Part 10

In the East, on the contrary, the usual form is to employ a young boy, taken at haphazard from the street, and to force him to gaze intently at Indian ink poured into the hollow of the hand, at molten lead, wax poured into cold water, the paten of a priest or a shining sword, with which several men have been killed. General readers will recall the famous boy of Cairo, who saw thus, in the dark, glittering surface of ink, the great Nelson--curiously enough as in a mirror, for he reported the image to be without the left arm and to wear the left sleeve across the breast, while the great admiral had lost his right arm and wore the right sleeve suspended. Burke, in his amusing "Anecdotes of the Aristocracy," etc. (I. p. 124), relates how the "magician" Magraubin in Alexandria appeared with a ten-year-old Coptic boy before the officers of H. M's. ship Vanguard. After burning much incense and uttering many unintelligible formulas he rolled a paper in the shape of a cornucopia, filled it with ink, and bade the boy tell them what he saw. As usual, he saw first a broom sweeping, and was thoroughly frightened. When a young midshipman asked him to inquire what would be his fate, he described instantly a sailor with gold on the shoulders, fighting against Indians till he fell dead; then came friends and buried him under a tree on a hill. The midshipman, Croker, returned home, abandoned the sea, and became a landowner in one of the midland counties of England, where he often laughed at the absurd prediction. Long years afterwards, however, when there was a sudden want of seamen, he was recalled into service and sent on a long cruise. He rose to become a captain, and while in command of a frigate fell, upon the island of Tongataboo, in a skirmish with the natives, whereupon he was interred there under a lofty palm-tree which stood on a commanding eminence. The same author repeats (I. p. 357) the well-known story of Lady Eleanor Campbell, which is in substance as follows:

Poor Lady Primrose, a daughter of the second Earl of Loudoun, had for years endured the saddest lot that can befall a noble woman: she had been bound by marriage to a husband whose dissolute habits and untamable passions inspired her with fear, while his short love for her had long since turned into bitter hatred. At last he formed the resolution to rid himself forever of his wife, whose very piety and gentleness were a standing reproof to his villainy. By a rare piece of good luck she was awake when he came from his deep potations, a bare sword in his hand, and ready to kill her; she saw him in the mirror before which she happened to be sitting, and escaped by jumping from a window and hastening to her husband's own mother. After this attempt at her life he disappeared, no one knew whither, but the poor lady, forsaken and yet not a widow, could not prevent her thoughts from dwelling, by day and by night, year after year, upon the image of her unfortunate husband and his probable fate in foreign lands. It was, therefore, not without a pardonable interest that she heard, one winter, people talk of a foreigner who had suddenly appeared in Canongate and created a great sensation throughout Edinburgh by his success in showing to inquiring visitors what their absent friends were doing. Her intense anxiety about her husband and her natural desire to ascertain whether she was still a wife or already a widow, combined to tempt her to call on the magician; she went, therefore, with a friend, both disguised in the tartans and plaids of their maids. Before they reached the obscure alley to which they had been directed, they lost their way, and were standing helpless, exposed to the cold, stormy weather, when suddenly a deep voice said to them: "You are mistaken, ladies, this is not your way!" "How so?" asked Lady Primrose, addressing a tall, gentlemanly looking man, with a stern face of deep olive color, in which a pair of black eyes shone like stars, and dressed in an elegant but foreign-looking costume. The answer came promptly: "You are mistaken in your way, because it lies yonder, and in your disguise, because it does not conceal you from him who can lift the veil of the Future!" Then followed a short conversation in which the stranger made himself known as the magician whom they were about to visit, and, by some words whispered into the lady's ear, as a man who not only recognized her as Lady Primrose, but who also was perfectly well acquainted with all the intimate details of her history. Amazed and not a little frightened, the two ladies accepted his courteous invitation to follow him, entered the house, and were shown into a simply furnished room, where the stranger begged them to wait for him, till all was ready for the ceremony by which alone he could satisfy their curiosity. After a short pause he reappeared in the traditional costume of a magician, a long tunic of black velvet which left his breast, arms, and hands free, and requested Lady Primrose to follow him into the adjoining room. After some little hesitation she left her companion and entered the room, which was perfectly plain, offering nothing to attract the eye save the dark curtains before the windows, an old-fashioned arm-chair, and a kind of altar of black marble, over which a large and beautiful mirror was suspended. Before the latter stood a small oven, in which some unknown substance burnt with a blue light, which alone feebly lighted up the room. The visitor was requested to sit down, to invoke help from above, and to abstain from uttering a sound, if she valued her life and that of the magician. After some simple but apparently most important ceremonies, the magician threw a pinch of red powder upon the flame, which instantly changed into bright crimson, while a few plaintive sounds were heard and red clouds seemed to rise before the mirror, broken at short intervals by vivid flashes of lightning. As the mist dispersed the glass exhibited to the lady's astonished eye the interior of a church, first in vague outlines undulating as passing clouds seemed to set them in motion, but soon distinctly and clear in the minutest details. Then a priest appeared with his acolytes at the altar, and a wedding party was seen standing before him, among whom Lady Primrose soon recognized her faithless husband. Before she could recover from her painful surprise she saw a stranger hastily entering the church, wrapped in his cloak; at the moment when the priest, who had been performing the usual ceremony, was about to join the hands of the couple before him, the unknown dropped his cloak and rushed forward. Lady Primrose saw it was her own brother, who drew his sword and attacked her husband; suddenly a thrust was made by the latter which threatened to be fatal, and the poor lady cried out: "Great God, they will kill my brother!" She had no sooner uttered these words than the whole scene in the mirror became dim and blurred, the clouds rose again and formed dense masses, and soon the glass resumed its ordinary brightness and the flame its faint blue color. The magician, apparently much excited, informed the lady that all was over, and that they had escaped a most fearful danger, incurred by her imprudence in speaking. He would accept no reward, stating that he had merely wished to oblige her, but would not have dared do so much, if he had foreseen the peril to which they had both been exposed. Lady Primrose, accompanied by her friend, reached home in a state of extreme excitement, but immediately wrote down the hour and the day of her strange adventure, with a full account of all she had seen in the magic mirror. The paper thus drawn up she sealed in the presence of her companion and hid it in a secret drawer. Not long afterwards her brother returned from the Continent, but for some time refused to speak at all of her husband; it was only after being long and urgently pressed by the poor lady, that he consented to tell her, how he had heard of Lord Primrose's intention to marry a very wealthy lady in Amsterdam, how by mere chance he had entered the church where the marriage ceremony was to be performed, and how he had come out just in time to prevent his brother-in-law from committing bigamy. They had fought for a few minutes without doing each other any injury, and after being separated, he had remained, while Lord Primrose had disappeared, no one knew whither. Upon comparing dates and circumstances, it appeared that the mirror had presented the scene faithfully in all its details; but the ceremony had taken place in the morning, the visit to the magician at night, so that the latter had, after all, only revealed an event already completed. There remains, however, the difficulty of accounting for the means by which in those days--about 1700--an event in Amsterdam could possibly have been known in Edinburgh, the night of the same day on which it occurred.

