the table, as if a strong wind had blown them

out." The italics are ours. Those heavy silk curtains could cover a multitude of frauds. It must be admitted that the observers were deadly afraid of Eusapia. "One of us held her feet and waist"—a difficult task for one person—and two others

observed her hands. But she rose above all disadvantages, and conjured with distinction. "I remember having seen the lid of a trunk, which was placed behind the experimenters and to the left of Eusapia, open and shut of its own accord." Nor was this all. By waving her hands she made the scale of

a letter-balance ascend and descend. We are not told of what metal the balance was made, but since the fingers of the lady were only three to five inches away, we may suggest that the steel index needle was deflected by a handy magnet. In another case a table was moved by a lady amateur.

Unfortunately, "this table, a light tripod was in contact with the dress of my hostess."

An anonymous medium, called for the purposes of the book Meurice, "furnished Dr. Maxwell with many of his

most important examples of psychical phenomena

Professor Richet, Dr. Maxwell, and Dr. X. say that, for diverse [sic] reasons, they cannot doubt this particular medium's honourability [sic]." For our own part, after a careful consideration of the results produced by him, we do

not hesitate to say that lie is an impostor of the worst order, and, on the evidence before us, a dangerous impostor. The horrible story of the unhappy lady whose true name is here hidden under that of Mrs. Stephens is sufficient to prove this to any unbiassed reader of the book. She was a Swede who in 1903 married secretly "a man occupying a high official position in Europe." Shortly after the marriage he was sent on service abroad for six months. He was a friend of Professor Richet, and, being "anxious not to leave his wife alone in Paris, during his absence, and knowing that Professor Richet intended making a long

series of experiments with Dr. Maxwell at W., he decided, for diverse [sic] reasons, to send his wife to the same locality." It was agreed that she possessed "nascent

psychical powers." Without inquiries into the state of her health, she, the medium, and the three doctors plunged into a perfect orgy of seances controlled by the medium, who seems rapidly to have obtained an influence over Mrs. Stephens; partly by alleged phenomena of, as it seems to us, the most blasphemous kind. "Mrs. Stephens—though her manner had never betrayed this—had taken a fancy to the medium and his family." It is impossible here to go into the details of the various alleged interviews with supernatural beings. The effect on the unhappy woman was deplorable. The doctors must have known it was wrong, but the horrible farce was carried on to the fatal end. Bad news of her husband's health arrived, and this was played with by the medium. Immediately after the birth of her son, Mrs.

Stephens desired to add to the names given to the child for an extraordinary reason by the medium. He instantly declared he must see the patient, and was admitted with the doctors to the sick-room, and announced by raps at the bedside that the names were not to be altered ! When the child was a week old "Mrs. Stephens was seized with a violent and inexplicable fever. The following day a thoughtless servant handed her a telegram ; the telegram announced the death of her husband. The fever regained possession, and Mrs. Stephens died the same night." That is the mild outline of one of the most horrible cases which we have ever read of persons ruined physically and mentally by being made to deal with imaginary forces that appear real to a distraught mind. What English doctors will think of such a case we have no doubt. As to .the wonders performed by the medium, they were poorer than the poorest, woodenest miracles ever performed in a travelling show. But they were sufficient. The same may be said of the other wonders in the book,—luminous phenomena, and so forth. Meaningless, dangerous, irreverent, and clumsy, they only serve to illus- trate the infinite capacity of educated men for being deceived.

Toying with spiritual fraud can never advance the cause of science, nor unlock the mysterious doors of that shadow-land which the Psychical Society desires, and rightly desires, to explore. To the carefully guarded and scientifically conditioned experiments and investigations made by the Psychical Society we offer no objections, but, on the contrary, regard them as certainly legitimate and as possibly useful. With haphazard dealings with paid mediums of doubtful antecedents we not only have no sympathy, but regard them as essentially injurious to the true ends of psychical research.

