to fallacious
illusions of memory. Unconsciously we make a coherent picture of what
we have seen, and very often it happens that the sequence of events
is not what actually passed, but what we were prejudiced in favour of
seeing. Hence the unlikelihood of finding exact agreement among the
witnesses of any exciting occurrence, a quarrel, a railway accident, a
collision at sea, the incidents of a battle.

"It commonly happens," says Mr. Kinglake,[1] "that incidents occurring
in a battle are told by the most truthful bystanders with differences
more or less wide." In the attack on the Great Redoubt in the Battle
of the Alma, a young officer, Anstruther, rushed forward and planted
the colours of the Royal Welsh--but where? Some distinctly remembered
seeing him dig the butt-end of the flagstaff into the parapet: others
as distinctly remembered seeing him fall several paces before he
reached it. Similarly with the incidents of the death of the Prince
Imperial near the Italezi Hills in the Zulu War. He was out as a
volunteer with a reconnoitring party. They had off-saddled at a kraal
and were resting, when a band of Zulus crept up through the long
grass, and suddenly opened fire and made a rush forward. Our scouts
at once took horse, as a reconnoitring party was bound to do, and
scampered off, but the Prince was overtaken and killed. At the
Court-Martial which ensued, the five troopers gave the most
conflicting accounts of particulars which an unskilled investigator
would think could not possibly have been mistaken by eye-witnesses of
the same event. One said that the Prince had given the order to mount
before the Zulus fired: another that he gave the order directly after:
a third was positive that he never gave the order at all, but that it
was given after the surprise by the officer in command. One said that
he saw the Prince vault into the saddle as he gave the order: another
that his horse bolted as he laid hold of the saddle, and that he ran
alongside trying to get up.

The evidence before any Court of Inquiry into an exciting occurrence
is almost certain to reveal similar discrepancies. But what we find it
hard to realise is that we ourselves can possibly be mistaken in what
we have a distinct and positive recollection of having seen. It once
happened to myself in a London street to see a drunken woman
thrown under a cab by her husband. Two cabs were running along, a
four-wheeler and a hansom: the woman staggered almos