In France, under Louis XIV., a glass of water was most frequently used as a mirror in which to read the future. The Duke of St. Simon reports that the Duke of Orleans was thus informed that he would one day become Regent of France. The Abbe Choisy mentions a remarkable occurrence which took place at the house of the Countess of Soissons, a niece of the great Cardinal Mazarin. Her husband was lying sick in the province of Champagne, and she was anxious to know whether she ought to undertake the long and perilous journey to him or not; in this dilemma a friend offered to send for a diviner, who should tell her the issue of her husband's illness. He brought her a little girl, five years old, who, in the presence of a number of distinguished persons of both sexes, began, under the nobleman's direction, to tell what she saw in a glass of water. When she began by saying that the water looked as if it were troubled, the poor lady was so frightened that her friend suggested he would ask the spirit to show the child not her husband himself, but a white horse, if the Count was dead, and a tiger if he was alive. Then he asked the girl what she saw now? "Ah!" she cried out at once, "what a pretty white horse!" The company, however, refused to be content with one trial; five times in succession the test was altered, and in such a manner that the little child could not possibly be aware of the choice, but in each case the answer was unfavorable to the absent Count. It appeared, afterwards, that he had really died a day or two before the consultation. One of the most striking cases of such exceptional endowment was a Frenchman, Cahagnet, who in his work, Lumiere des Morts (Paris, 1851), claimed to see remote objects and persons. He used to make a mental effort, upon which his eyes became fixed and he saw objects at a great distance, reading the title and discerning the precise shape of books in public libraries, or watching absent friends engaged in unusual occupations! This state of clairvoyance, however, never lasted more than sixty seconds, nor could he ever see the same object twice--limitations of his endowment which secured for him greater credit than he would have otherwise possessed. Occasionally he would assist the effort he had to make by fixedly gazing at some shining object, such as a small flaw in a mirror or a glass. Another restraint under which he labored, and which yet increased the faith of others, consisted in this, that such sights as presented themselves spontaneously to him proved invariably to be true, while the visions which he purposely evoked were not unfrequently unfounded in fact.

Among recent magicians of this class, a Parisian, Edmond, is perhaps the most generally known. He is a man without education, who leads a life of asceticism, and is said to equal the famous Lennormand in his ability to guess the future by gazing intently at certain cards. The latter, although not free from the charge of charlatanism, possessed undoubtedly the most extraordinary talent of divining the thoughts of those who came to consult her, and an almost marvelous tact in connecting the knowledge thus obtained with the events of the day. She began her career already as a young girl at a convent-school, where her playmates asked her laughing who would be the next abbess, and she mentioned an entirely unknown lady from Picardy as the one that would be appointed by the king. Contrary to all expectations the favorite candidates were put aside, and the unknown lady appointed, although eighteen months elapsed before her prophecy was fulfilled. As early as 1789 she predicted the overthrow of the French government, and during the Revolution her reputation was such that the first men of the land came to consult her. The unfortunate princess Lamballe and Mirabeau, Mme. de Stael and the king himself, all appeared in her stately apartments. Her efforts to save the queen, to whose prison she managed to obtain access, were unsuccessful; but when her aristocratic connections caused her to be imprisoned herself, even the noble and virtuous Mme. Tallien sought her society. The new dynasty, whose members were almost without exception more or less superstitious, as it is the nature of all Corsicans, consulted her frequently; the great Napoleon came to her in 1793, when he was disgusted with France, and on the point of leaving the country; he sent for her a second time in 1801 to confer with her at Malmaison, and the fair Josephine actually conceived for her a deep and lasting attachment. Afterwards, however, she became as obnoxious to the Emperor as his inveterate enemy, Mme. de Stael; she was repeatedly sent to prison because she predicted failures, as in the case of the projected invasion of England, or because she revealed the secret plans of Napoleon. The Emperor Alexander of Russia also consulted her in 1818, and of the Prussian king, Frederick William III., it is at least reported that he visited her incognito. After the year 1830 she appeared but rarely in her character as a diviner; she had become old and rich, and did not perhaps wish to risk her world-wide reputation by too numerous revelations. She maintained, however, for the rest of her life the most intimate relations with many eminent men in France, and when she died, in 1843, seventy-one years old, leaving to her nephew a very large fortune, her gorgeous funeral was attended by a host of distinguished personages, including even men of such character as Guizot. And yet she also had not disdained to use the most absurd and apparently childish means in order to produce the state of ecstasy in which she alone could divine: playing-cards fancifully arranged, the white of an egg, the sediment of coffee, or the lines in the hand of her visitors. At the same time, however, she used the information which she casually picked up or purposely obtained from her great friends with infinite cunning and matchless tact, so that the better informed often asked her laughingly if her familiar spirit Ariel was not also known as Talleyrand, David, or Geoffroy? The charlatanism which often and most justly rendered her proceedings suspicious to sober men, was in fact part of her system; she knew perfectly well the old doctrine, mundus vult decipi, and did not hesitate to flatter the fondness of all Frenchmen for a theatrical mise en scene.

