appealed to me to contradict this foolish gossip; and this I do most readily. I beg to state that the report is altogether unfounded. I would gladly have avoided all allusion to this subject; but having been called upon by Mr Cairns to speak out, I cannot help myself. The facts were simply these. At an evening party at Sir W. Hamilton's, some twelve or thirteen years ago, the conversation having happened to turn on the subject of animal magnetism, Mr Cairns professed his readiness to be experimented upon. After a very few passes made by Sir William, be was laid over in what appeared to be a trance, during which he poured forth a rhapsody of nonsense about everything and nothing. I, never doubting that the whole thing was a joke, and that Mr Cairns was a bit of a wag, laughed at the performance. When I was informed that it was quite a serious affair, and that Mr Cairns was no joker of jokes, I confess that I laughed still more,—being satisfied in my own mind that he was either an impostor, or one of those specimens of our species whose condition truly is no laughing matter. I may, possibly, have shewn my appreciation of the exhibition, too obviously,—I hope, however, that I did not,—for that would have been bad manners. But I never had any quarrel with Mr Cairns: he is quite right there.
I have now done with Mr Cairns. With the motives, public or private, which prompted him to engage in this controversy, I have no concern; just as I see no aggravation in the season which he chose for the outpouring of these ebullitions. He was at perfect liberty to be actuated by any motives, or to select any occasion which be thought proper. All that I have looked to, has been the veracity and cogency of his statements; and I fear my readers must conclude that, to whatever extent he may have succeeded in laying hold of truth by means of his "mental assertions,"—truthfulness is a thing which is rather shy of making its appearance in his verbal asseverations.
I have now to deal with a reviewer of a different character—one who, whatever his other faults may be, cannot be charged with either malignity or dishonesty.
The article on the Institutes of Metaphysics, by Mr Fraser,
