General News. SPIRITUALISM is gaining ground in Australia. The Melbourne Daily Telegraph of Oct. 12th last, reports that Mr. Nayler delivered a lecture on the subject at the Mechanics Institute, Melbourne, and that he asserted the King of Bavaria the Emperor Napoleon, and Queen Victoria, to be Spiri tualists. SPEAKING IN UNKNOWN TONGUES.—It will be remembered how, several years ago, considerable excitement was caused in London, by the psychological phenomena of the speaking in unknown tongues, breaking out in one of the religious sects. The well-known mediumship of Mr. R. Cogman, 22, New-road Whitechapel-road, E., has recently undergone a change, and he is sometimes made to talk vigorously in some language which neither he, nor anybody else who has heard it, can understand, This apparently useless phase of mediumship, is not pleasant to Mr. Cogman himself, who says that the words seem to roll up from his stomach, and they hurt his throat as they come up. It is manifestly a language, and not gibberish which he is made to speak, and one linguist has expressed an opinion that it is probably a Polynesian language, as nearly if not all the words end in vowels. If the language can be identified, it will be capital proof that spiritual communica tions are sometimes very foreign to the mind of the medium but in the meantime this form of mediumship is unpleasant enough to Mr. Cogman, and void of instruction to the hearers TABLE SIGNALS AND THE ALPHABET.—A few weeks ago we pointed out the saving in time that might be effected when receiving messages by means of raps or tilts, if the alphabet were written in the following way, and a particular method of signalling adopted: I T H O E A 1 D R N S 2 M C U L 3 B P W G V 4 J K X Q V 5 Z 6 A friend at Norwich has written to say that he places this alphabet on the table, and asks the spirits to tilt first the number of the horizontal line in which the letter is placed then to make a pause, and afterwards to tilt the number of the letter itself according to the position it occupies in the line. Thus the calling over of the alphabet by anybody present is rendered unnecessary. At some American circles the spirits have been taught to signal by means of the Morse alphabet, as follows :— N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C D E F G H I J K L M The above alphabet consists of long and short dashes. A short dash means a little tilt of the table, and a long dash a great tilt; a pause of longer duration must be made to sepa rate the letters. This system is troublesome and requires patience to learn, but afterwards messages can be signalled with great rapidity by its aid. THE SPIRITUAL MAGAZINE.—The Spiritual Magazine is now ten years old, and is justly very elated by the fact. The : “The work goes bravely and editor says in the last number steadily on ; without hurry and without pause. It is true we have had our difficulties and discouragements; no work worth engaging in was ever without them ; but Time, which tries all things, has but deepened our convictions, and strengthened our resolves to persevere in the work in which we are engaged, and shown how impregnable are the founda tions of our faith, and taught us more fully how great the need of its corrective lessons, and how wide, and ever widening an horizon it opens out before us. Our work is, and has even been purely a labour of love. and therefore one whose rewards though unsought, have been the most satisfying and ample far higher in kind than any of an external sort could pos sibly be. Our contributors, too, one and all, have had and have sought no compensation other than arises from the satis faction of bearing testimony to the truth. We thank them on our own behalf and on that of our readers for their disin terested and efficient co-operation." PROPER NAMES AND TRANCE MEDIUMSHIP.—Last Friday Mr. J. M. Peebles, medium, and Consul at Trehizond to the Government of the United States, was present at the public séance at 15, Southampton-row, Holborn, when the subject of the difficulty of forcing proper names through trance media came up. He then said that he has noticed that there are three ways of controlling trance mediums—“ mechanically We have since asked psychologically, and inspirationally." him to define the ideas conveyed to his own mind by these three terms, since his large experience of spiritual phenomena in America, makes his testimony valuable. He says that sometimes the spirits have complete control of the body of the medium, moving fingers, arms, legs, muscles, and mouth with the greatest ease, without exercising much action, if any, upon the brain. This he calls mechanical control, and by it the spirits, he says, can bring out proper names with the greatest ease and accuracy. By psychological control, he means that wherein the medium speaks according to the will of the person or spirit controlling him. He (Mr. Peebles) has asked the spirits to leave a medium, and let him control the mediun himself by his will-power, and he has done so successfully but found that he must put his thoughts very clearly into words, to make the medium speak them. There is liability to error, in giving proper names by this method. By “ inspira tional” mediumship he means mediumship wherein great ideas lie dormant in the mind of the medium, and a high spirit or band of spirits, direct a stream of the spiritual forces upon the brain of the medium, and raise his intellect to a high and abnormal state of activity ; acting in fact somewhat as a blast of pure oxygen gas would act upon a dull coal fire. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to get out proper names with accuracy by this kind of mediumship. He thinks the mediumship of Mr. J. J. Morse to be a mixture of the psycho logical and the inspirational. The control of the physical frame of Mr. Morse is imperfect, for when he is made to write the lines run into each other, he has difficulty in folding tho paper when he tries to do so, and he has difficulty in carrying it to, and in seeing the person he wants to give it to.