in the form of a luminous vapour, from one to
two spans in height.

"Some time afterwards I took her to two
great cemeteries, near Vienna, where several
interments occur daily, and the grave mounds
lie all about in thousands.  Here she saw
numerous graves, which exhibited the lights
above described. Wherever she looked, she
saw masses of fire lying about; but it was
chiefly seen over all new graves, while there
was no appearance of it over very old ones.
She described it less as a clear flame than as
a dense, vaporous mass of fire, holding a
middle place between mist and flame. On
many graves this light was about, four feet
high, so that when she stood on the grave, it
reached to her neck. When she thrust her
hand into it, it was as if putting it into a
dense fiery cloud. She betrayed not the
slightest uneasiness, as she was, from her
childhood, accustomed to such emanations,
and had seen, in my experiments, similar
lights produced by natural means, and made
to assume endless varieties of form. I am
convinced that all who are, to a certain
degree, sensitive, will see the same phenomena
in cemeteries, and very abundantly in
the crowded cemeteries of large cities; and
that my observations may be easily repeated
and confirmed." These experiments were
tried in 1844. A postscript was added in
1847. Reichenbach had taken five other
sensitive persons, in the dark, to cemeteries.
Of these, two were sickly, three quite healthy.
All of them confirmed the statements of
Mademoiselle Reichel, and saw the lights
over all new graves more or less distinctly;
"so that," says the philosopher, " the fact
can no longer admit of the slightest doubt,
and may be everywhere controlled."

"Thousands of ghost stories," he continues,
"will now receive a natural explanation, and
will thus cease to be marvellous. We shall
even see that it was not so erroneous or absurd
as has been supposed, when our old women
asserted, as everyone knows they did, that
not everyone was privileged to see the spirits
of the departed wandering over their graves.
In fact, it was at all times only the sensitive
who could see the imponderable emanations
from the chemical change going on in corpses,
luminous in the dark. And thus I have, I
trust, succeeded in tearing down one of the
densest veils of darkened ignorance and
human error."

So far speaks Reichenbach; and for myself,
reverting to the few comments with which
we set out, I would suggest, that Reichenbach's
book, though it is very likely to push
things too far— to fancy the tree by looking
at the seed—is yet not such a book as men
of sense are justified in scouting. The repetition
of his experiments is very easy if they
be correct. There are plenty of "sensitives "
to be found in our London hospitals and streets
and lanes. Unluckily, however, though we
live in an age which produces, every day, new
marvels, the old spirit of bigotry, which used
to make inquiry dangerous in science and
religion, still prevails in the minds of too
many scientific men. To be incredulous of
what is new and strange, until it has been
rigidly examined and proved true, is one
essential element of a mind seeking enlightenment.
But, to test and try new things is
equally essential. Because of doubting, to
refuse inquiry, is because of hunger to refuse
our food. For my own part, I put these
matters into the livery of that large body of
thoughts already mentioned, which walk about
the human mind, armed each with a note of
interrogation. This only I see, that, in addition
to the well-known explanations of
phenomena, which produce some among the
many stories of ghosts and of mysterious
forebodings, new explanations are at hand which
will reduce into a natural and credible position
many other tales by which we have till
recently been puzzled.

THE ROVING ENGLISHMAN.
IN PRAISE OF SALAD.

You do not know in England the importance
of the salad question. You have traditions
of gentlemen who have driven in their
carriage from dinner-party to dinner-party,
receiving fees, and practising with all the
respectability attached to a grave doctor of
physic, the profession of a salad-maker. Such
traditions move you to a little wonder, but you
are not moved thereby to much inquiry into
the true principles of salad-dressing; you
exercise the craft empirically; you are
quacks. Now, I having travelled through
eminently salad-eating countries, with a
proper reverence for salad as a part of my
constitution, which at all times inclines to
venerate whatever is mysterious, — I having
thus travelled, and respectfully eaten, in
Germany, in Italy, and, above all, in France,
salads of many kinds, am qualified now, also,
by bookish study, and by every preparation
which an earnest mind should bring to the
treatment of an important subject, to inform
my countrymen. I request that which I now
write may be read not frivolously, but in a
serious and sober frame of mind, and, if
aloud, that it be read with a dignified tone,
and listened to with a majestic countenance.
Salad is a subject of too much importance to
be lightly handled. A French writer of the
sixteenth century, falling into raptures about
eggs, tells us, that he could vary his dinner
every day for an entire twelvemonth, and yet
dine always only upon eggs. In other words,
he was acquainted with three hundred and
sixty-five ways in which it was possible to
prepare an egg for eating. By how much
more is salad to be venerated, which admits
not only of being dressed in three hundred and
sixty-five different ways, but of which
there are upwards of three hundred and