Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 096.djvu/433



London has been to the top of the Haymarket to see Robin's conjurings, and his wife's "second sight;" and the ingenuity of papas and mammas has been most painfully strained in their efforts to explain te their puzzled offspring the astounding doings of the necromancer and his spouse.

It would much edify the curious public to learn the crafty processes by which half-crowns are made to jump into an empty box, or live pigeons out of a thin portfolio; but the secret of such delusions is the stock-in-trade of Bosco, Houdin, Robin, and their fellow wizards; and though it would amuse the readers of the New Monthly to learn the simple means by which such apparent impossibilities are effected, they must remember that their wonder is the consequence of their ignorance, and that all the conjurors would starve if the rest of the world were as wise as they.

The secrets of "magie blanche, magie noire, et autre," shall therefore, for the present, retain their mystery; and the British nation, unenlightened, shall go on staring and gaping at delusions which most children could produce if only they once knew how.

There is, however, one branch of the science of recent professors of the black art which may, without injustice to their interests or rights, be examined and explained; for some of the less worthy among them have claimed for it the attention and respect which is due only to great discoveries.

"Double Vue," or "second sight," was first put forward in Paris some six or seven years ago, and was announced as a new evidence of the prodigious effects of mesmerism and magnetic influence. Performances of it were given, before astonished audiences, in the principal towns of France; and it was introduced into England (though only as an acknowledged trick) by Robert Houdin and his son. It has sinee become familiar to everybody from the admirable representations of M. and Madame Robin.

As "double vue" is simply a perfectly contrived mechanism of words, and has no more to do with "electric sympathy" than with the botany of the fixed stars, and as it is still largely employed to impose upon the credulity of those weak people who believe whatever they see or hear, it will be useful, as well as amusing, to set forth its principles and process.

It is, perhaps, prudent to observe that there may, very possibly, be a great deal of reality and valuable truth in what is generally known as "Mesmerism;" it is by no means intended to assert the contrary; but it is, at the same time, certain that most of the results of the so-called magnetism, somnambulism, and "lucidity," which have lately been exhibited in England, have been obtained by means almost exactly analogous to those about to be described ; and though of course it is not pretended that the key now published is the identical one employed by all professors of supernatural knowledge (it being obviously capable of great variation), yet the principle is the same throughout, and they who have