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but as half-philosophies, consequently, that neither of them, singly, could have been the philosophy of such a man as Shakespeare.

5th. The great artist is pre-eminently the man of fact and common sense. He sees more facts than other men do, and also the common-senseness of those facts.

6th. All good Art takes both the spiritual and natural worlds for granted, and works with both, according to the laws of both, and with such effect, that the best artists are by common consent, placed above all other men; and justly so. To be what they are, whether as poets, painters, or musicians, they must not only have the most powerful sense of the objective realities of both worlds, but they are also gifted with the faculty of realising their perceptions, so as to convey them to other men.

7th. That these axioms admitted, an additional evidence is gained for the highest truths of all—those of Religion, which are thus shewn to be at one with all that tends to raise and refine mankind.

MADEMOISELLE LE NORMAND, THE PARISIAN SIBYL OF THE REVOLUTION.

BY WILLIAM HOWITT.

have

IN one department of the great and varied field of Spiritualism figures a class of mediums who have been termed in different periods, and by different persons, fortune-tellers, conjurors, wise men and women, necromancers, sorcerers, and in almost all cases charlatans. These persons who have practised their so-called art, or as we should now rather term it, function, for gain, by one class of mind been regarded as in compact with the devil, by another as in compact with their own spirit of chicanery, by a third as having more or less of both. Many have set down their success to a clever assurance in specious fraud, or to an acute insight into character and circumstances, but have stoutly denied them to have any real possession of the gift of prescience. Such men as Nostradamus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cagliostro, and such women as Mademoiselle le Normand, have been adjudged by different minds to belong to all these classes of entrepreneurs. Another order of minds is unwilling to recognise as Spiritualists such persons as do not take a religious view of the dispensation, and is disposed to treat all those included under the general head here adverted to, as persons disreputable, and about whom the less said the better.

Now it is surely time that all Spiritualists understood that

More witnesseth than fancy's images,

And grows to something of great constancy,
But, howsoever, strange, and admirable.

Here again, Shakespeare shows his nice observation of the sceptical mind. Every one who has conversed on any subject, with persons predetermined, on that subject, not to believe, must have observed how common it is for the latter, when fairly brought to a stand-still, to lapse into a dead silence, instead of saying, as the lover of truth would do, "What you have alleged is very reasonable, and I will now examine." They can say no more, nor may you. Accordingly, to the incontrovertible speech of Hippolyta, Theseus makes no reply.

It is a truly noteworthy and significant fact, that to the sceptical Theseus should have been allotted by Shakespeare the sceptical idea concerning the poet; namely, as being the embodier of the unreal, and not as being the copyist of what is true. It is exactly in character, that the doubting Theseus should thus speak of the poetic art, and thence we may be sure that the poet who wrote the lines for him, thought precisely the very reverse. Owing, however, to the general doubt concerning the supernatural, and the consequent assumption of Shakespeare's disbelief, this point seems never to have been considered, and it may be safely affirmed that nine hundred and ninety-nine readers out of every thousand, would gravely quote the lines upon the poet, as containing Shakespeare's own idea, although, only five lines previously, Theseus has placed the poet in the same category with the lunatic. From the purely dramatic character of his works, Shakespeare can never speak in his own person, but he can always act; that is, so frame his story as that scepticism shall be shewn to be entirely at fault: and this he does.

CONCLUSION.

In conclusion, the following axioms are submitted to the consideration of those who are interested in criticism respecting Shakespeare.

1st. That all good art is absolutely true, or it could not be good.

2nd. That to the true artist, whatever he cannot feel to be absolutely true in its foundations, is altogether intolerable.

3rd. That all the difficulty in intellectually admitting these things, lies in the non-admission of an internal, causal world as absolutely real. It is said, in intellectually admitting, because the influence of the arts proves that men's feelings always have dmitted, and do still admit, this reality.

4th. That neither pure Immaterialism (nor Idealism), on the one hand, or pure Materialism, on the other, can be considered

but as half-philosophies, consequently, that neither of them, singly, could have been the philosophy of such a man Shakespeare.

as

5th. The great artist is pre-eminently the man of fact and common sense. He sees more facts than other men do, and also the common-senseness of those facts.

6th. All good Art takes both the spiritual and natural worlds for granted, and works with both, according to the laws of both, and with such effect, that the best artists are by common consent, placed above all other men; and justly so. To be what they are, whether as poets, painters, or musicians, they must not only have the most powerful sense of the objective realities of both worlds, but they are also gifted with the faculty of realising their perceptions, so as to convey them to other men.

7th. That these axioms admitted, an additional evidence is gained for the highest truths of all-those of Religion, which are thus shewn to be at one with all that tends to raise and refine mankind.

MADEMOISELLE LE NORMAND, THE PARISIAN SIBYL OF THE REVOLUTION.

BY WILLIAM HOWITT.

