Mystic London; or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis

It has been repeatedly urged upon me on previous occasions, and also during the progress of these sheets through the press, that I should make a clean breast of my own belief or...

It has been said--perhaps more satirically than seriously--that theology could not get on without its devil. Certain it is that wherever there has been a vivid realization of th...

One half of the world believes the other half to be mad; and who shall decide which moiety is right, the reputed lunatics or the supposed sane, since neither party can be unprej...

I was walking the other day in one of the pleasant western suburbs, and rashly sought a short cut back; when, as is generally the case, I found that the longer would have been m...

At the head of social heresies, and rapidly beginning to take rank as a religious heresy as well, I have no hesitation in placing modern Spiritualism. Those who associate this l...

When the bulk of the London Press elects to gush over anything or anybody, there are at all events, primâ facie grounds for believing that there is something to justify such a c...

A distinct and well-marked epoch is reached in the history of any particular set of opinions when its adherents begin to organize and confer, and the individual tenets become th...

Of all the protean forms of misery that meet us in the bosom of that "stony-hearted stepmother, London," there is none that appeals so directly to our sympathies as the spectacl...

Among the various qualifications for the festivities of Christmastide and New Year, there is one which is, perhaps, not so generally recognised as it might be. Some of us are we...

Notwithstanding my previous experiences among the Western tribes of Bedouins whose locale is the Desert of the Seven Dials, I must confess to considerable strangeness when first...

In those days--happily now gone by--when public strangulation was the mode in Merry England, there was always an evident fascination appertaining to the spot where, on the morro...

When a man's whole existence has resolved itself into hunting up strange people and poking his nose into queer nooks and corners, he has a sorry time of it in London during Augu...

Alarmed at the prospect of "a free breakfast table" in a sense other than the ordinary one--that is, a breakfast table which should be minus the necessary accompaniment of bread...

In a series of papers like the present it is necessary, every now and then, to pause and apologize, either for the nature of the work in general, or for certain particulars in i...

I have often thought that an interesting series of articles might be written on the subject of "London out of Church," dealing with the manners and customs of those people who p...

There is no more engaging or solemn subject of contemplation than the decay of a religious belief. Right or wrong, by that faith men have lived and died, perhaps for centuries;...

Reading my _Figaro_ the other day--as I hope I need not state it is my custom devoutly to do--I came upon the following passage in the review of a book called "Psychopathy; or,...

For several years--in fact ever since my first acquaintance with these "occult" matters whereinto I am now such a veteran investigator--my great wish has been to become practica...

It is very marvellous to observe the number of strange and unexpected combinations that are continually occurring in that moral kaleidoscope we call society. I do not suppose th...

There never was a time when, on all sorts of subjects, from Mesmerism to Woman's Rights, the ladies had so much to say for themselves. There is an ancient heresy which tells us...

When Sydney Smith, from the depths of his barbarian ignorance, sought to rise to the conception of a Puseyite, he said in substance much as follows:--"I know not what these sill...

In the previous chapter an account was given of the Arabs inhabiting that wonderful "square mile" in East London, which has since grown to be so familiar in men's mouths. The la...

"Attracted by the prominence recently given to the subject of Spiritualism in the _Times_, and undeterred by that journal's subsequent recantation, or the inevitable scorn of th...

The connexion of modesty with merit is proverbial, though questioned by Sydney Smith, who says their only point in common is the fact that each begins with an--m. Modesty, howev...

Some years ago I contributed to the columns of a daily paper an article on Spirit Faces, which was to me the source of troubles manifold. In the first place, the inquirers into...

"How it's done" is the question which, in the words of Dr. Lynn, we want to settle with reference to his own or kindred performances, and, still more, in the production of the p...

"Among the recent utterances of spiritualistic organs is one to the effect that 'manifestations' come in cycles--in 'great waves,' I believe was the actual expression; and of th...

I was quietly fiddling away one evening in the Civil Service band at King's College, as was my custom while my leisure was larger than at present, when the gorgeous porter of th...

Who has ever penetrated beneath the surface of clerical society--meaning thereby the sphere of divinities (mostly female) that doth hedge a curate of a parish--without being sen...

Mr. Spurgeon a short time since oracularly placed it on record that, having hitherto deemed Spiritualism humbug, he now believes it to be the devil. This sudden conversion is, o...

Amongst those customs "more honoured in the breach than the observance" which are rapidly being stamped out by the advancing steps of civilization, are the institutions which we...

There is no doubt that at the present moment the British baby is assuming a position amongst us of unusual prominence and importance. That he should be an institution is inevita...

Visions of Oriental splendour and magnificence float across the imagination at the mere mention of the storied East. Soaring above all the routine of ordinary existence and the...

There is something very Arcadian and un-Cockney-like in the idea of linnet-singing in Lock's Fields. Imagination pictures so readily the green pastures and the wild bird's song,...

There is something very weird and strange in that exceptional avocation which takes one to-day to a Lord Mayor's feast or a croquet tournament, to-morrow to a Ritualistic servic...

Boxing-day in the London streets, and especially a wet Boxing-day, can scarcely fail to afford us some tableaux vivants illustrative of English metropolitan life. In a metaphori...

I am about for once to depart from my usual custom of narrating only personal experiences, and in this and the two following chapters print the communications of a friend who sh...

Mr. James Burns, the spirited proprietor of the Progressive Library, Southampton Row, having devoted himself to the study of phrenology, has for some time past held a series of...

There is a story called "Travellers' Wonders" in that volume which used to be the delight of our childhood, when the rising generation was more easily amused and not quite so wi...

In a volume bearing the title of _Mystic London_ it would seem perchance that Spiritualism, as par excellence the modern mystery, should stand first. I have thought it better, h...

Time was when it was accepted as an axiom that young ladies had no object in life but to be ornamental--no mission but matrimony. The "accomplishments" were the sum total of a g...

In this title, be it distinctly understood, no reference is intended to those anti-Æsculapian persons who, from time to time, sacrifice to Moloch among the Essex marshes. It is...

There are few more exhilarating things, on a breezy spring morning, than a spurt across that wonderful rus in urbe--Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park--for a prospective dip in th...

The present age, denounced by some ungenial censors as the age of shams, may be described by more kindly critics as emphatically an age of "shows." Advancing from the time-honou...

There is no doubt that the "Woman's Rights" question is going ahead with gigantic strides, not only in social and political, but also in intellectual matters. Boys and girls--or...

Unromantic as it sounds to say it, I know of few things more disgusting than to revisit one's old school after some twenty or thirty years. Let that dubious decade still remain...