Earl the cap of a seaman in the ship. Soon the ship turned the point, and a seaman claimed the cap, saying that shortly before it had been blown from his head in a gale.

Sometimes, however, the prediction is one of a series of mere fishing adventures. It is a conjecture, more or less sagacious, of one of a number of probabilities. So it was when Napoleon, when marching to Acre, had a Nile boat named L'Italie destroyed. "Italy is lost to France," he declared; and the remark, when the result was found to have taken place, was treasured up, though it turned out to be only parenthetically true. So it was with the warning given by Lord Falkland and Archbishop Williams, of the fate of Charles I. So it was with the famous prophecies of Cazotte, of the decapi tation of himself and his friends. In each case the prophecy was a conjecture, and the event at the time probable.

Then again come the mere dodging oracles, which are so framed as to read both ways.

"The power is here which Cæsar will overcome;" leaving the question whether it is Cæsar or the power which is to be triumphant to be determined by the result.

Then take the following given to Pyrrhus on his way to attack Rome:

"Aio te acida Romanos te vincere posse;" meaning either that Rome was to conquer him or he conquer Rome.

Alexander the Great, in the first gush of his youthful vigor, visited the Delphic pythoness in order to obtain a favorable omen for his eastern campaign. The priestess shrank from an interview with a prince at once so capricious and so powerful. Alexander, however, would take no refusal, and seizing her, forced her down upon the tripod from which her prophetic strains usually emanated. An operation like this, when we keep in mind the age of the prophetess, and the sharp, jutting points of the tripod on which she was impelled, was any thing but agreeable to her, and she cried out testily: "O son! who can withstand thee?" Alexander inquired no further, for this pettish cry was seized by him as a divine announcement of his future invincibility. Do not many of our modern prophecies receive a similar ex post facto interpretation?

To this may be added those instances in which an apparently supernatural presentiment is produced by the resuscitation of a dead recollection. Let us take the following, from Moreton's Essay on Apparitions: "The Reverend Dr. Scott, of Broad street, was sitting alone in his study. On a sudden, the phantom of an old gentleman, dressed in a black velvet gown, and full-bottom wig, entered, and set himself down in a chair opposite to the Doctor. The visitor informed him of a dilemma in which his grand-son, who lived in the west country, was placed, by the suit of his nephew for the recovery of an estate. This suit would be successful, unless a deed of conveyance was found, which had been hidden in an old chest in a loft of the house. On his arrival at this house, he learned that his grandson had dreamed of this visit, and that his grandfather was coming to aid him in the search. The deed was found in the false bottom of the old chest, as the vision had promised."

Now, the solution no doubt is, that the dreamer heard of the place of deposit when a boy, and had the circumstances recalled to him in part by the fact of the pending trial.

After the death of Dante, as we are told by the same author, it was discovered that the thirteenth canto of the Paradise was missing. Great search was made for it, but in vain; and, to the regret of every body concerned, it was at length concluded that it had either never been written, or had been destroyed. The quest was therefore given up, and some months had elapsed, when Pietro Allighieri, his son, dreamed that his father had appeared to him and told him that if he removed a certain panel near the window of the room in which he had been accustomed to write, the thirteenth canto would be found. Pietro told his dream, and was laughed at, of course. However, as the canto did not turn up, it was thought as well to examine the spot indicated in the dream. The panel was removed, and there lay the missing canto behind it, much mildewed, but fortunately still legible.

A gentleman in this country received a promissory note to a large amount, which he placed in a book. After the note became due, he was unable to recollect where he had placed it, and the debt was in danger of being lost, and his character

seriously injured. The fact caused him great anxiety, but his efforts to recollect the place of deposit were fruitless. Some time afterwards he was almost drowned, and became apparently insensible. When in this state, all the circumstances of the deposit flashed upon his mind, and the spot where he had placed the note was recalled. When he was able to speak, he sent for the book, and there the note was found.

Sir Evan Nepeau, being at the time Secretary of the Admiralty, found himself one night unable to sleep, and, urged by an undefinable feeling that he must rise, though it was then only two o'clock. He accordingly did so, and went into the park, and from that to the Home Office, which he entered by a private door, of which he had the key. He had no object in doing this; and to pass the time, he took up a newspaper that was lying on the table, and there read a paragraph to the effect that a reprieve had been dispatched to York, for the men condemned for coining.

The question occurred to him, was it indeed dispatched? He examined the books and found it was not; and it was only by the most energetic proceedings that the thing was carried through, and reached York in time to save the men.

