that

mesmerical researches entirely apart from yourself; nay, on the other side of the Channel; and that, yet more, we were but recently made acquainted, by letter only through the medium of a mutual friend, who is not a mesmeriser, but a public functionary and man of letters. Again: let it be known that I never had the pleasure of seeing you till within the last two months; though, indeed, I must add, that I think it a loss not to have made your acquaintance earlier. It was said of some great man -Burke, I think, you could not stand up with him under a shed during a shower of rain, without finding out that you were in company with a fine genius. The remark may be applied, with some diversity, in most cases. Our first impressions of persons are often an instinctive judgment, of which our after feelings towards them are only a developement; and, with regard to yourself in particular, I am not singular in remarking, that to converse with you, but for a quarter of an hour, is to carry away a pledge of your honour as a gentleman, and of your sincerity as a man of principle; and this, independently of the knowledge that, to the cause of truth, you have made every sacrifice except that of integrity. I must speak my opinion, though at the risk of being suspected of flattery. You, at least, shall not have the credit of countenancing the panegyric, as this letter will only be read by you on the day it is given to the public.

These things ought to be known; for they are testimony to mesmerism. Here are two persons, in different countries, wholly unconnected, setting out on an inquiry by different paths, and yet meeting, at length, in one common conclusion and point of union. As regards myself, I may affirm that no one could possibly have taken up and pursued a subject more independently, or in a more unbiassed manner than I have taken up and pursued mesmerism. I have not drawn my ideas of it from books, but from experience; I have even abstained from reading articles on it, lest I should lose the originality and freshness of personal observation. But I need not insist on this.

My work itself contains internal testimony that our coincidence of opinion is honest, not concerted; for, in truth, we differ while we agree. I have not described, because I have never seen, the curious delirium, and coma, which some of your patients have displayed. Not being myself of the medical profession, I have naturally treated mesmerism as a phenomenon of our nature, rather than as a curative means; and the maladies, which you have so successfully combated by the new agency, have of course produced modifications in its action, which the healthy subjects to whom I have confined my practice could not have displayed. However various the degrees of mesmeric developements portrayed by me, the

principal features of the state have been similarly characterised throughout, my object being to delineate that species of mesmeric sleepwaking, which, I conceive, may be induced, to a certain extent, in any indifferent person. So far we are shown as drawing from separate and independent sources; and this involuntary kind of testimony is favourable to our cause: but, inseparable from this benefit, is a collateral disadvantage, on which I must briefly touch.

The greater part of the London, I may say of the English, world have derived their ideas of mesmerism from your experiments, which so many have personally witnessed. Hence the general reader, comparing his preconceptions on the subject with the portrait I have set before him, may surmise that the new science is not in unity with itself, confounding, by a very common mistake, diversity with discrepancy. But, in truth, while there is much that is different in our facts, there is nothing whatever that is contradictory. The subject is large, and cannot but present itself in various points of view to various observers. Even where we most appear to disagree, it must be remembered that the same phenomenon may have more than one phasis, just as the celebrated shield, that was black on one side, was not the less certainly white on the other. Thus, it is very true that a kind of delirium may be developed under mesmeric influence, while, at the same time, it is

capable of eliciting the highest state of moral and intellectual advancement, to which man, in this existence, can probably attain. This remark is the more necessary to be made, inasmuch as, throughout my work, I have laboured to prove the mesmeric condition a rise on our actual mode of being; and, according to the view I have taken of the subject, if it be not this, it is nothing. For what does a writer achieve, who does not contribute, in however small a measure, to the hopes and welfare of humanity?

It has struck me that the world, who is very fond of proving that an author did not write his own book, may inquire-What share had Doctor Elliotson in this treatise? I therefore think it not perhaps altogether useless to state, that neither yourself, nor any body else, has dictated or suggested to me one opinion which is therein contained. The only debt that I have to acknowledge, is on the trifling score of some advice respecting the terms to be employed in writing on this particular subject. You observed to me, that the phraseology of mesmerism could not too soon be fixed, and rendered precise; and you suggested the substitution of Mesmeric Sleepwaking for Induced Somnambulism, on the ground that Somnambulism, strictly speaking, was not always, nor necessarily, an adjunct of the condition I wished to describe. In all other respects, the faults or merits of the publication must be charged on my own head.

For the former, indeed, as probably numerous, few persons would like to become responsible; and on their account (especially should any repetitions disfigure my pages), I shall have to claim indulgence from my readers, in consideration of the circumstances under which the work was composed; one part being despatched from abroad to the printer, while other portions were written at distant intervals, as health and opportunity permitted. I know not, however, whether, on the whole, a residence on the Continent has not been favourable to the consideration of such a subject as mesmerism; for I can assure my countrymen that their own prejudices respecting it are no measure of the reception which it meets with from enlightened foreigners. I have scarcely conversed with one person of education in Germany, who was not able to detail to me some interesting fact relating to mesmerism, which had been personally witnessed and authenticated; and every where abroad, during those travels which in search of health I have undertaken, my information respecting this remarkable phenomenon of our nature has been extended. Opportunities also of mesmerising different individuals (many of them distinguished for rank and science) have been freely and agreeably accorded me. Since I sent to England a list of the persons I had mesmerised, I have experimented on some thirty others at Rome, Naples, &c., and I have still found the