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A Crucial Experiment.

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most fingers, the difficult thing to do is to hold any object still. Our ring will sway to and fro at the end of its thread, in fact, when hanging from nine fingers out of ten. If, however, a tenth one be found which is able to hold it suspended in perfect stillness, there is then discovered a positive proof that the movements in the other nine cases must have been owing to nothing that is 'physical and objective.' Considering the matter as a question of motion or no motion, Caspari's experiment is negative although it affirms, and ours is positive although it denies. If there be such a motive force, free to operate its effects in such circumstances, as Dr. Mayo asserts, then no property of ours could interfere with its action. We could as easily hinder the ring from falling to the extent of its tether, in obedience to terrestrial gravity, as control the odylic impulsion, if there were such a thing at work within, through, and upon the so-called odometer. Any properly qualified person can repeat our experiment.

II. We summoned two ladies to witness the experiment repeated. No sooner had the ring come to rest than it began to move again, and that no longer vaguely. It swung to and from us along the line of the spoon; but as soon as one of the fair testators laid hold on our unoccupied hand it stopped, only however to vibrate transversely. The thing was repeated with the same results: it oscillated longitudinally when we were sole and singular; transversely whenever either of the ladies gave us her hand. We bade them observe how fixedly we held our uplifted hand, and they observed it. But, to tell the reader the truth, we produced these motions of the ring by means of infinitely trifling and imperceptible movements of our hand; and without any difficulty we could suffer the tricksy pendulum to fall to rest whenever we chose. This is certainly not the manner in which Dr. Herbert Mayo's librations, longitudinal and transverse, were brought about; but this purely negative experiment is described for the purpose of showing how very minute and unobservable movements of the hand and finger can work wonders.

III. We suspended the odometer from a fixed point by its thread, and let it fall to rest. We then held a silver spoon, a plate of porcelain, sealing-wax, and several other odylic subjects under it in the air, half an inch from it, a quarter, a twelfth, but all in vain no motions ensued; no phenomenon of any sort took place. Now we think that this is precisely the same experiment as Caspari's, considered as 'physical and objective;' and it is strange to think that an English doctor did not at once reverse it in this style. If odyle go down the thread, it goes through the spoon. It cannot matter whether the odometer or the odylic subject be in the hand of course, else the experiment is neither

objective nor physical. This is certainly a crucial test, and it needs no ghost to predict that not one of all the doctor's variations of his mathematician's geomantic performance will bear its application.

At the same time, the regularity and reckonable certainty which attended these Boppart experiments, after a few days (be it always observed) of contradiction and caprice, is very interesting, when considered from the right point of view. It is as clear as crystal that the results became expected things. Many of the experiments indicate a foregone conclusion. All of them would become such after the first satisfactory trial. Now we have seen that the most minute and invisible movements of the hand communicate certain oscillatory motions to the suspended body; and we also know something of the power of expectant attention and extrinsic suggestion over certain nervous systems, especially the hypnotizable. It appears that Dr. Mayo is the subject of the mesmerizable diathesis or habit of body: the disease under which he labours is almost a completed proof of it. Nor would any one venture to speak in this manner of his condition, but that he has adduced himself as the instrument of a scientific investigation, as well as its author. That instrument, although it is the sick body of a most excellent and valuable man, must therefore be judged as freely as if it were a sympiesometer or an electric clock. Be it understood, then, that a mesmerizable nervous system holds a thread with a light body at the other end of it; that the most infinitesimal movements of the suspensive point of that nervous system are able to institute librations of the light figure suspended; that the direction of these librations is under the control of the will of a wholly self-possessed experimentalist; that the expectant attention of another sort of nervous system in the operator is calculated to bring about its own results in the matter of direction-and this posthumous letter on the truth contained in popular superstitions is both refuted and explained.

The intellectual under-current of motive in these unproductive experiments is good and true. Their distinguished author expresses, through means of them, his opinion that the experiments of Reichenbach are hitherto purely subjective, to use that adjective in the limited sense frequently put upon it by English writers. It is evidently his conviction that physical and objective manifestations are necessary to the establishment of the existence of an imponderable or a dynamide, which professes to be objective and physical. Neither is Dr. Mayo blind to the fact that odyle is nothing more nor less than the animal magnetism of Mesmer, whether animal magnetism be a new specific force or a nerve-stirring resultant of the general cosmical powers of nature.

