As to his powers, they seem to have included every form of
mediumship in the highest degree--self-levitation, as witnessed
by hundreds of credible witnesses; the handling of fire, with the
power of conferring like immunity upon others; the movement
without human touch of heavy objects; the visible materialisation
of spirits; miracles of healing; and messages from the dead, such
as that which converted the hard-headed Scot, Robert Chambers,
when Home repeated to him the actual dying words of his young
daughter. All this came from a man of so sweet a nature and of
so charitable a disposition, that the union of all qualities
would seem almost to justify those who, to Home's great
embarrassment, were prepared to place him upon a pedestal above
humanity.

The genuineness of his psychic powers has never been
seriously questioned, and was as well recognised in Rome and
Paris as in London. One incident only darkened his career, and
it, was one in which he was blameless, as anyone who carefully
weighs the evidence must admit. I allude to the action taken
against him by Mrs. Lyon, who, after adopting him as her son and
settling a large sum of money upon him, endeavoured to regain,
and did regain, this money by her unsupported assertion that he
had persuaded her illicitly to make him the allowance. The facts
of his life are, in my judgment, ample proof of the truth of the
Spiritualist position, if no other proof at all had been
available. It is to be remarked in the career of this entirely
honest and unvenal medium that he had periods in his life when
his powers deserted him completely, that he could foresee these
lapses, and that, being honest and unvenal, he simply abstained