simulation of absolute vision. The impressed
person thinks he sees the absent friend or relative,
whose cerebral agitation influences him
from afar. In other cases, the senses or the
brain are differently acted upon.

Altogether I divide these kinds of impressions
into five:

1. Merely mental.

2. By the sense of hearing.

3. By the sense of seeing.

4. By sight and hearing.

5. By dreams.

Of the merely mental impression I will
relate two instances. The first was told me
by the late Professor Wilson, of Edinburgh, to
whom it occurred. The other happened to myself:

"One thing which impressed me strongly
when I was yet in careless bachelorhood," said
Professor Wilson, " was the following. I was in
Ireland, on a visit to a charming family, where
the sons were all brave and the daughters beautiful.
With a gay party, in which the element
of youth predominated, I went, in the course of
this visit, on a pic-nic excursion to some ruins
of an ancient castle in the neighbourhood. We
were all dotted picturesquely about amongst the
moss-grown stones that lay strewn about the
inner court of the broken edifice: the turf
formed our table, and on this a snow-white cloth
decorously presented pies, hams, chickens, and
bottles to our view. The thick of the dinner
being over, we still sat, or lolled in that pleasant
prolongation of a repast which is the best part
of a thing of the sort; but as we knew that,
according to the programme, our time was
limited, on account of some other spots which
we had yet to visit, I was deputed to see, by a
reference to my watch, that we did not overstay
the hour. Accordingly, I had placed my watch,
a fine old silver warming-pan, the paternal gift,
on a low fragment of the ruin that was just
opposite to me, and in the intervals of conversation
I looked at it, though indeed not quite so
often as at the face of Mary M. Suddenly—I
perfectly remember the hands were pointing to
twenty minutes past two in the sunshine—the
watch arrested my gaze, while a remarkable
feeling passed over me. I said to myself, but to
this hour I know not why, " At this exact time
my brother R. is dying in India." The sensation
came and went with the rapidity of those
unaccountable impressions

Which make the present, while the flash doth last,
Seem but the semblance of an unknown past.
Yet, so much was I struck with the circumstance,
that, taking out my pocket-book, saying
nothing, however, to anybody us to why I did
so, I noted down the day and hour of this
strange visitation of thought. I did not exactly
place confidence in the prevision, yet I could
not shake off an unpleasant feeling about it.
At length the circumstance became merged in
the frequent repetition to myself that it was all
"fudge;" and I might call it forgotten (there
was plenty of time for this, for it was not in the
days of steam), when a letter from India brought
our family the startling intelligence that my
brother had actually died there on the very day
when I had made the entry in my pocket-book,
and at an hour which, by allowance for latitude,
corresponded exactly with that marked
by my watch when I had my eyes on it.
Our correspondent also informed us that
my brother had, in his last moments, mentioned
me."

Such was Professor Wilson's story. My own
is as follows:

Many years ago I had a friend who was in a
bad state of health, but not considered to be in
any immediate danger. Indeed, I had heard that
he was better, and preparing to remove to a
milder climate for the winter. His passage to
Malta was already taken. I was then living at
a village in Surrey, my friend (who had been
my patient) was staying at a town in Middlesex,
about fifteen miles from me. Though I
had been much interested about him, my feelings
at the time I speak of were, by the recent
death of my father, drawn off in another
direction. Perhaps I had not thought of my
friend C. S. for some days, when, as I was sitting
at tea with a family party, I suddenly felt myself
impelled, I might say compelled, to call out, in
the very midst, too, of other conversation, " C. S.
is dying!" Every one stared. I tried to laugh,
and to pooh-pooh my own exclamation; but I
made a poor hand of it. The sort of way in
which I had uttered the ominous words was so
completely a mystery to myself, so exactly as if
some one else had made use of my organs of
speech, that I was unpleasantly impressed.
However, I did not believe my own prediction,
and went to bed without forebodings. I
slept soundly, and without dreaming. But I
awoke myself with the sound of my own voice.
I was calling out loudly, "C. S. is dead!"
Having a light in my room, I looked at my
watch, and saw that it was between three and
four in the morning. Two days afterwards I
received a letter with a black seal from the friend
at whose house C. S. had been staying. C. S. was
dead. On the very day, and at the very hour when
I had called out, "C. S. is dying!"—that is, seven
in the evening—he had been suddenly seized, as
he also sat at tea (for he had never kept his bed)
with a difficulty of breathing. He could no
longer support himself, and was carried up to
bed. From that time until between three and four
in the morning he was dying, and conscious that
he was dying. He spoke much of me, and sent
me some last messages. His last breath seems
to have been drawn at the very moment
when I woke myself by calling out, "C. S. is
dead!"

II.

I NOW proceed to give an example of the second
mode of the moribund human influence,
namely,

Impression by hearing.

Of this I know but one single instance. This,
however, was related to me by the very person
to whom the thing happened, a gentleman to
whom I was introduced by some old friends of