Dryden's famous horoscope of his younger son Charles was probably nothing more than one of those rare but striking coincidences of which the laws of probability give us the exact value. He loved the study of astrology and never omitted to calculate the nativity of his children as soon as they were born. In the case of Charles he discovered that great dangers would threaten him in his eighth, twenty-third, and thirty-third or forty-third year; and sure enough those years produced serious troubles. On his eighth birthday he was buried under a falling wall; on the twenty-third he fell in Rome from an old tower, and on his thirty-third he was drowned in the Thames.

Divination by means of bones--generally the shoulder bones of rams--is quite common among the Mongols and Tongoose, and the custom seems to have remained unchanged through centuries. For Purchas already quotes from the "Journal" of the Minorite monk Guillaume de Rubruguis, written in 1255, a description of the manner in which the Great Khan of Mongolia tried to ascertain the result of any great enterprise which he might contemplate. Three shoulder bones of rams were brought to him, which he held for some time in his hands, while deeply meditating on the subject; then he threw them into the fire. After they were burnt black they were again laid before him and examined; if they had cracked lengthways the omen was favorable, if crossways the enterprise was abandoned. Almost identically the same process is described by the great traveler Pallas, who witnessed it repeatedly and obtained very startling communications from the Mongol priests. But here also violent dancing, narcotic perfumes, and wild cries had to aid in producing a trance. The Laplanders have, perhaps, the most striking magic powers which seem to be above suspicion. At least we are assured by every traveler who has spent some time among them, from Caspar Peucer ("Commentaries," etc., Wittebergae, 1580, p. 132) down to the tourists of our days ("Six Months in Lapland," 1870), that they not only see persons at the greatest distance, but furnish minute details as to their occupation or surroundings. After having invoked the aid of his gods the magician falls down like a dead man and remains in a state of trance for twenty-four hours, during which foreigners are always warned to have him carefully guarded, "lest the demons should carry him off." During this time the seer maintains that his "soul opens the gates of the body and moves about freely wherever it chooses to go." When he returns to consciousness he describes accurately and minutely the persons about whom he has promised to give information. In the East Indies it is well known clairvoyance has existed from time immemorial, and the kind of trance which consists in utter oblivion of actual life and perfect abstraction of thought from this world is there carried out to perfection. The faithful believer sits or lies down in any position he may happen to prefer for the moment, fixes his eyes intently upon the point of his nose, mutters the word One, and finally beholds God with an inner sense, in the form of a white brilliant light of ineffable splendor. Some of these ascetics pass from a simple trance to a state of catalepsy, in which their bodies become insensible to pain--but this kind of ecstasis is not accompanied by divination.

Another branch of divination conquers the difficulty which distance in space opposes to our ordinary perceptions. In all such cases it is of course not our hearing or smelling which suddenly becomes miraculously powerful, but another magic power, which causes impressions on the mind like those produced by the eye and the ear. The oldest well-authenticated instance of magic hearing is probably that of Hyrcanus, the high-priest of the Jews, who while burning incense in the temple, heard a voice saying: "Now Antiochus has been slain by thy sons." The news was immediately proclaimed to the people, and some time afterward messengers came announcing that Antiochus had thus perished as he approached Samaria, which he desired to relieve from the besieging army under the sons of Hyrcanus (Josephus, "Antiq." lxiii. ch. 19). A still more striking instance is also reported by a trustworthy author (Theophylactos Simocata, l. viii. ch. 13). A man in Alexandria, Egypt, saw, as he returned home about midnight, the statues before the great temple moved aside from their seats, and heard them call out to him that the Emperor had been slain by Phocas (602). Thoroughly frightened he hastened to the authorities, reporting his adventure; he was carried before Peter, the Viceroy of Egypt, and ordered to keep silence. Nine days later, however, the official news came that the Emperor had been murdered. It is evident that the knowledge of the event came to him in some mysterious way, and for an unknown purpose; but that what he saw and heard, was purely the work of his imagination, which became the vehicle of the revelation.

