New success of the Spirit of Carcassonne.

The rapping Spirit of Carcassonne maintains its reputation and proves, by the success it obtains in the various competitions in which it presents itself as a candidate, the incontestable merit of its excellent fables and poems. After having won the first prize, the golden Wild Rose, at the Academy of the Floral Games of Toulouse, it has just obtained a bronze medal in the competition of Nimes. The Courrier de l'Aude says of it: “This distinction is all the more flattering as the competition was not restricted to fables and poems, but embraced all literary works.”

Surely this new triumph presages others, for the future, for it is probable that this Spirit will continue there. Decidedly it is coming to become a formidable competitor. What will the incredulous say? What they already said at the time of the success of Toulouse: that Mr. Joubert is a poet who has the fancy of hiding himself under the mantle of a Spirit. But those who know Mr. Joubert know that he is not a poet; and even were he one, the manner of obtaining it by typtology, in the presence of witnesses, removes any doubt, unless one supposes that he hides himself, not under the table, but in the table. Be that as it may, facts of this nature cannot fail to draw the attention of serious persons and to hasten the moment when the relations between the visible and invisible worlds will be admitted as one of the laws of Nature. Once this law is recognized, philosophy and science will necessarily enter upon a new path. Providence, which wills the triumph of Spiritism, because Spiritism is one of the great stages of human progress, employs various means to make it penetrate into the spirit of the masses, means appropriate to the tastes and dispositions of each one, seeing that what convinces some does not convince others. Here are the academic successes of a poet Spirit; there are tangible phenomena provoked or spontaneous manifestations; yonder are purely moral effects; then, cures that formerly would have passed as miraculous, confounding vulgar science; artistic productions by persons strangers to the arts. There are the cases of obsession and of subjugation which, proving the impotence of Science in these kinds of afflictions, will lead the learned to recognize an extra-material action. Finally, have we need to add that the adversaries of the Spiritist idea are, in the hands of Providence, one of the most powerful means of popularization? for it is quite evident that without the repercussion of their attacks, Spiritism would be less widespread than it is. God, in convincing them of their impotence, willed that they themselves should serve its triumph. (See the Review of June 1863).