On the other hand, when the proper element of credulity offered--when the séance was comprised of the select few, emotional, sensitive, and hysterical as they ought to be--when the nervous lady sat beside the timid gentleman, and neuralgia confronted confirmed dyspepsia--the artist could afford to be daring, and might venture on flights that astounded even himself. What limit is there, besides, to contagional sympathy? Look at the crowded theatre, with its many-minded spectators, and see how one impulse, communicated occasionally by a hireling, will set the whole mass in a ferment of enthusiastic delight. Mark, too, how the smile, that plays like an eddy on a lake, deepens into a laugh, and is caught up by another and another, till the whole storm breaks out in a hearty ocean of merriment. These, if you like, are spirits; but the great masters of them are not men like Mr Home--they have ever been, and still are, of a very different order. Shakespeare and Molière and Cervantes knew something of the mode to summon these imps, and could make them come at their bidding besides.
Was it--to come back to what I started with--was it in any spirit of rivalry that the Papal Government drove Mr Home out of Home? Was it that, assuming to have a monopoly in the wares he dealt in, they would not stand a contraband trade? If so, their ground is at least defensible; for what chance of attraction would there be for the winking Virgin in competition with him who could “make a young lady ascend to the ceiling, and come slowly down like a parachute!”--a spiritual fact I have heard from witnesses who really, so far as character went, might challenge any incredulity.
If the Cardinals were jealous of the Conjuror, the thing is intelligible enough, and one must feel a certain degree of sympathy with the old-established firm that had spent such enormous sums, and made such stupendous preparations, when a pretender like this could come into competition with them, without any other properties than could be carried conveniently about him.
But let us be practical The Pope’s Government demanded of Mr Home that he should have no dealings with the Evil One during his stay at Rome. Now, I ask, what should we say of the efficacy of our police system if we were to hear that the Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard lived in nightly terror of the pickpockets who frequented that quarter, and came to Parliament with a petition to accord him some greater security against their depredations? Would not the natural reply be an exclamation of astonishment that he who could summon to his aid every alphabetical blue-coat that ever handled a truncheon, should deem any increased security necessary to his peace? And so, would I ask, of what avail these crowds of cardinals--these regiments of monsignori--these battalions of bishops, Arch and simple?--of what use all the incense and these chanted litanies, these eternal processions, and these saintly shin-bones borne in costly array--if one poor mortal, supposed to live on visiting terms with the Evil One, can strike such terror into the whole army led on by Infallibility?