There exists a long, almost unbroken series of similar phenomena through the entire course of modern history, of which but a few can here find space. Richelieu tells us in his Memoires ("Coll. Michaud--Poryoulat," 2d series, vii. p. 23), that the Prevost des Marechaux of the city of Pithiviers was one night engaged in playing cards in his house, when he suddenly hesitated, fell into a deep musing, and then, turning to his companions, said solemnly: "The king has just been murdered!" These words made a deep impression upon all the members of the assembly, which afterward changed into genuine terror, when it became known that on that same evening, at the same hour of four o'clock, P. M., Henry IV. had really been murdered. Nor was this a solitary case, for on the same day a girl of fourteen, living near the city of Orleans, had asked her father, Simonne, what a king was? Upon his replying that it was the man who commanded all Frenchmen, she had exclaimed: "Great God, I have this moment heard somebody tell me that he was murdered!" It seems that the minds of men were just then everywhere deeply interested in the fate of the king, and hence their readiness to anticipate an event which was no doubt very generally apprehended; even from abroad numerous letters had been received announcing his death beforehand. In the two cases mentioned this excitement had risen to divination. The author of the famous Zauber Bibliothek, Horst, mentions (i. p. 285) that his father, a well-known missionary, was once traveling in company with the renowned Hebrew scholar Wiedemann, while a third companion, ordinarily engaged with them in converting Jews, was out at sea. It was a fine, bright day; no rain or wind visible even at a distance. Wiedemann had walked for some time in deep silence, apparently engaged in praying, when suddenly he stopped and said: "Monsieur Horst, take your diary and write down, that our companion is at this moment exposed to great peril by water. The storm will last till night and the danger will be fearful; but the Lord will mercifully preserve him and the vessel, and no lives will be lost. Write it down carefully, so that when our friend returns, we may jointly thank God for His great mercy." The missionary did so, and when the three friends were united once more their diaries were compared, and it appeared that the statement had been exact in all its details.

Clairvoyance, as far as it implies the seeing of persons or the witnessing of events at a great distance, is counted among the most frequent gifts of early saints, and St. Augustine mentions a number of remarkable cases. Not only absent friends and their fate were thus beheld by privileged Christians, but even the souls of departing saints were seen as they were borne to heaven by angelic hosts. The same exceptional gifts were apparently granted to the early Jesuit fathers; thus Xavier once saw distinctly a whole naval expedition sailing against the pirates of Malacca and defeating them in a great naval battle. He had himself caused the fleet to be sent from Sumatra, and remained during the whole time in a trance. He had fallen down unconscious at the foot of the altar, where he had been fervently praying for a long time, and during his unconsciousness he saw not only a general image of what was occurring at a distance of 200 Portuguese leagues, but every detail, so that upon recovering from the trance he could announce to his brethren the good news of a great victory, of the loss of only three lives, and of the very day and hour on which the official report would be received (Orlandini, l. vii. ch. 84). Queen Margaret, not always reliable, still seems to state well-known facts only, when she tells us in her famous Memoires (Paris, 1658) the visions of her mother, the great Queen Catherine de Medici. The latter was lying dangerously ill at Metz, and King Charles, a sister, and another brother of Margaret of Valois, the Duke of Lorraine, and a number of eminent persons of both sexes, were assembled around what was believed to be her death-bed. She was delirious, and suddenly cried out: "Just see how they run! my son is victorious. Great God! raise him up, he has fallen! Do you see the Prince of Conde there? He is dead." Everybody thought she was delirious, but on the next evening a messenger came bringing the news of the battle of Jarnac, and as he mentioned the main events, she calmly turned to her children, saying: "Ah! I knew; I saw it all yesterday!" It seems as if in times of great and general expectation, when bloody battles are fought, and the destiny of empires hangs in the scales, the minds of the masses become so painfully excited that the most sensitive among them fall into a kind of trance, and then perceive, by magic powers of divination, what is taking place at great distances. This over-excitement is, moreover, not unknown to men of the highest character and the greatest erudition. Calvin, whose stern, clear-sighted judgment abhorred all superstition, nevertheless once saw a battle between Catholics and Protestants with all its details. Swedenborg, whose religious enthusiasm never interfered with his scrupulous candor, saw more than once with his mind's eye events occurring at a distance of hundreds of miles. His vision of the great fire at Stockholm is too well authenticated to admit of doubt. Not less reliable are the accounts of another vision he had at Amsterdam in the presence of a large company. While engaged in animated conversation, he suddenly changed countenance and became silent; the persons near him saw that he was under the influence of some strong impression. After a few moments he seemed to recover, and overwhelmed with questions, he at last reluctantly said: "In this hour the Emperor Peter IV. of Russia has suffered death in his prison!" It was ascertained afterwards that the unfortunate sovereign had died on that day and in the manner indicated.

Among modern seers the most remarkable was probably the well-known poet, Emile Deschamps, who published in 1838 interesting accounts of his own experiences. When he was only eight years old it was decided that he should leave Paris and be sent to Orleans; this troubled him sorely, and in his great grief he found some little comfort in setting his lively fancy to work and to imagine what the new city would be like. When he reached Orleans he was extremely surprised to recognize the streets, the shops, and even the names on the sign-boards, everything was exactly as he had seen it in his day-dreams. While he was yet there he saw his mother, whom he had left in Paris, in a dream rising gently heavenwards with a palm-branch in her hand, and heard her voice, very faint but silvery, call to him, "Emile, Emile, my son!" She had died in the same night, uttering these words with her departing breath. Later in life he often heard strange but enchanting music while in a state of partial ecstasis; he saw distant events, and, among others, distinctly described a barricade, the defenders of the adjoining house, and certain events connected with the fight at that spot, as they had happened in Paris on the same day (Le Concile de la libre pensee, i. p. 183).

