The Earl of Home
about 1856 asked questions on the subject, and Home 'stated what my
connection with the family was.' Dunglas is the second title in the
family.]
In no instance, as far as I am informed, did anything extraordinary
occur in connection with Home which cannot be paralleled in the
accounts of Egyptian mediums in Iamblichus.[18]
[Footnote 18: The curious reader may consult my _Cock Lane and Common
Sense_, and _The Making of Religion_, for examples of savage,
mediaeval, ancient Egyptian, and European cases.]
In 1850 America was interested in 'The Rochester Knockings,' and the
case of the Fox girls, a replica of the old Cock Lane case which
amused Dr. Johnson and Horace Walpole. The Fox girls became
professional mediums, and, long afterwards, confessed that they were
impostors. They were so false that their confession is of no value as
evidence, but certainly they were humbugs. The air was full of talk
about them, and other people like them, when Home, aged seventeen, was
so constantly attended by noises of rappings that his aunt threw a
chair at him, summoned three preachers, an Independent, a Baptist, and
a Wesleyan (Home was then a Wesleyan), and plunged into conflict with
the devil.
Pages:
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214