THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

Stead and the SpiritsCONSIDERABLE attention has beenattracted and excitement created by the latest development ofMr. W. T. Stead's agency for communicant spirits which he callsJulia's Bureau. The supposed communications of Mr. Gladstone,Lord Beaconsfield and other distinguished politicians on the questionof the Budget have awakened much curiosity, ridicule and evenindignation. The ubiquitous eloquence of Lord Curzon has beenset flowing by what he considers this unscrupulous method ofpressing the august departed into the ranks of Liberal electioneeringagents, and he has penned an indignant letter to the papersin which there is much ornate Curzonian twaddle about sacredmysteries and the sanctities of the grave. If there is anything atall in the alleged communications from departed souls which havebecome of increasing interest to the European world, it ought tobe fairly established that the grave is nothing but a hole in theearth containing a rotting piece of matter with which the spirithas no farther connection, and that the spirit is very much thesame after death as before, takes much interest in small, trivialand mundane matters and is very far from regarding his newexistence as a solemn, sacred and mysterious affair. If so, wedo not see why we either should approach the departed spiritwith long and serious faces or with any more unusual feelingsthan curiosity, interest and eagerness to acquire knowledge ofthe other world and communication with those we knew andloved in this, in fact, the ordinary human and earthly feelingsexisting between souls sundered by time and space, but stillcapable of communication. But Lord Curzon still seems to belabouring under the crude Christian conception of the blesseddead as angels harping in heaven whose spotless plumes oughtnot to be roughly disturbed by human breath and of spiritualcommunication as a sort of necromancy, the spirit of Mr. Gladstonebeing summoned from his earthy bed and getting into itagain and tucking himself up comfortably in his coffin after Julia