A still higher power of divination enables men to read in the faces and forms of others, even of totally unknown persons, not only the leading traits of their character, but even the nature of their former lives. There can be no doubt that every important event in our life leaves a more or less perceptible trace behind, which the acute and experienced observer may learn to read with tolerable distinctness and accuracy. It is well known how the study of the human face enables us thus to discern one secret after another, and how really great men have possessed the power to judge of the capacity of generals or statesmen to serve them, by natural instinct and without any effort. We say of specially endowed men of this class, that they "can read the souls of men," and what is most interesting is the well-established fact that the purer the mind and the freer from selfishness and conceit, the greater this power to feel, as it were, the character of others. Hence the superiority of women in this respect; hence, especially, the unfailing instinct of children, which enables them instantly to distinguish affected love from real love, and makes them shrink often painfully from contact with evil men.

When this power reaches in older men a high degree of perfection, it enters within the limits of magic, and in this form was well known to the ancients. The Neo-Platonic Plotinus is reported by Porphyrius to have been almost marvelously endowed with such divining powers; he revealed to his pupils the past and the future events of their lives alike, and once charged the author himself with cherishing thoughts of suicide, when no one else suspected such a purpose. In like manner, we are told, Ancus Naevius, the famous augur of the first Tarquins, could read all he desired to know in the faces of others. The saints of the church were naturally as richly endowed, and from Filipo Neri to Xavier nearly all possessed this peculiar gift of divination. But other men, also, and by no means always those most abundantly endowed with mental superiority, have frequently a peculiar talent of this kind. Thus the well-known writer Zschokke, the author of the admirable work, "Hours of Devotion," gives in his autobiographical work, Selbstschau, a full account of his peculiar gifts as a seer, which contains the following principal facts: At the moment when an utter stranger was first introduced to him, he saw a picture of his whole previous life rising gradually before his mind's eye, resembling somewhat a long dream, but clear and closely connected. During this time he would, contrary to his general custom, lose sight of the visitor's face and no longer hear his voice. He used to treat these involuntary revelations at first as mere idle fancies, till one day he was led by a kind of sportive impulse to tell his family the secret history of a seamstress who had just left the room, and whom he had never seen before. It was soon ascertained that all he had stated was perfectly true, though known only to very few persons. From that time he treated these visions more seriously, taking pains to repeat them in a number of cases to the persons whom they concerned, and to his own great amazement they turned out in every case to be perfectly accurate. The author adds one case of peculiarly striking nature: "One day," he says, "I reached the town of Waldshut, accompanied by two young foresters, who are still alive. It was dusk, and tired by our walk we entered an inn called The Grapevine. We took our supper at the public table in company with numerous guests, who happened to be laughing at the oddities and the simplicity of the Swiss, their faith in Mesmer, in Lavater's 'System of the Physiognomy,' etc. One of my companions, hurt in his national pride, asked me to make a reply, especially with regard to a young man sitting opposite to us, whose pretentious airs and merciless laughter had been peculiarly offensive. It so happened that, a few moments before, the main events in the life of this person had passed before my mind's eye. I turned to him and asked him if he would answer me candidly upon being told the most secret parts of his life by a man who was so complete a stranger to him as I was? That, I added, would certainly go even beyond Lavater's power to read faces. He promised to confess it openly, if I stated facts. Thereupon I related all I had seen in my mind, and informed thus the whole company at table of the young man's history, the events of his life at school, his petty sins, and at last a robbery which he had committed by pilfering his employer's strong-box. I described the empty room with its whitewashed walls and brown door, near which on the right hand, a small black money-box had been standing on a table, and other details. As long as I spoke there reigned a deathlike silence in the room, which was only interrupted by my asking the young man, from time to time, if all I said was not true. He admitted everything, although evidently in a state of utter consternation, and at last, deeply touched by his candor, I offered him my hand across the table and closed my recital."

This popular writer, a man of unblemished character, who died in 1850, regretted by a whole nation, makes this account of his own prophetic power still more interesting by adding that he met at least once in his life another man similarly endowed. "I once encountered," he says, "while travelling with two of my sons, an old Tyrolese, a peddler of oranges and lemons, in a small inn half concealed in one of the narrow passes of the Jura Mountains. He fixed his eyes for some time upon my face, and then entered into conversation with me, stating that he knew me, although I did not know him, and then began, to the intense delight of the peasants who sat around us and of my children, to chat about myself and my past life. How the old man had acquired his strange knowledge he could not explain to himself or to others, but he evidently valued it highly, while my sons were not a little astonished to discover that other men possessed the same gift which they had only known to exist in their father."

It must not be forgotten that the human eye has, beyond question, often a power which far transcends the ordinary purposes of sight, and approaches the boundaries of magic. There is probably no one who cannot recall scenes in which the soothing and cheering expression of gentle eyes has acted like healing balm on wounded hearts; or others, in which glances of fury and hatred have caused genuine terror and frightened the conscience. History records a number of instances, from the glance of the Saviour, which made Peter go out and weep bitterly, to the piercing eye of a well-known English judge, which made criminals of every rank in society feel as if their very hearts lay open to the divining eye of a master. This peculiar and almost irresistible power of the eye has not inaptly been traced back to the gorgon head of antiquity--a frightful image from Hades with a dread glance of the eye, as it is called by Homer (Il. viii. 349; Odyss. xi. 633). The same fearful expression, chilling the blood and almost arresting the beating of the heart, is frequently mentioned in modern accounts of visions. Thus the Demon of Tedworth recorded by Glanvil ("Sadd. Triumph." 4th ed. p. 270), consisted of the vague outlines of a human face, in which only two bright, piercing eyes could be distinguished. In other cases, a faint vapor, barely recalling a human shape, arises before the beholder, and above it are seen the same terrible eyes

"Sent from the palace of Ais by fearful Persephoneia."

