converts—we will inform our readers, on his
conclusive authority, what they are required to
believe; premising what may rather astonish
them in connexion with their views of a certain
historical trifle, called The Reformation, that their
present state of unbelief is all the fault of
Protestantism, and that "it is high time, therefore,
to protest against Protestantism."

They will please to believe, by way of an
easy beginning, all the stories of good and evil
demons, ghosts, prophecies, communication with
spirits, and practice of magic, that ever
obtained, or are said to have ever obtained, in the
North, in the South, in the East, in the West,
from the earliest and darkest ages, as to which
we have any hazy intelligence, real or supposititious,
down to the yet unfinished displacement
of the red men in North America. They
will please to believe that nothing in this wise
was changed by the fulfilment of Our Saviour's
mission upon earth; and further, that what
Saint Paul did, can be done again, and has been
done again. As this is not much to begin with,
they will throw in at this point rejection of
FARADAY and BREWSTER, and "poor PALEY,"
and implicit acceptance of those shining lights,
the Reverend CHARLES BEECHER, and the
Reverend HENRY WARD BEECHER ("one of
the most vigorous and eloquent preachers of
America"), and the Reverend ADIN BALLOU.

Having thus cleared the way for a healthy
exercise of faith, our advancing readers will
next proceed especially to believe in the old story
of the Drummer of Tedworth, in the inspiration
of George Fox, in "the spiritualism, prophecies,
and prevision" of Huntington the coal-porter
(him who prayed for the leather breeches which
miraculously fitted him), and even in the Cock-
lane Ghost. They will please wind up, before
fetching their breath, with believing that there
is a close analogy between rejection of any such
plain and proved facts as those contained in the
whole foregoing catalogue, and the opposition
encountered by the inventors of railways, lighting
by gas, microscopes and telescopes, and vaccination.
This stinging consideration they will always
carry rankling in their remorseful hearts as they
advance.

As touching the Cock-lane ghost, our
conscience-stricken readers will please particularly
to reproach themselves for having ever supposed
that important spiritual manifestation to have
been a gross imposture which was thoroughly
detected. They will please to believe that Dr.
JOHNSON believed in it, and that, in Mr.
Howitt's words, he "appears to have had excellent
reasons for his belief." With a view to
this end, the faithful will be so good as to
obliterate from their BOSWELLS the following
passage: "Many of my readers, I am convinced,
are to this hour under an impression that Johnson
was thus foolishly deceived. It will therefore
surprise them a good deal when they are
informed upon undoubted authority that Johnson
was one of those by whom the imposture
was detected. The story had become so popular,
that he thought it should be investigated, and
in this research he was assisted by the Rev. Dr.
Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, the great
detector of impostures"—and therefore tremendously
obnoxious to Mr. Howitt—"who informs
me that after the gentlemen who went and
examined into the evidence were satisfied of its
falsity, Johnson wrote in their presence an account
of it, which was published in the newspapers
and Gentleman's Magazine, and undeceived the
world." But as there will still remain another
highly inconvenient passage in the Boswells of
the true believers, they must likewise be at the
trouble of cancelling the following also,
referring to a later time: "He (Johnson) expressed
great indignation at the imposture of the Cock-
lane Ghost, and related with much satisfaction
how he had assisted in detecting the cheat, and
had published an account of it in the
newspapers."

They will next believe (if they be, in the
words of Captain Bobadil, "so generously
minded") in the transatlantic trance-speakers
"who professed to speak from direct inspiration,"
Mrs. CORA HATCH, Mrs. HENDERSON,
and Miss EMMA HARDINGE; and they will
believe in those eminent ladies having "spoken
on Sundays to five hundred thousand hearers"
—small audiences, by the way, compared with
the intelligent concourse recently assembled in
the city of New York, to do honour to the
Nuptials of General the Honourable T. BARNUM
THUMB. At about this stage of their spiritual
education, they may take the opportunity of
believing in "letters from a distinguished gentleman
of New York, in which the frequent
appearance of the gentleman's deceased wife and
of Dr. Franklin, to him and other well-known
friends, are unquestionably unequalled in the
annals of the marvellous." Why these modest
appearances should seem at all out of the common
way to Mr. Howitt (who would be in a state of
flaming indignation if we thought them so), we
could not imagine, until we found on reading
further, "it is solemnly stated that the
witnesses have not only seen but touched these
spirits, and handled the clothes and hair of
Franklin." Without presuming to go Mr.
Howitt's length of considering this by any
means a marvellous experience, we yet
venture to confess that it has awakened in our
mind many interesting speculations touching
the present whereabout in space, of the spirits
of Mr. Howitt's own departed boots and hats.

The next articles of belief are Belief in the
moderate figures of "thirty thousand media in the
United States in 1853;" and in two million five
hundred thousand spiritualists in the same country
of composed minds, in 1855, "professing to
have arrived at their convictions of spiritual
communication from personal experience;" and
in "an average rate of increase of three hundred
thousand per annum," still in the same country
of calm philosophers. Belief in spiritual knockings,
in all manner of American places, and,
among others, in the house of "a Doctor Phelps
at Stratford, Connecticut, a man of the highest
character for intelligence," says Mr. Howitt,