warrant us in moderating our faith in a class of phenomena produced only in certain circles, and commonly in the dark. With respect to very many of the spirit communications of these times, the simple tests proposed by the poet Saxe, are all sufficient:

"If in your new estate you cannot rest,
But must return, Oh, grant us this request;
Come with a noble and celestial air,
And prove your titles to the names you bear.
Give some clear token of your heavenly birth;
Write as good English as you wrote on earth;
And, what were once superfluous to advise,
Don't tell, I beg you, such egregious lies."

Occult natural causes offer still another explanation for the phenomena of Spiritualism. This theory admits the reality of certain phenomena, but refers them to unknown laws of nature. That certain physical effects are produced without any assignable cause must be admitted. And to admit such facts and to confess our ignorance of their solution, is the part of true philosophy. In the world of matter and in the world of mind "there are phenomena which, though unable to refer to any known cause or class, it would imply an irrational ignorance to deny. Yet some have obstinately disbelieved phenomena in themselves certain and even manifest, if these could not at once be referred to already recognized causes, and did not easily fall in with the systems prevalent at the time.

.. There are two sorts of ignorance; we philosophize to escape ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance; and the pursuit of knowledge is but a course between two ignorances, as human life is itself only a traveling from grave to grave. . . . . . The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition of human ignorance. The grand result of human wisdom is only a consciousness that what we know is as nothing to what we know not, an articulate confession, in fact, by our natural reason, of the truth. declared in revelation, that now we see through a glass darkly."*

Had Prof. Morse or Prof. Henry, with his knowledge of magnetism and its powers, lived in the Middle Ages, when a belief in supernatural appearances was well-nigh universal, how easy would it have been for him to have worked upon the superstitious fancies of the ignorant; to have run a telegraphic-wire around a cathedral and have made this indite messages from the spirit world; and thus to have kept up a correspondence between the faithful on earth and their friends in purgatory! How such a contrivance would have replenished the coffers of Leo X! Any natural philosopher who had discovered a law of nature unknown to the multitude, might impose ad libitum upon their fancies and their fears. And so there may be occult causes, causes which no philosophy has yet discovered, but which some future Franklin or Morse may detect, which will explain phenomena that now perplex men of science, and that some call supernatural. We should not be in haste to bring in elements from the invisible world to solve the passing events of this. It is more philosophical to suspect a natural law than a supernatural interposition. Only when the moral reason is great enough to demand. such intervention, may we trouble ourselves to sift the testimony as to an alleged miracle. Mr. Owen himself has well discriminated between the belief of facts and the acceptance of theories. "It is one thing to refuse credit to the reality of the phenomena, and quite another to demur to the interpreta

Sir W. Hamilton.

tion put upon them. We may admit the existence of comets, yet deny that they portend the birth or death of heroes." We may admit the phenomena of Spiritualism without thereby admitting that they are the result of a spiritual agency exterior to our world. Mr. Owen does not pretend to have established his theory of "ultra-mundane interference" by the philosophical method of induction. After wandering through so many pages we are led to this impotent conclusion-" As to the proofs of the agency upon earth of these Invisibles, I rest them not on any one class of observations set forth in this volume, not specially on the phenomena of dreaming, or of unexplained disturbances, or of apparitions whether of the living or the dead, or of what seem examples of ultra-mundane retribution or indications of spiritual guardianship, but upon the aggregate and concurrent evidence of all these. It is strong confirmation of any theory that proofs converging from many and varying classes of phenomena unite in establishing it."* But Mr. Owen's facts, many of which are most feebly attested, fall far short of his theory. Others may already be classed under known physical or psychological laws. How much of the mystery of animal magnetism is dispelled by recent experiments in hypnotism by means of a shining substance, holding the eyes steadily asquint toward the ridge of the nose? Some equally simple experiment may solve much that appears mysterious in Spiritualism. For the rest, we shall not invoke the Supernatural, even under this lucid exposition from Mr. Harris.

"Divinely given vision is not to be confounded with the faculty of perceiving odylic emanations of the magnet or of the human body. The latter is merely natural sight, carried to a finer degree. The magnetic and electric emanations, which play, with corruscating flash and sparkle, around all natural objects, are themselves a finer quality of diffused matter. But this refined and diffused matter, however brilliant, is not of the quality of spiritual substance; therefore, when the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of the spirit-man, these fire-rainbows and opalescent gleams of inner nature, are still below the visual plane; he sees over them, past them, and through them-nor is he bewildered by the intervening substances."

pp. 508, 509.

We fear that we are doomed to abide in "the visual plane" of mundane realities. The reticence of the Bible upon all details of the future state and the spirit world is worthy both of our respect and of our imitation. The Scriptures never address themselves to mere curiosity, nor attempt to interpret the "unutterable things."

When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,
And home to Mary's house returned,
Was this demanded-if he yearned
To hear her weeping by his grave?

Where wert thou, brother, those four days?
There lives no record of reply,

Which telling what it is to die

Had surely added praise to praise.

From every house the neighbors met,

The streets were filled with joyful sound;

A solemn gladness even crowned

The purple brows of Olivet.

Behold a man raised up by Christ!

The rest remaineth unrevealed;

He told it not; or something sealed

The lips of that Evangelist.-TENNYSON.

We cannot break that seal of silence by knocking at the door of death, nor can we believe that it is given to spirits to break it by knocking on the other side. God has spoken, and if we hear not Moses and the prophets, neither would we be persuaded though one rose from the dead. The belief that Mr. Owen derives from the spirit world would obliterate those sharp distinctions of moral character upon which the Bible so much insists; would efface from the calendar of th Future the Day of Judgment and retribution; and would leave all men to a progressive law of development through Hades into Heaven. The moral lessons of his theory would alone condemn it as not of God.

ARTICLE VI.-WORCESTER'S DICTIONARY.

A Dictionary of the English Language. By JOSEPH E. WORCESTER, LL. D. Boston: Hickling, Swan & Brewer. 1860. 4to. pp. 1786.

THE publication of an original, comprehensive Dictionary of the English language, is no ordinary event. No lexicographer can throw off such a work, stans pede in uno. The enormous labor of adjusting the almost endless details of orthography, etymology, orthoepy, definition, illustration, etc., demands a lifetime, or at least no small portion of a lifetime, for even a tolerable performance of the task. Johnson's memorable "seven years" of toil must be regarded as a marvel of expedition, considering the amount of work he accomplished. Abundantly indebted to Bailey as he was, his own Dictionary, nevertheless, was essentially an original production, and certainly, for the time devoted to it, a most creditable one. His task, all things considered, was, for that day, well done; so well, that his Dictionary became at once the acknowledged standard, and as edited and enlarged by others, held its rank in public estimation for nearly a century, or until supplanted in this country, if not in England, by Webster's.

The great "American Dictionary," like Johnson's, was in many important respects an original work, and it involved the labor, not of seven years only, but of a lifetime, or, considering the aggregate of associated effort expended upon it, of much more than a lifetime. Notwithstanding its American origin, however, its great and obvious merits, particularly as a defining Dictionary, were long since most fully recognized on both sides of the Atlantic. In this country, especially, it has attained extraordinary circulation and influence.

We have now before us a new competitor for public favor, in the attractive quarto of Dr. Worcester. We say new, for although its author has previously prepared dictionaries of