Magic divination in point of time includes the class of generally very vague and indefinite perceptions, which we call presentiments. These are, unfortunately, so universally mixed up with impressions produced after the occurrence--vaticinium post eventum--that their value as interesting phenomena of magic is seriously impaired. There remains, however, in a number of cases, enough that is free from all spurious admixture, to admit of being examined seriously. The ancients not only believed in this kind of foresight, but ascribed it with Pythagoras to revelations made by friendly spirits; in Holy Writ it rises almost invariably, under direct inspiration from on high, to genuine prophecy. It reveals not only the fate of the seer, but also that of others, and even of whole nations; the details vary, of course, according to the prevailing spirit of the times.

When Narses was ruling over Italy, a young shepherd in the service of Valerianus, a lawyer, was seized by the plague and fell into syncope. He recovered for a time, and then declared that he had been carried to heaven, where he had heard the names of all who in his master's house should die of the plague, adding that Valerianus himself would escape. After his death everything occurred as he had predicted. An English minister, Mr. Dodd, one night felt an irresistible impulse to visit a friend of his who lived at some distance. He walked to his house, found the family asleep, but the father still awake and ready to open the door to his late visitor. The latter, very much embarrassed, thought it best to state the matter candidly, and confessed that he came for no ostensible purpose, and really did not know himself what made him do so. "But God knew it," was the answer, "for here is the rope with which I was just about to hang myself." It may well be presumed that the Rev. Mr. Dodd had some apprehensions of the state of mind of his friend; but that he should have felt prompted to call upon him just at that hour, was certainly not a mere accident.

The family of the great Goethe was singularly endowed with this power of presentiment. The poet's grandfather predicted both a great conflagration and the unexpected arrival of the German Emperor, and a dream informed him beforehand of his election as alderman and then as mayor of his native city. His mother's sister saw hidden things in her dreams. His grandmother once entered her daughter's chamber long after midnight in a state of great and painful excitement; she had heard in her own room a noise like the rustling of papers, and then deep sighs, and after a while a cold breath had struck her. Some time after this event a stranger was announced, and when he appeared before her holding a crumbled paper in his hand, she had barely strength enough to keep from fainting. When she recovered, her visitor stated that in the night of her vision a dear friend of hers, lying on his deathbed, had asked for paper in order to impart to her an important secret; before he could write, however, he had been seized by the death-struggle, and after crumpling up the paper and uttering two deep sighs he had expired. An indistinct scrawl was all that could be seen; still the stranger had thought it best to bring the paper. The secret concerned his now orphaned child, a girl whom Goethe's grandparents thereupon took home and cared for affectionately (Goethe's Briefwechsel, 3d ed., II. p. 268).

Bourrienne tells us in his Memoires several instances of remarkable forebodings on the part of Napoleon's first wife, Josephine. Her mind was probably, by her education and the peculiar surroundings in which she passed her childhood, predisposed to receive vivid impressions of this kind, and to observe them with great care and deep interest. Thus she almost invariably predicted the failure of such of her husband's enterprises as proved unsuccessful. After Bonaparte had moved into the Tuileries on the 18th Brumaire, she saw, while sitting in the room of poor Marie Antoinette, the shadow of the unfortunate queen rise from the floor, pass gently through the apartment, and vanish through the window. She fainted, and from that day predicted her own sad fate. On another occasion the spirit of her first husband, Beauharnais, appeared before her with a gesture of solemn warning; she immediately turned to Napoleon, exclaiming: "Awake, awake, you are threatened by a great danger!" There seemed to be, for some days, no ground for apprehension, but so strong were her fears that she secretly sent for the minister of police and entreated him to take special measures for the safety of the First Consul. At eight o'clock of the evening of the same day the latter left the Tuileries on his way to the opera; a terrible explosion was heard in the Rue St. Nicaise, where conspirators attempted to blow up the dictator, and he narrowly escaped with his life. Josephine at once hastened to his side, and after having most tenderly cared for the wounded, embraced Napoleon in public with tears streaming down her face, and implored him hereafter to listen more attentively to her warnings. Napoleon, however, though superstitious enough firmly to believe in what he called his "star," and even to see it shining in the heavens when no one else beheld it, never would admit the value of his wife's forebodings.

Presentiments of this kind are most frequently felt before death, and it is now almost universally believed that the impending dissolution of the body relieves the spirit in many cases fully enough from its bondage to endow it with a clear and distinct anticipation of the coming event. A large number of historical personages have thus been enabled to predict the day, and many even the hour of their own death. The Connetable de Bourbon, who was besieging Rome, addressed, according to Brantome (Vies des gr. capitaines, ch. 28), on the day of the final assault, his troops, and told them he would certainly fall before the Eternal City, but without regret if they but proved victorious. Henry IV. of France, felt his death coming, according to the unanimous evidence of Sully, L'Etoile, and Bassompierre, and said, before he entered his coach on the fatal day: "My friend, I would rather not go out to-day; I know I shall meet with misfortune." On the 16th of May, 1813, four days before the battle of Bautzen, two of Napoleon's great officers, the Duke of Vicenza and Marshal Duroc, were in attendance at Dresden while the emperor was holding a protracted conference with the Austrian ambassador. The clock was striking midnight, when suddenly Duroc seized his companion by the arm and with frightfully altered features, looking intently at him, said in trembling tones: "My friend, this lasts too long; we shall all of us perish, and he last of all. A secret voice tells me that I shall never see France again." It is well known that on the day of the battle a cannon-ball which had already killed General Kirchner, wounded Duroc also mortally, and when he lay on his deathbed he once more turned to the Duke of Vicenza and reminded him of the words he had spoken in Dresden.

