have no great difficulty
in understanding how a fanciful notion of this kind should attach itself
to minds of a certain conformation, or be even generated by them, and
that it should exercise a considerable, though unseen influence over the
secret convictions of men of ability, and of women of vivid religious
emotions; but we do not so readily comprehend how such persons as
Napoleon and Talleyrand should have embraced a delusion which was
utterly irreconcilable with their skeptical natures, and which
necessarily presupposed an immaterial state of existence, and the
providential superintendence of human affairs by a benevolent order of
beings, whose powers must have been deputed to them by a superior and
over-ruling Intelligence. It was the part of an ancient Roman, like
Augustus, to believe in portents and omens, however insignificant; it
might even require some philosophy to despise them; and among ourselves
in modern times it will be found, if we mistake not, that strong
poetical sensibilities, or a peculiarly impressible temperament, is the
foundation of what can be regarded in no other light than an
hallucination. The world of spirits, with all its shadowy tenants and
imaginary impulses, might be a reality to Scott, whose demonology never
for one moment obscured the lucid perceptions of a singularly clear and
masculine intellect; while the Rosicrucianism of so vigorously-minded a
man as Samuel Johnson was the plain result of that constitutional
melancholy under which he labored--fortified, it may be, by theological
tenets which bordered on the mystical: but what could Napoleon mean by
Fate, or Talleyrand by Destiny? They were both of them unbelievers in
spiritualism of any kind; and whence could those intimations come of
which Talleyrand, at least, conceived himself to be the recipient? He
was obviously possessed by the idea that numerous premonitions had been
vouchsafed to him; and what chiefly moved in him a desire to visit
Scotland was, not its scenery, its lakes, its mountains, or its people,
but a wish to inquire into the (as he supposed) natural faculty of
divination. The dream may be of Jove[19]--Homer is a sound heathen
authority upon this point; but Talleyrand was no dreamer. His
"presentiments" (for so he loved to call them), were, apparently, sudden
intuitions, which he was wholly unable to explain, but in which he
placed so much confidence that he acted upon them to the letter--so says
M. Colmache--and n