The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

176 THE IJll'BOTVISATORE,
of the same character, have been the familiar practice of
the ancients, and a constantly attending evidence of mental
materiality in all times 4nd in all plaus where the
physical materiality of religion or science did not proscribe
its study. On the continent of Europe and in countries
where schools of philosophy have been established, these
sciences, especially the two last, have been identified with
every search into the curiously abstruse phenomena of
nature. It is English and Americans alone who have not
recognized their manifestations; and therefore their exhibition
as portions of the phenomena of spiritualism has
appeared as a new revelation of nature to them. The
German, Bohemian, and French 8avans ridicule the idea
of any new revelation in these sciences, while every nation
of the East is familiar with their practice, if not with their
identity with the agency of departed spirits.
Having said thus much, we need add no more in apology
for antedating the ducovery of the application of
clairvoyance in America, by introducing scenes, the details
of which are derived from actual fact, although the time,
place, and names of the actors are all disguised in the
license of fictional composition.
The moon was gleaming brightly over the camp-ground
of the Hungarians, and picturing her fair face on many a
gleaming bayonet point as the moveless sentinels returned
the slight salute which Ernest Rossi gave them, passing
from point to point ere he gained the remote quarter
where he shared with a young lieutenant of his own age
the shelter of a rude tent. The quiet scene, where slumbering
masses lay outstretched in that peaceful rest which
might know but one more earthly waking; the sight of
so many groups of noble forms and gallant hearts all press-