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The most important of these indications is certainly the perception that nothing short of a physical instrument, an odometer in fact, will ever establish and illustrate the thesis of the Baron of Castle Reisenberg. In short it is the one urgent, commanding, unmistakable, and unavoidable duty of Von Reichenbach to suspend his operations on the exceptional nerve, and betake himself with stout and eager devotion to the invention of an odyloscopic apparatus. It were in vain to say that the exceptional nerve is the only reagent and test of odylic action; for if such be the case, it differs from all the family of dynamides in a very central particular, and that is a sad argument against it to begin with. It were almost as absurd as to speak of a new gas, supposed to want the property of weight. To imagine that, though gendered and resident in all sorts of unorganized matter, as well as in plants and animals, it shows its existence only through the exceptional nerve, is all but equivalent to shutting it out of the society of the imponderables altogether. Gravity, cohesion, affinity, heat, light, electricity, galvanism, and honest old magnetism disown it in such a case, and it must just found a family for itself. The indefinite hope is not to be abandoned, however, that Reichenbach himself, or Professor Gregory, or Dr. Herbert Mayo will yet construct a true odometer, and thereby exult victoriously over all us sceptics and critical house-dogs. Io triumphe!

ART. VII.-1. Report from the Select Committee on Public Libraries, together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, &c. Ordered to be printed 23d July 1849.

2. Report from the Select Committee on Public Libraries, together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, &c. Ordered to be printed 1st August 1850.

On the 6th of April 1841, Mr. Ewart moved in his place in the House of Commons, "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that she will be graciously pleased to direct that some responsible Minister of the Crown shall yearly make to the House of Commons a statement of the condition and prospects of the education of the people." This was in other words moving for the appointment of a Minister of Public Instruction. It is hardly necessary that we should inform our readers that the address was not presented to Her Majesty. In the course of the arguments by which Mr. Ewart supported his motion, he alluded in marked terms to the importance of the establishment of Public Libraries. The motion itself failed, but the discussion was not altogether barren of results, and the subject of public education being constantly kept before the notice of the House of Commons by the Committee on the Fine Arts, the Public Museums Act, and in other forms, Mr. Ewart succeeded, on the 15th of March 1849, in obtaining the consent of Sir George Grey to the appointment of a Committee "on the best means of extending the establishment of Libraries freely open to the public, especially in large towns, in Great Britain and Ireland." The only restriction imposed upon the Committee was, that it should not enter into any inquiry respecting the British Museum, the constitution and management of that institution being then the subject of investigation by a Royal Commission.

The result of the inquiry by the Committee of the House of Commons is now before the public, comprised in two Blue-books -the one issued in the year 1849, and the other in 1850.

The Minutes of Evidence present a great deal of curious and most interesting matter relating to the state of education among the poorer classes of society in the three kingdoms, and the efforts which have been made from time to time to infuse among them a love of reading, and to supply them with the means of gratifying the taste when acquired. These Minutes also shew that much time and labour have been bestowed upon inquiries foreign to the subject before the Committee, and of which the

Libraries for the Poor.

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greatest praise would be to say that they were aimless and worthless.

The attention of the Committee was very much directed towards the benefit likely to accrue from the formation of public libraries to the classes lowest in the scale of education. And here, not only the direct evidence of some of the witnesses, but the natural inference to be drawn from that of all who spoke with anything like experience upon the subject, was, that public libraries must be considered and treated as ancillary to a good and comprehensive scheme of Public Education. The mere fact of being able to read is not sufficient. There must be a certain degree of mental cultivation before books, that is, good and useful books, will be relished. And here is the difficulty with what are termed the lower orders. We do not speak now of journeymen mechanics, or those who are in the receipt of regular wages, and who are thus raised above the lowest level: we speak of those whose means of living are casual, whose earnings are small, to whom the common decencies of life are strange, and who consequently are more particularly exposed to the temptations of idleness and want. It is not enough to say to such persons as these, "There is the public library; go and read; ask for the book you want, and it will be given to you." They must be coaxed into a respect and liking for books. On this point the evidence of Mr. Mackenzie, the rector of St. Martin's-in-theFields, and that of Mr. Brereton, his curate, is most conclusive and highly encouraging.

It appears that Mr. Brereton was in the habit of giving religious instruction to the inhabitants of a locality called White Hart Court, in Whitcomb Street, inhabited by "the humblest of the working people." Being anxious to improve their social condition, and conceiving that this could be accomplished by cultivating a taste for reading, and giving them something which they could enjoy in common, " he took a room in White Hart Court, he then got together some books, and little subscriptions were made, and he got together a library of about 400 volumes. The parties who used it were all of the humblest classes; they were admitted upon paying a subscription of one penny per week. The library was open two days in the week. The rules were, that one month's residence in the Court was to entitle them to become members; that the curate of the district should be the secretary, and have charge of selecting books and admitting members." In a letter addressed to Mr. Mackenzie, (produced by that gentleman in the course of his examination by the Committee,) Mr. Brereton gives the following particulars of the working of his scheme :

VOL. XV. NO. XXIX.

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