The Atherstone, Nuneaton, and Warwickshire Times. — 1886-06-26 (Atherstone, Warwickshire, England)

SPIRITUALIST.  There died at Auteuil on Momlay • man who certainly does not denerve to be called remarkable, but who at one time sticceeded in making a great sensation, and achieved the more palpable advantage of eisty thousand pounds. The money had to be refunded, and the impression produced upon the public mind wee but ephemeral. Yet if Mr. Daniel Douglas Hume was no more than a nine-daps' wonder, and if at least nine of them were wasted on him, he deserve • plowing notice. lees for bisneelf than for the experiments on human gullibility which he successfully tried. It was in 1868 that Mr. Home leapt or crawled into a disagreeable sort of noterity. The eighteen years which have sinoe elapsed have taken the gloss off epiritlialism, and nowadays the "medium" is regarded with no more interest than a fortune-teller or a pickpocket Even the masterly portrait of Mr. Sludge, drawn with ruthlees eeverity and consummate skill by the greatest dramatic poet of the age, has become almost obsolute, and the reader wonder. how Mr. Browning can have spared even a moment's thought for such a thing. Perhapa a society wt ich tolerates " F.ateric Buddhists," and believes that it believes in "astral bado. ' is not entitled to be pharisaical over memory of Mr. Home. There are tho'e fancy themselves superior to the Chi,: faith and can yet accept implicitly meanest superstition promoted by the grocer: fraud. They certainly have no right to throw atones at the reputation of Mr. Home, or his dupe Mrs. Lyon.. Mr. Home has been . _ . .  gathered to Apollonins and Cawlaiostro. We seek not to yes his ashes. Was he not the  "guest of crowned heads I" And diii he n"o's "reside at the Emperor of Rumba's Paime —which, we presume. is not an euphemism for the Fortress of Peter and Paul. Perhaps be was not a oonaciencions impoeter. It is easier for a man to deceive himself than to be always playing a part from the time he rises in the morning to the time when he lies down in his bed at night. •• There may be coarse hypocrites." says George Eliot, who consciously effect beliefs and emotions tor the sake or gulling the world," implying that there probably are not. We do not use this language of thieve. and forgets. But we are willing, for our put, to admit its justice in the case of Mr. Home.  Mr. Home's principal appearance was in the Court of Chancery, when he was fortyfour years of age. At Lincoln's Inn, before the late Vice-chancellor GilTud, he attained his apogee. It cost him sixty thousand pounds, hut it was the summit of his earthly fame, and he possibly enjoyed it, especiaPy as the sum in question had been very easily earned. It may be presumed that spirits do not take away other people's umbrellas in moments of mental (and physical) abstraction, as it is said by calcumnions laymen that Bishops sometimes do. Mrs. Lyon visited the spiritual athenaeum in order to hear news of her husband, who had died in 1859, and had previously informed her that a great change would come in seven years after his death. Mrs. Lyon interpreted this deck saying to mean that she herself would die in 1866. Bat a "female photogripher " told her she was quite wrong, and advised her to call on Mr. Home, Mr. Home was equal to the OCCHIIion. He produced at• message." MB nauseously vulgar and inane as all such messiest are. We do not know haw •• believers" explain the hopeless idiocy of spiritual communications. To other persons it seems obeious that they are adopted by p-ofessional charlatans to the intelligence of such as seek their aid. Certainly, as Profeesor Huxley once pia it, spiritualisana if true, would be a strong argument against suicide. " Better live a crossing-sweeper," said Mr. Huxley, than die and be hired by a medium at • guinea • night to talk twaddle." In a little while, however, the spirit of Mr. Lyon, while still using the same sickening jargon, became more practical. " I love Daniel." it said : "be is to be my an— therefore yours." Now Daniel, was Mr. Home's Christian name, and Mr. Home explained the meaning of this uttenanoe from another world to be that twenty-four thousand pounds' worth of stock should he invested for hits in the Bank of England. Soon afterwards the excellent and pious Home declared it to be the spirit's will that Mrs. Lyon should leave him everything she 11088(,geti, which she did. the am elm beings hundred and fifty thousand pounds. stxty thousands pounds she gave him in her lifetime, and this, when she came to her sens.. he had to refund.  For Mrs. Lyon was ei untivsteful to her spiritual instructor im to tiles Odi n Chancery against hint Mr. Ifoine ii is criaueseitined by the late Lord Justice