But before they pass through this portal into
the Temple of Serene Wisdom, we, halting blind
and helpless on the steps, beg to suggest to them
what they must at once and for ever disbelieve.
They must disbelieve that in the dark times,
when very few were versed in what are now the
mere recreations of Science, and when those
few formed a priesthood-class apart, any marvels
were wrought by the aid of concave mirrors and
a knowledge of the properties of certain odours
and gases, although the self-same marvels could
be reproduced before their eyes at the
Polytechnic Institution, Regent-street, London, any
day in the year. They must by no means believe
that Conjuring and Ventriloquism are old trades.
They must disbelieve all Philosophical Transactions
containing the records of painful and careful
inquiry into now familiar disorders of the senses
of seeing and hearing, and into the wonders of
somnambulism, epilepsy, hysteria, miasmatic
influence, vegetable poisons derived by whole
communities from corrupted air, diseased imitation,
and moral infection. They must disbelieve all such
awkward leading cases as the case of the
Woodstock Commissioners and their man, and the case
of the identity of the Stockwell Ghost with the
maid-servant. They must disbelieve the vanishing
of champion haunted houses (except, indeed,
out of Mr. Howitt's book), represented to have
been closed and ruined for years, before one
day's inquiry by four gentlemen associated with
this Journal, and one hour's reference to the
local Rate-books. They must disbelieve all
possibility of a human creature on the last verge of
the dark bridge from Life to Death, being mysteriously
able, in occasional cases, so to influence
the mind of one very near and dear, as vividly to
impress that mind with some disturbed sense of
the solemn change impending. They must
disbelieve the possibility of the lawful existence of
a class of intellects which, humbly conscious of
the illimitable power of GOD and of their own
weakness and ignorance, never deny that He can
cause the souls of the dead to revisit the earth,
or that He may have caused the souls of the
dead to revisit the earth, or that He can
cause any awful or wondrous thing to be; but
do deny the likelihood of apparitions or spirits
coming here upon the stupidest of bootless
errands, and producing credentials tantamount
to a solicitation of our vote and interest and
next proxy, to get them into the Asylum for
Idiots. They must disbelieve the right of Christian
people who do not protest against
Protestantism, but who hold it to be a barrier against
the darkest superstitions that can enslave the
soul, to guard with jealousy all approaches tending
down to Cock-lane Ghosts and such-like
infamous swindles, widely degrading when widely
believed in; and they must disbelieve that such
people have the right to know, and that it is
their duty to know, wonder-workers by their
fruits, and to test miracle-mongers by the tests
of probability, analogy, and common sense. They
must disbelieve all rational explanations of
thoroughly proved experiences (only) which
appear supernatural, derived from the average
experience and study of the visible world. They
must disbelieve the speciality of the Master and
the Disciples, and that it is a monstrosity to
test the wonders of show-folk by the same
touchstone. Lastly, they must disbelieve that
one of the best accredited chapters in the history
of mankind is the chapter that records the
astonishing deceits continually practised, with
no object or purpose but the distorted pleasure
of deceiving.

We have summed up a few—not nearly all—
of the articles of belief and disbelief to which Mr.
Howitt most arrogantly demands an implicit
adherence. To uphold these, he uses a book as a
Clown in a Pantomime does, and knocks everybody
on the head with it who comes in his way.
Moreover, he is an angrier personage than the
Clown, and does not experimentally try the effect
of his red-hot poker on your shins, but straightway
runs you through the body and soul with it.
He is always raging to tell you that if you are
not Howitt, you are Atheist and Anti-Christ.
He is the sans-culotte of the Spiritual Revolution,
and will not hear of your accepting this
point and rejecting that;—down your throat
with them all, one and indivisible, at the point
of the pike; No Liberty, Totality, Fraternity, or
Death!

Without presuming to question that "it is
high time to protest against Protestantism" on
such very substantial grounds as Mr. Howitt
sets forth, we do presume to think that it is
high time to protest against Mr. Howitt's
spiritualism, as being a little in excess of the
peculiar merit of Thomas L. Harris's sermons,
and somewhat too "full, out-gushing, unstinted,
and absorbing."

VOLTAIRE'S HEART.

WHOSE property should the heart of a great
man be? That of his family and his friends, or
that of his country?

Amongst the inheritances left by the Marquis
de Vilette, about which, in 1860, a lawsuit came
before the assizes at Clermont, there was the
heart of Voltaire—surely one of the rarest
bequests ever made. What Shakespeare was to
England—what Schiller and Goethe to Germany
—that Voltaire was to France.

And this heart was, according to the last will
and testament of the Marquis de Vilette, to fall
into the hands of the Duc de Bordeaux, or Henry
the Fifth, as the Legitimists call him.

Wonderful adventures have befallen this heart.
Voltaire died on the 30th of May, 1778, at
Paris. The weak government, which had not
dared to oppose the last triumphant assertion
of the living man, now prohibited the mere
mention of his name in newspapers and other
writings. The Archbishop of Paris refused
permission for his interment, and the first
minister, Maurepas, to whom the Académie sent its
petitions, replied that his conscience forbade him
to give his consent to the Christian burial of such