several of the spirits had a difficulty in speaking, whilst a few of them could talk freely. Just so is it with the ordinary materialisation manifestations of Spiritualism, and the stronger the light in the room, all other conditions being equal, the lower is the voice of the materialised form. In the Katie King manifestations, which were so well tested by Mr. William Crookes, Mr. C. F. Varley, and others, the spirit never raised her voice much above a strong whisper during the two or three years she manifested. Some spirits have naturally more voice - power than others. Beresford saw the spirit of Lord Tyrone in the "night;" if we assume that it was not daylight, and that there was strong natural sympathy between the spirit and the seer, those two circumstances account for the lengthy conversation and the general strength of the manifestation. At all séances strong sympathy between the sitters, medium, and spirits, is well known to strengthen the phenomena more than anything else.

Lady

The reason, in all probability, why apparitions of dying persons are so much more common than apparitions long after death is, that although a spirit of the former class is free from the body at the time of its appearance, it nevertheless possesses a sleeping or dying body from which, by some natural process, it unconsciously draws enough materiality to make itself visible. In all these phenomena, distance between the death-bed scene and the person visited seems to be no impediment.

Chapter Fourth.

DEATH-BED APPARITIONS SEEN BY ONE PERSON (CONTINUED) --IMPRESSIONAL, BUT REAL, APPARITIONS-MESMERIC INFLUENCE OF THE SPIRIT OVER THE SENSITIVE-WHAT THE SPIRIT THINKS, THE SENSITIVE SEES-THE SENSATIONS AND TEMPORARILY ABNORMAL CONDITION OF THE SEERS-TRUSTWORTHY INFORMATION ABOUT EVENTS AT A DISTANCE GIVEN BY THIS PSYCHICAL METHOD-THE RULING PASSION OF A RUSSIAN DOCTOR STRONG IN DEATH-PARTICULARS RELATING TO DEATH-BED APPARITIONS SEEN BY ST. BENEDICT, CATHERINE DE MEDICIS, MADAME SOPHIE AKSAKOF, AND M. BEZULE-DEATH-BED APPARITIONS TESTIFIED TO OR PUBLISHED BY MR. SERJEANT COX, FATHER NEWMAN, QUEEN MARGUERITE, AND THE ABBÉ DE ST. PIERRE-THE CONDITION OF MIND IN WHICH IRRUPTIONS FROM THE SPIRIT-WORLD ARE IMMINENT.

IN the preceding chapter, the various apparitions described had to all appearance the ordinary characteristics of normal human beings, and exhibited the power of moving solid objects; but they were taciturn, with the exception of Lord Tyrone. Some death-bed apparitions are seen to try to speak; they usually fail, but not always. Had they made themselves visible by psychically influencing a witness who chanced to be a mesmeric sensitive, so that he could see what others in the room could not see, the natural inference is, that the apparitions would not have been of such a commonplace nature, but that richer and more complex imagery from the mind of the spirit would have been seen. And so

it is in fact; for when the observer admits himself to have been in a partly abnormal state, when solid objects are not moved by the spirit, and when there are other

indications that a vision was mesmerically impressed on him, the death-bed apparitions present themselves with surroundings of their own, which are often of a marvellous nature. The psychic sensitive, being plastic to the spiritual influence, sometimes has symbolical or direct visions, difficult to describe in words, of a higher and different state of human existence to that of earth.

Here is a simple illustration of an impressional death-bed apparition, not much removed in complexity from those of a physical nature already brought forward. In a memoir read before the Psychological Society early in February 1879, Mr. Serjeant Cox said that the following case was reported to him by a surgeon of the Royal Artillery: it occurred some years ago:

A party of children, sons and daughters of the officers of artillery stationed at Woolwich, were playing in the garden. Suddenly a little girl screamed, and stood staring with an aspect of terror at a willow-tree there. Her companions gathered round, asking what ailed her. "Oh!" she said, "there-there. Don't you see? There's papa lying on the ground, and the blood running from a big wound." All assured her that they could see nothing of the kind. But she persisted, describing the wound and the position of the body, still expressing her surprise that they did not see what she saw so plainly. Two of her companions were daughters of my informant (one of the surgeons of the regiment), whose house adjoined the garden. They called their father, who at once came to the spot. He found the child in a state of extreme terror and agony, took her into his house, assuring her that it was only "a fancy," and having given her restoratives, sent her home. The incident was treated by all as being what the doctor had called it, and no more was thought of it. News from India, where the child's father was stationed, was in those

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days slow in coming. But the arrival of the mail in due course brought the information that the father of the child had been killed by a shot, and died under a tree. Making allowance for difference in the counting of time, it was found to have been about the moment when the daughter had the vision at Woolwich.

Mr. Serjeant Cox informs me that three of the witnesses of the above occurrence were Surgeon Harris, of the Royal Artillery, and his two daughters; one of these daughters afterwards became Mr. Serjeant Cox's wife.

The spirit was seen impressionally, for the other persons present saw nothing. The little girl saw, not merely the spirit, but some of the details of the death: she saw her father "lying on the ground." Hereinafter I shall bring forward experimental evidence that in such cases-what the spirit thinks, the sensitive

sees.

Here is an event from Church history, in which the surroundings of the departing spirit show that the whole scene was impressionally visible. In Newman's "Lives: St. Bega," p. 175, it is stated:

One night after they had separated, St. Benedict remained in the upper part of the tower in which he generally dwelt, and Servandus went to rest at the bottom. It was a calm night, and suddenly a great light was poured down from heaven. While the saint stood gazing on this vision, he saw a fiery sphere traversing the brightness, and ascending up to heaven. It was borne by angels, and in it St. Benedict discerned what he recognised to be the soul of Germanus, Bishop of Capua. Forthwith St. Benedict despatched some one from the neighbouring town to the city of Capua, where he learned that the holy Germanus had departed to a better life at the very hour at which the saint had been favoured with the vision.

A spirit from the battle of Jarnac, probably the Prince of Condé, once influenced Catherine of Medicis to see some of the details of the fight. I give Calmet's translation of Queen Margaret's words:

My mother [Queen Catherine of Medicis], the night before that unhappy tournament, dreamed that she saw the king [Henry II.], my father, wounded in the eye, as it afterwards happened; and when she awaked, begged him several times not to run in the lists that day. Another time, when she was dangerously ill at Metz, and there stood by the bedside the king [Charles IX.], my sister, my brother of Lorrain, and many ladies and princesses, she cried out, as if she had seen the battle of Jarnac, "See how they fly! my son has the victory. See the Prince of Condé dead in that hedge." All who were by thought her delirious; but the night after, when M. de Lesses brought news of the battle, "I knew it," said she, "very well; did I not see it the day before yesterday?"

We come now to a more complex case, fairly illustrative of this type of death-bed apparitions, recorded in Psychic Studies (Leipzig: March 1874), by Madame Sophie Aksakof, wife of Chancellor Alexander Aksakof, Nevsky Prospect 6, St. Petersburg. I quote Miss Kislingbury's translation, published in Rifts in the Veil (London, 1878):

"At the time of this event, 1855, I was nineteen years old, without any knowledge of Spiritualism, the name of which I had never heard. I was brought up very strictly in the Greek Catholic religion; superstitious fears, as well as any tendency to enthusiasm or mysticism, were foreign to my nature, and I was of a calm and happy disposition. In May 1855 we were living at Romanoff-Borrisogliebsk, capital of the province of Jaroslav. My sister-in-law, then the wife of Dr. A. F. Sengireef, now a widow after

* Memoires de la Reine Marguerite, 1. i.