The trustworthy author of "Eight Months in Japan," N. Luehdorf, tells us (p. 158) a remarkable instance of unconscious foreboding on the part of a common sailor. The American barque Greta was in 1855 chartered to carry a great number of Russians, who had been shipwrecked on board the frigate Diana during an earthquake at Simoda to the Russian port of Ayan. A sailor on board was very ill, and shortly before his death told his comrades that he would soon die, but that he was rather glad of it, as they would all be captured by the English, with whom Russia was then at war. The report of his prediction reached the captain's cabin, but all the officers agreed that such an event was next to impossible; a dense fog was making the ship perfectly invisible, and no English fleet had as yet appeared in the Sea of Okhotsk, where the Russians had neither vessels nor forts to tempt the British. The whole force of England in those waters was at that moment engaged in blockading the Russian fleet in the Bay of Castris in the Gulf of Tartary. Nevertheless it so chanced that a British steamer, the corvette Barracouta, hove in sight on the 1st of August and captured the vessel, making the Russians prisoners of war.

SECOND SIGHT.

A special kind of divination, which has at times been evidenced in certain parts of Europe, and is not unknown to our North-western Indians, consists in the perception of contemporaneous or future events, during a brief trance. Generally the seer looks with painfully raised eyelids, fixedly into space, evidently utterly unconscious of all around him, and engaged in watching a distant occurrence. A peculiar feature of this phenomenon, familiar to all readers as second sight, is the exclusion of religious or supernatural matters; the visions are always strictly limited to events of daily life: deaths and births, battles and skirmishes, baptisms and weddings. The actors in these scenes are often personally unknown to the seer, and the transactions are as frequently beheld in symbols as in reality. A man who is to die a violent death, may be seen with a rope around his neck or headless, with a dagger plunged into his breast, or sinking into the water up to his neck; the sick man who is to expire in his bed, will appear wrapped up in his winding sheet, in which case his person is more or less completely concealed as his death is nearer or farther off. A friend or a messenger coming from a great distance, is seen as a faint shadow, and a murderer or a thief, as a wolf or a fox. Another peculiar feature of second sight is the fact that the same visions are very frequently beheld by several persons, although the latter may live far apart and have nothing in common with each other. The phenomena are sporadic in Germany and Switzerland, in the Dauphine and the Cevennes; they occur in larger numbers and are often hereditary in certain families, in Denmark, the Scotch Highlands and the Faroe Islands. In Gaelic, the persons thus gifted are called Taishatrim, seers of shadows, or Phissichin, possessing knowledge beforehand. Hence, they have been most thoroughly studied in those countries, and Mr. Martin has gathered all that could be learnt of second sight in the Shetlands, in a work of great interest. Here the phenomena are not unfrequently accompanied by magic hearing also, as when funerals are seen in visions, and at the same time the chants of the bystanders and even the words of the preacher are distinctly heard. The most marked form of this feature is the taisk or wraith, a cry uttered by a person who is soon to die, and heard by the seer. The dwellers on those remote islands are also in the habit of smelling an odor of fish, often weeks and months before the latter appear in their waters. A special kind of divination exists in Wales and on the Isle of Man, where the approaching death of friends is revealed by so-called body lights, caulawillan cyrth.

The entirely unselfish character of second sight must not be overlooked, as far as it increases in a high degree the value of such phenomena and adds to their authenticity. In the great majority of cases the persons and events seen under such circumstances are of no interest to the seer; they are frequently utterly strange and unknown to him, and hence find no sympathy in his heart. It appears as if, by some unknown and hence magic process, a window was opened for the soul to look out and behold whatever may happen to be presented to the inner vision; this image is then transferred to the outer eye, and the seer's imagination makes him believe that he sees in reality what is revealed to him by this mysterious process. Hence also the facts that the persons gifted with second sight, so far from laboring under diseases of any kind, are almost without exception simple, frugal men, free from chronic affections, and perfect strangers to hysterics, spasms, or nervous sufferings. Insanity and suicide are as unknown to them as drunkenness, and no case of selfish interest or willful imposture has ever been recorded in connection with second sight. This does not imply, however, that efforts have not been made by others to profit by the strange gifts of such persons; but even the career of the famous Duncan Campbell, a deaf and dumb Scot, who, in the beginning of the last century, created an immense sensation in London, only proved anew the well-known disinterestedness of these seers. In many instances the gift of second sight is treated with indifference, and hardly noticed. Such was the case with Lord Nelson, who is reported to have exhibited the gift of a kind of second sight, at least in two well-authenticated cases, related by Sir Thomas Hardy to Admiral Dundas, and quoted by Dr. Mayo, as he had the account from the latter. Captain Hardy heard Nelson order the commander of a frigate to shake out all sails to sail towards a certain place where he would in all probability meet the French fleet, and as soon as he had made it out, to run into a certain port and there to wait for Nelson's arrival. When the officer had left the cabin, Nelson turned to Hardy, saying: "He will go to the West Indies; he will see the French; he will make the port I told him to make, but he will not wait for me--he will sail for England." The commander actually did so. In this case, however, Nelson may possibly have only given a striking evidence of his power to read the character of men, and to draw his conclusions as to their probable action. In the following instance his knowledge appeared, on the contrary, as a magic phenomenon. It was shortly before the battle of Trafalgar, when an English frigate was made out at such a distance that her position could not be accurately ascertained. Suddenly Nelson turned to Hardy, who was standing by his side, and said: "The frigate has sighted the French." Hardy had nothing to say in reply. "She sights the French; she will fire presently." In an instant the low sound of a signal-shot was heard afar off!

