On this the spectre started up, seized the brother I have mentioned, and after a short contest, brought him down. From that night Mr. A. continued to rally, till he was restored to perfect health; and the next post, or next but one, came intelligence that the brother at Eton had been drowned in the Thames near Windsor.

THEODORA. How difficult to explain this on the ordinary principle of explaining away supernatural occurrences! That Miss A. had been hoping her father might yet recover; had been comforting herself with the recollection of instances in which cases apparently as hopeless had terminated favourably; had been thinking (as, the explainer would say, she very naturally might) of her absent brother; had been recollecting the dangers to which a boy at a public school is liable; and had by an easy confusion, and by means of a somewhat excited imagination, compounded a dream out of all these various thoughts, which dream, by a not unlikely coincidence, was actually true.

PISTUS. Yes; and the interpreter of this coincidental arrangement would enunciate his discovery with as much gravity as if it were not much harder of belief than the supernaturalism of the original story.

SOPHRON. And yet how useless the interference here. Useless, I mean, to our ideas.

PISTUS. There are, however, accounts of such

interferences which have manifestly their use. We know the tale of the German prince, who, in a full career of wickedness, dreamed that an angel appeared to him with a scroll, on which were inscribed the words, AFTER SEVEN. He awoke in horror, thinking that his life was doomed, and that seven days or seven weeks would end it. He set himself in earnest to the work of repentance: seven days passed, and he continued in good health; seven weeks,-still no change; seven months,—and he was perfectly himself: then he thought that seven years must be meant. The seven years passed, and he found himself raised to the imperial throne.

THEODORA. The mercy of such an ambiguous warning is here evident. But, perhaps, in thè same way we may explain those in which the prediction has not been fulfilled.

SOPHRON. Of which, perhaps, the most remarkable instance is that which happened to the late Dr. Isaac Milner. His biographer gives the following account: "Some time before his appointment to the deanery of Carlisle, Dr. Milner dreamed that he was led by a friend through the different apartments of a large rambling old house, which he was given to understand would shortly belong to himself. After showing him several rooms, his conductor opened a door which proved to be the entrance to a steep stone staircase, and desired him to ascend. He did so; and

on turning the corner at the top of this flight of steps, was suddenly arrested by the sight of a tombstone, bearing the inscription,

Here lieth

The Body of
ISAAC MILNER,

Who died

A. D.

When, happily for himself, he could not discover; for in the extremity of his eager effort to read the date of the year, which he perceived was given, he awoke. This dream, striking as it was, gradually faded from Dean Milner's mind, and would probably in time have been entirely forgotten, but for a circumstance which strangely and forcibly recalled it to his recollection. On going over his deanery for the first time, in company, I think, with Dr. Paley, a door was thrown open which discovered a steep flight of stone steps leading to the tower, and so exactly resembling those which he had seen in his dream, that, as he always declared, when induced to mention the circumstance, he absolutely feared to ascend and turn the corner at the top, so strong was the impression that the tombstone would appear. Nor did he ever ascend that staircase with perfect indifference 1."

1

PISTUS. I know another singular example. A

1 Milner's Life, p. 101.

gentleman, whom I will call Mr. B., engaged in a large business in London, dreamed-I will not pretend to give you the exact dates, but only an approximation to them-that his wife would die on the 9th of September in the following year, and he himself on the 11th of October in the year succeeding that. He did not, I believe, pay much attention to the intimation; but towards the end of August his wife was taken ill, and actually died on the fatal 9th of September. Mr. B. now considered his own decease as certain, and sold his business at a great loss; took a cottage in the vicinity of town, and prepared for death. However, the day passed, and he found himself very well. When he had learnt to believe that the prediction would not be verified in him, he was much at a loss what to do in the way of business, he having given up all connexion with that to which he had been educated.

SOPHRON. There are some instances which one can hardly believe to have been more than coincidences. Such is that which Sir Walter Scott relates in his journal of Dubuison, a celebrated dentist of Edinburgh. Dr. Blair, the day before his death, met him, and made use of a peculiar expression to him. Some time after, Lord Melville met him on the same spot, and made use of the same expression. He died the next day. On this Dubuison said-in jest, however-"I shall be the next, I suppose." + He went home, was taken suddenly ill, and died almost immediately. An& we died

+ which!

other such is recorded in the parish register of Garthorpe church, in Leicestershire. A poor man presented himself for the purpose of being married; but, instead of the words, "I take thee to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward," he could only be prevailed on to say, "to have and to hold till this day fortnight." That day fortnight he died. And a coincidence of another kind occurred at the destruction of the Royal Exchange by fire. At twelve o'clock on that night, the chimes struck up, for the last time,

"There's nae luck about the house,
There's nae luck at a"."

THEODORA. This naturally introduces the consideration of those cases where persons, in a nervous state, have fancied themselves to have received such intimations of death, and have actually fallen ill from the terror and anxiety which such imaginary revelations occasioned. And these are not unusual cases; nor are there wanting many instances in which, by the use of opium or some similar method, the fatal hour has been safely passed, while the patient, on awaking, has had no further recollection of the past, than as a horrible dream, gone by for ever.

PISTUS. There is a curious Cornish story of a warning of death, which very probably is only a coincidence, but which was at the time and in the place believed to be something more than this.