THE LETTERS OF SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA.* CATERINA BENINCASA was born on March 25th, 1347, and all her early life was passed in her father's house, still shown as one of the chief sanctuaries of Siena. Her father, Giacomo Benincasa, was a dyer by trade, and belonged to the Contrada of Fontebranda. He and his wife, Monne. Lapa, were good people, but even they, like so many others in such circum- stances, found the saintliness of their extraordinary child— the youngest of twenty-five—almost more than they could understand, or even endure. When only six years old Catherine saw a vision of our Lord in the air, above the great Church of San Domenico, which stands on the hill above Fontebranda. From that time the unseen world was present to her, but not with the consequence of making the world in which she lived an unreal dream. Neither did she feel herself called to enter a strictly religious life. For three years, indeed, from seventeen to twenty, wearing the habit of a Dominican Tertiary, she remained almost entirely shut up at home in religious meditation ; but after that, "in obedience to the commands of God, and impelled by her love of men," she returned to the world, and spent her whole time in works of charity. Her self- devotion was perfect; self hardly existed for her. While still a young girl her father and her family, convinced of the reality of her great holiness, had withdrawn their opposition to the kind of life she chose to lead. For Catherine, in following with open eyes the path of spiritual marvel which lay before her, never forgot the claims of home. This wonderful woman, whose mystical visions and strange experiences belong to a world too little understood by us to be dogmatised upon, loyally loved and served her own people. After Giacomo Benincasa's death in 1368 the family was scattered, but Monna Lapa remained with her daughter, and the affection that united them was no less great because the poor woman, in her ordinary humanity, found it very hard to reach, even in imagination, the heights on which Catherine dwelt. She could understand, probably, the generous self- denial which laid all daily life at the feet of Christ, to be consecrated to the service of His poor and sick, so that in times of plague and distress Catherine's name was known throughout the city and province for her heroic and charitable devotion. And no mother, perhaps, could be leas than proud of a daughter who gathered disciples round her, noble young men striving for the honour of being her secretary ; and by her amazing letters—at this time dictated, for it was not till later that she learned to write, her biographers say

*Saint Catherine of Siena, as Seen in her Letters. Translated and Edited, with Introduction, by Vida D. Scudder. London : J. K. Dent and CO. [6a. net.]

"miraculously "—acted as peacemaker both in State affairs and between private persons. Her prayers and exhortations, too, converted many a soul; and the change from black to white was very vivid in those days,—the world was not so full of "grey sheep" as now. Monna Laps could look round on her native city and see many a terrible character reformed by her saintly daughter's means. She may well have wept for joy—for she was certainly a good woman—at the thrilling and tragical story of young Niccolb di Toldo, condemned to death for some slight offence against the Government of Siena. Catherine not only, by her loving and wonderful words, brought this youth into a state of perfect resignation to his terrible end; she was with him on the scaffold, knelt before him, and received the poor head into her hands. It is one of the most wonderful episodes in the Saint's life, and was no doubt the talk of city and country. She told the story in a letter to her friend and confessor, Era Raimondo of Capin., "one of the famous letters of the world," of which Miss Scudder gives what is rather rarely to be found, a com- plete translation. Sodoma also tolcLit in his well-known fresco in the Church of San Domenico.

In all such great home works and charities Catherine may well have bad the sympathy of the mother who adored her and shared her home. But when Catherine was sent by the Spirit of God to do the work of a political missionary it seems to have been another matter. The Church was growing more and more corrupt ; the Pope, at Avignon, was fighting the Florentines, who lay under his interdict, and his Legates were carrying fire and sword over Italy. That religion lived at all was a miracle. History tells how Catherine, a true messenger of peace, threw herself into the midst of the wild confusions of Christendom. There are few more remarkable stories than that of her journey to Avignon as ambassador of the Florentines, the eager woman full of one passion, one idea and aim, to make Christendom once more Christian, to bring back the Pope—" Christ on earth," as her astonishing faith called him—to Rome, and to reconcile him with his people. Still more marvellous than the journey itself was its Evidently Monna Lapa, from her street in Siena, from the standpoint of a mother who felt herself at last deserted, com- plained rather bitterly of this new adventure, which all the world thought mad. One of the most attractive, perhaps, of Catherine's letters is written to her mother when she was on her way home from Avignon—Gregory XL having started on his journey to Rome—and was lingering at Genoa because of a companion's illness. We can only quote a few sentences of what Catherine wrote to her "dearest sweetest mother," but all the letter is tender, high-toned, and beautiful :— " You know that it behoves me to follow the will of God; and I know that you wish me to follow it. His will was that I should go away ; which going did not happen without mystery, nor without fruit of great value And thus it will behove me to go on, following His footsteps in what way and at what time shall please His inestimable goodness. You, like a good, sweet mother, must be content, and not disconsolate, enduring every burden for the honour of God, and for your and my salvation. . . . . . . Now, comfort you, for the love of Christ crucified, and do not think that you are abandoned either by God or by me."

This letter, with its grave, half-playful tenderness, is certainly one of the most exquisite in the whole collection. More remarkable and more interesting, of course, are Catherine's wonderful letters to Gregory XL; to his successor, the choleric Urban VI.; to the Italian Cardinals when they, rebelling against Urban, elected an Anti-Pope, Clement VII.,—" Ah, foolish men, worthy of a thousand deaths ! " ; to the sinful Queen Giovanna of Naples; to the English free-lance, Sir John Hawkwood, who promised her that he would no longer kill Christians, but would go on the next Crusade; to say nothing of many other correspondents of all degrees, lay and religious, on subjects of public welfare or of their own salvation, or of that reformation of the Church which Catherine longed and struggled for till her strenuous life of vision and prayer and work ended at Rome, in the Pope's And :—