diary for February, 1828, that he was afflicted one
day at dinner-time by a sense of pre-existence so
strong as to resemble a mirage or a calenture;
and he adds: "There was a vile sense of want
of reality in all I did and said." The mind was
evidently overtasked, and, had it been less
strong, might have broken down altogether.

Tennyson, in one of his earlier volumes, has
a sonnet, in which he describes this singular
mental condition with the finely organised
apprehension of a poet:

  As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
  And ebb into a former life, or seem
  To lapse far back in a confuséd dream
  To states of mystical similitude;
  If one but speaks, or hems, or stirs his chair,
  Ever the wonder waxeth more and more,
  So that we say, "All this hath been before,
  All this hath been, I know not when or where:"
  So, friend, when first I look'd upon your face,
  Our thought gave answer, each to each, so true,
  Opposéd mirrors, each reflecting each,—
  Although I knew not in what time or place,
  Methought that I had often met with you,
  And each had liv'd in the other's mind and speech.

Wordsworth refers to the belief in pre-existence
in his magnificent Ode on Immortality; and the
opinion is one which runs through the whole
philosophy and religion of the world, especially
of the Eastern races. The Brahmins and
Buddhists teach that the soul has already passed
through many previous conditions, and will pass
through many more ere it attains the blissful
state of absolute repose and personal non-
existence resulting from its re-absorption into
the Deity, from whom it emanated. The more
philosophical among the ancient Greeks held the
same view. Pythagoras professed to have a
distinct recollection of his former lives; and Plato
said that the knowledge which we seem to
acquire for the first time is only the recollection
of what the soul knew before its submersion in
matter, and its assumption of the human form.
Some of the Hellenic philosophers contended
that the endless repetition of the same mode of
existence, though at vast intervals of time, is an
absolute necessity, because, there being only a
certain number of things in the universe, there
can only be a certain number of combinations,
and, when those are exhausted, the same course
must begin over again. After this theory, the
apparent recollection of what is passing around
us may be no delusion, but a genuine, though
abnormal, exercise of the memory.

A wonderful instance of apparent
recollection of a previous life is related of
himself by William Hone, the author of the Everyday
Book. He says that one day he had to
make a call in a part of London which was quite
unknown to him. He was shown into a room to
wait, and, on looking round, remarked, to his
astonishment, that every object appeared
familiar. It then occurred to him that there was
a very peculiar knot in the shutter; and he
determined to test the reality of the impression
by examining into the fact. He therefore
turned back the shutter, and found the knot.
Previously to this, he had been a materialist;
but the incident impressed him with the belief
that there must be something beyond matter, and
he finally became a member of a religious sect.

The reduplication of this world is another
strange speculation that has from time to time
appeared on the intellectual horizon. Pythagoras
and various ancient writers affirmed that there
was a globe resembling our earth, and called
Antichthon, which was constantly moving round
the sun, though always invisible to us, because
invariably on the opposite side of the solar orb
to ourselves. A few years ago, we came across
a singular book professing to give an account of
the Neo-Christian religion, which is shortly to
supplant the older form; and we there
discovered this old tradition of Antichthon
reproduced on a larger and still more amazing scale.
The anonymous writer says that the whole solar
system is repeated at a distance from us in space
so enormous that, "to express it with ordinary
arithmetical figures, the writing would occupy
a line twenty miles long." He goes on to say,
that "the earth of that distant system has a
surface divided, as ours is, into five parts, called
Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania.
There is also a Rome, a London, a Paris, a New
York, a Pekin; all the cities, towns, and
villages, inhabited by us here below. The very
houses are made after the same architectural
pattern, and of the same size as ours: so are
the animals, the trees, the stones. In that
remote world there is a man of my name, of my
age, with my moral and intellectual character,
with my own physical features. The other men
there resemble also on all points my fellow-men
here below. There is, indeed, some exceedingly
small difference between them and us, which the
All-seeing Deity can perceive; but they
resemble us more perfectly than the reflected
image in the looking-glass resembles our face.
And, although our reflected image is a vain
appearance, they are a living reality. At the very
moment that thou art reading this volume, thy
namesake too is reading these very words in
the same book, published there by another
mysterious Man like me, even by my very Self,
existing there under the same form. Thy living
portrait there is now thinking of thee with the
same stupid levity, or with the same awful
impression—in the same manner, whatever it is—
as thou art thinking of him." The writer gives
us no reason for believing this wild and spectral
dream: we are simply to take it on faith. It is
certainly a bewildering idea.

The same author adopts the old opinion that
the soul of man is embodied several times in
different individualities. Thus, Napoleon the
Third has been Lycurgus, Aristotle, St. Paul,
Odin, Haroun-al-Raschid, Roger Bacon,
Mahomet (the Turkish Sultan who took Constantinople),
Descartes, William the Third of England,
Robespierre, &c.—altogether a very
illustrious line. Our own Queen was formerly
Andromache, Hector's wife. And the Conductor
of this Journal has already appeared on the stage
of the world as Nahum, Seleucus Nicator,