The de Bunsens And Mesmerism

This choice bit, from Caroline Fox's journal for 1851:

The Bunsens have been deep in Mesmerism. The Chevalier's theory of the mesmeric power is, that it silences the sensuous and awakens the super-sensuous part of our nature ; a sort of faint shadow of Death, which does the same work thoroughly and for ever. George de Bunsen afterwards gave me some of his own mesmeric experiences ; he is a rigid reasoner and extorter of facts. I forget the three absolute laws which he has satisfactorily established, but here is an experience of his own: When he went to college and studied Greek history, he learnt that a book of Aristotle's on the politics of his own time was lost. He mused on this fact, and pined after the missing book, which would have shed such light on his studies. It became a perpetual haunting thought, and soon his air castle was the finding of this book. He would be for ever romancing on the subject, getting into a monastery, finding it amidst immense masses of dusty books and parchments, then making plans for circumventing the monks, rescuing the treasure, &c., &c. Just after this excitement had been at its maximum, he received a letter from a friend, telling that he had been consulting a clairvoyante about him, who had seen him groping amongst dusty parchments in the dark. It seems to have established a firm faith in his mind in the communication of spirit with spirit as the real one in mesmerism. His opposite class of facts was thus illustrated : When his father was with his King and our Queen at Stolzenfels, he wanted to know something about him, and accordingly mesmerised a clairvoyante, and sent her in spirit to the castle. "Do you see my father?" "No, he is not there." "Then go and look for him." At length she announced having found him sitting with an elderly lady. George de Bunsen could not conceive him anywhere but at Stolzenfels, till the thought struck him, he may have gone to Karlsruhe to see his sister ; so he asked, " It is a very neat, regular-looking town, is it not, and the houses new ? " and asked particulars of the room in which he thought his aunt likely to be found. "No, nothing of the sort; an old town, an old house, and an old lady." She gave many details which he could make nothing of, and gave up the geographical problem in despair. In a few days a letter from his father arrived, saying that the King had taken a fancy to go somewhere in a steamer, and had asked Bunsen to accompany him. This brought him within a moderate distance of another sister, whom he had previously had no idea of visiting, and so he was actually with her at the time of the clairvoyance.

In the passage, I believe the title Chevalier refers to Christian von Bunsen, not to Ernest, who was present at the event Fox is documenting, and who sang "like a nightingale" with his brother at that event.