IN one department of the great and varied field of Spiritualism figures a class of mediums who have been termed in different periods, and by different persons, fortune-tellers, conjurors, wise men and women, necromancers, sorcerers, and in almost all cases charlatans. These persons who have practised their so-called art, or as we should now rather term it, function, for gain, have by one class of mind been regarded as in compact with the devil, by another as in compact with their own spirit of chicanery, by a third as having more or less of both. Many have set down their success to a clever assurance in specious fraud, or to an acute insight into character and circumstances, but have stoutly denied them to have any real possession of the gift of prescience. Such men as Nostradamus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cagliostro, and such women as Mademoiselle le Normand, have been adjudged by different minds to belong to all these classes of entrepreneurs. Another order of minds is unwilling to recognise as Spiritualists such persons as do not take a religious view of the dispensation, and is disposed to treat all those included under the general head here adverted to, as persons disreputable, and about whom the less said the better.

Now it is surely time that all Spiritualists understood that

the power of spirits to communicate with those still in the flesh is not conferred on any particular section of the spirit race, but is, like all God's ordinances, open to all. As there are light and dark, good and evil, in the world, so there are good and evil spirits in operation about us; and, between these, every grade of quality, good, bad, and indifferent, as there is in the infinitely varied mass of mankind. It is not a sacred opening into this earth alone through which the divine agents of God can pass and repass; it is a wide and mighty gate-a great and broad highway between the worlds, through which spirits of all classes and qualities can pass, and on which they can travel. We have to choose our companions amongst the invisibles, just as we have to choose them amongst the visibles: we have to do more-to avoid and repel the approaches of the evil, by all the powers put into our hands-those of prayer, and a clinging to the pure and the noble in life, and of cultivating a firm repugnance to everything low, sensual, and unworthy. In what is truly called the battle of life, we must steadily range ourselves on the divine side, certain that the light and the dark phalanxes of the spiritual will be fighting around us, and that the trivial, the indifferent, the lazy, and the mixed characters of the other life, will gather about us in our hours of ease and ordinary proceeding.

That very much trick and an impudent mystification have been mingled with real spiritual power, in the fortune-tellers of all times, is very certain. At the same time, there are so many extraordinary predictions which have been fulfilled, at dates to which no human foresight could possibly reach-predictions uttered, and even written down at once, by these popular professors of vaticination, that it is equally certain that they were mediums of great and undoubted endowments. St. Cæsar, who died at Arles in 552, prophesied of a terrible revolution in France, including all the events of the revolution of 1789. Instead of the Christian era, he said it would occur in or about the year 1789 of the era of Diocletian, which would have been 284 years later. In the facts he was right, and in the date right to a year, supposing him only to have taken the true era-the Christian for that of Diocletian-then in use by Christian writers, as the era of Martyrs. At 1237 years before the time, such an error is not wonderful: but the prophecy so literally fulfilled is wonderful. The prophecy is written in Latin. (See Liber Mirabilis, pp. 55-58.) Nostradamus, as may be seen at full in his Prophetical Centuries, besides many other things, clearly, in 1555, foretold the French Revolution of 1789, and Napoleon, that is, 234 years in advance. But this great event was predicted still earlier; namely, in 1476, by Jean Müller, an account of which appeared in the Odoeporicon of 1553. He says-"That a thousand seven

hundred and eighty-eight years after the birth of Christ, there will come an astonishing period, in which, if the whole perverse race of men is not struck with death, yet whole empires will be overturned, and great calamity everywhere prevail."` M. Pièrart, in the Revue Spiritualiste, Tome IX. 3o livraison, has noticed the prophecy of the same event in M. Turrel, philosopher_and astrologer, and rector of the schools of Dijon, in 1531. It is contained in a pamphlet of sixty-two pages, on parchment, composed in Latin, in the monastery of Trois Valees. The pamphlet is so rare that M. Pièrart believes that this is probably the sole copy remaining; there being no copy of it in the Imperial Library, nor in those of the Arsenal and of Mazarine. Jean Müller hit the date to within a single year, 313 years beforehand; giving it distinctly as 1788 instead of 1789; but it is well known that all the elements of the Revolution were in active operation in the year before it fully broke out. Turrel, however, names the exact year in 1531, that is, 258 years in advance. He says, "Not only will a tremendous revolution break out then, but that it will not end for twenty-five years, that is, till 1814; and that in it will arise a man, who shall rule in that revolution, and that by a law dishonest, lying, and magical, so that no such man shall arise like him between Mahomet and Antichrist." Boyle, in his Dictionary, notices Turrel, and many successive predictions copied from Turrel's prophecy, as Roussat, canon of Langres, in 1550, in his Livre des Temps.

These are things so clear, so unambiguous, so precise in date, that, the original works in which they appeared still existing, there is no getting rid of them. They attest the existence of prophecies by persons calling themselves simply astrologers, which centuries afterwards were fulfilled to the letter and the figure. In our own time have appeared others of this same class, scarcely less extraordinary; one or two of whom, it may be interesting to notice with some degree of detail, as Cagliostro and Mademoiselle le Normand, to whom we may add in awhile, one of the religious class-Madame von Krüdener.

None of these have equalled in force and fulness of prescience Mademoiselle le Normand. This lady, who became obnoxious to Napoleon I., because, like the old prophets of Israel with their monarchs, she would not prophesy to please him, was repeatedly imprisoned by him, and was as much in favour with the Empress Josephine, whose rise and fall she openly predicted. She died in 1843, after having for fifty years been assiduously consulted by the crowned heads, princes, ambassadors, and people of every class in France, and of most of the countries of Europe. She had acquired an income of 20,000 francs, which she chiefly left to her nephew M. Hugo.

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