Mrs. Crowe, in her Night Side of Nature, tells us of a case that occurred not many years since, where a murder having been committed, a man came forward, saying that he had dreamed that the pack of the murdered peddler was hidden in a certain spot; where, on a search being made, it was actually found. They at first concluded he was himself the assassin, but the real criminal was afterwards discovered; and it being asserted that the two men had passed some time together since the murder, in a state of intoxication, the conclusion was gen. erally reached that the crime and the place of concealment had been communicated to the pretended dreamer in such a way, in consequence of his then drunkenness, as to leave a vague impression on his mind, without enabling him to understand how that impression came.

Now here we have in each case a solution perfectly in accordance with well-known psychological laws. The soul, of which memory is an attribute, is independent of corporeal con

ditions, and is unshackled by those bonds which confine even the will. It exists as a distinct and an eternal element, treating in its own right with exterior influences, acting on them, and acted on by them, as an independent agent. It is this, we may remark incidentally, which invests the memory with such tremendous future retributive powers.

4th. Natural Phenomena at present Inexplicable.

Under this head we may place the alleged "Odylic Force" of the Animal Magnetists and Spirit Rappers. The phenomena of Spiritualism may be thus explained in accordance with wellknown natural analogies. They differ in no respect from a series of other phenomena equally inexplicable, but for which it has never been thought necessary to suppose direct Satanic or spiritual interference. Here the strongest way of stating the phenomenon is, that one human being is able, under certain circumstances, to so impress his idiosyncrasies upon another as to produce in that other their counterparts. Suppose, instead of this, it should be stated that a dog is able to so act upon a human being as after a certain period of time to impress his idiosyncrasies upon the man-to cause him to bark like a dog-to believe himself a dog-in fact, to respond to the dog's nature. And yet this horrible and mysterious transformation we witness in the phenomenon of hydrophobia, and what is more, we rest satisfied with the fact without attempting to explain it supernaturally, though the process by which this extraordinary infusion of one nature into another is effected, is utterly inexplicable. And again, we see that the sun, itself an unintelligent agent, is able so to act upon a silver plate as to stamp in a flash the portrait of an intermediate. object-say a human face-upon the inanimate metal. Is this more strange than that the passionate and flexible spirit of man-impregnated as it is with so many wonderful energies which we have never been able to test--should project on the soul of its fellow at least some sort of portrait of itself? Do we not see this constantly in social life, at least to some modified extent? Have we been able as yet to systematize and define the transforming influences of human affection or fear?

Can even the most volatile, the most resolute, the least capable of receiving impressions, and the most capable of resisting them--can even these say that they never felt the subtle grasp of another's will around their own?

Now, in view of these phenomena, do we see any thing requiring a supernatural solution in the following statement by Dr. Bushnell?

"Nothing is farther off from the Christian expectation of our New-England communities than the gift of tongues. So distant is their practical habit from any belief in the possible occurrence, that not even the question occurs to their thought. And yet a very near Christian friend, intelligent in the highest degree, and perfectly reliable to me as my right hand, who was present at a rather private social gathering of Christian disciples, assembled to converse and pray together, as in reference to some of the higher possibilities of Christian sanctification, relates that, after one of the brethren had been speaking, in a strain of discouraging self-accusation, another present shortly rose, with a strangely beaming look, and, fixing his eye on the confessing brother, broke out in a discourse of sounds, wholly unintelligible, though apparently true language, accompanying the utterances with a very strange and impressive gesture, such as he never made at any other time; coming finally to a kind of pause, and commencing again, as if at the same point, to go over in English, with exactly the same gestures, what had just been said. It appeared to be an interpretation, and the matter of it was, a beautifully emphatic utterance of the great principle of self-renunciation, by which the desired victory over self is to be obtained. There had been no conversation respecting gifts of any kind, and no reference to their possibility. The circle was astounded by the demonstration, not knowing what to make of it. The instinct of prudence threw them on observing a general silence, and it is a curious fact that the public in H-have never, to this hour, been startled by so much as a rumor of the gift of tongues, neither has the name of the speaker been associated with so much as a surmise of the real or supposed fact, by which he would be, perhaps, unenviably distinguished. It has been a great trial to him, it is said, to submit himself to this demonstration; which has recurred several times."

Now, two observations may be made here, each of which is sufficient to dispose of this narrative. In the first place, talking even an unknown tongue, to say nothing of uttering gibberish, is capable of a well-known psychological solution. Coleridge tells us of a servant-girl whose memory received, and afterwards, during a nervous fever, disgorged undigested the whole of a Latin oration she had unconsciously heard her master repeating while she was sweeping out his study. Old men, born in foreign lands, often talk on their death-beds in