In other cases the curious gift is borne with great impatience, and becomes a source of intense suffering. This is certainly very pardonable in men who read impending death in the features of others, and hence are continually subject to heart-rending impressions. Sometimes the moribund appears as if he had been lying in his grave already for several days, at other times he is seen wrapped up in his shroud or in the act of expiring. In some parts of Germany the approaching death of a neighbor is announced by the appearance of Death itself, not in the familiar mythological form, but as a white, luminous appearance, which either stops before the house of the person who is to die soon, or actually enters it and places itself by the side of the latter. Occasionally the image is seen to fill the seat or to walk in a procession in the place of a man as yet in perfect health, who nevertheless soon falls a victim to some disease or sudden attack.

Second sight is, like all similar magic phenomena, frequently mentioned in the writings of the ancients. Homer mentions a case in his "Odyssey" (xx. v. 351). Apollonius of Tyana was delivering an oration at Ephesus, when he suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence and beheld in a vision the Emperor Domitian at Rome, in the act of succumbing to his murderers. He fell into a kind of trance, his eyes became fixed, and he exclaimed in an unnatural voice: "Down with the tyrant!" (Vita Apoll. Zenobis Anolo interprete. Paris, 1555, l. viii. p. 562.) Henry IV., when still Prince of Navarre, saw on the eve of St. Bartholomew several drops of blood falling upon the green cloth of the card-table at which he was seated in company with several courtiers; the latter beheld the fearful and ominous sight as well as he himself. German writings abound with instances of men having seen their own funeral several days before their death, and in many instances the warning is reported to have had a most salutary effect in causing them to repent of their sins and to prepare for the impending summons. One of the most remarkable instances is that of a distinguished professor of divinity, Dr. Lysius, in Koenigsberg. He had inherited special magic powers through many generations from an early ancestor, who saw a funeral of very peculiar nature, with all the attending circumstances, long before it actually took place. He himself had his first revelation when, lying in bed awake, he saw suddenly his chamber quite light, and something like a man's shadow pass him, while on his mind, not on his ear, fell the words: Umbra matris tuae. Although his mother had just written to him that she was in unusually good health and spirits, she had died that very night. On another occasion he astonished his friends by telling them what a superb new building he had seen erected in Koenigsberg, giving all the details of church and school-room to a little gate in a narrow alley. Many years afterwards such a building was really erected there, and he himself called to occupy part of it, when that little gate became his favorite entrance. Although he had many such visions, and his wife, succumbing to the contagious influence of magic powers, also foresaw more than one important event, he sternly refused to attach any weight to his own forebodings or those of other persons. Thus a poor woman, possessing the gift of second sight, once came to some members of his family and told them she had seen seven funerals leave his house; when this was reported to him, he denounced the superstition as unchristian, and forbade its being mentioned again in his presence. But, although there was not a sick person in the house at the time, and even the older members of the family were unusually hale and hearty, in a few weeks every one in the house was dangerously ill, the head of the family alone excepted, and as three only escaped, the seven deaths which had been foreseen actually took place.

The annals of Swedish history (Arndt, Schwed. Gesch. p. 317) record a remarkable case of this kind. The scene was the old castle of Gripsholm, near Stockholm, a place full of terrible reminiscences, and more than once made famous by strange mysteries. A great state dinner given to a prince of Baden, had just ended, when one of the guests, Count Froelich, suddenly gazed fixedly at the great door of the dining-hall, and when he regained his composure, declared he had just seen their princely guest walk in, wearing a different uniform from that in which he was actually dressed, as he sat in the place of honor. It was, however, a custom of the prince's to wear one costume one day and another the next day, and thus to change regularly; Count Froelich had seen him in that which he would accordingly wear the next day. The impression was beginning to wear away, and the accident was nearly forgotten, when suddenly a great disturbance was heard without, servants came running in, women were heard crying, and even the officers on guard were seriously disturbed. The report was that "King Eric's ghost" had been seen. On the following day the Prince of Baden was thrown from his carriage and instantly killed; his body was brought back to Gripsholm.

Here also we meet again with the exceptional powers granted to Goethe. He had just parted with one of his many loves, the fair daughter of the minister of Drusenheim, Friederike, and was riding in deep thought upon the footpath, when he suddenly saw, "not with the eyes of the body, but of the spirit," his own self in a new light gray coat, laced with gold, riding towards him. When he made an effort to shake off the impression, the vision disappeared. "It is strange, however," he tells us himself, "that I found myself eight years later riding on that same road, in order to see Friederike once more, and was then dressed, by accident and not from choice, in the costume of which I had dreamt" (Aus Meinem Leben, iii. p. 84). A kindred spirit, Sir Humphry Davy, had once a vision, which strangely enough was fulfilled more than once. In his attractive work ("Consolations in Travel," p. 63), he relates how he saw, when suffering of jail fever, the image of a beautiful woman, with whom he soon entered into a most interesting conversation. He was at the time warmly attached to a lady, but the vision represented a girl with brown hair, blue eyes and blooming complexion, while his lady-love was pale and had dark eyes and dark hair. His mysterious visitor came frequently, as long as he was really sick, but as his strength returned, her visits became rarer, and at last ceased altogether. He forgot it entirely; but ten years later he suddenly met in Illyria, a girl of about fourteen or fifteen years, who strikingly resembled the image he had seen, and now recalled in all its details. Another ten years passed, and the great chemist met once more in traveling, a person who as strikingly resembled his first vision, and became indebted to her tender care and kindness for the preservation of his life.