est interest. Nor am I the
only one in possession of this faculty. In a journey with two of my
sons, I fell in with an old Tyrolese, who travelled about selling lemons
and oranges, at the inn at Unterhauenstein in one of the Jura passes. He
fixed his eyes for some time upon me, joined in our conversation,
observed that though I did not know him, he knew me, and began to
describe my acts and deeds to the no little amusement of the peasants,
and astonishment of my children, whom it interested to learn that
another possessed the same gift as their father. How the old lemon
merchant acquired his knowledge, he was not able to explain to himself,
or to me. But he seemed to attach great importance to his hidden
wisdom."

It appears to me, my dear Archy, that the remarkable statement which I
have thus put before you, completely establishes that, in reference to
the past, the mind occasionally receives knowledge through other than
the known and ordinary channels; and that the simplest and most natural
interpretation of the facts narrated, is to suppose that, under special
circumstances, one mind can put itself into direct communication with
another.

And I think that these considerations give a front and plausibility to
the hypothesis, that, in some cases of dreams and sensorial illusions,
which have turned out true and significant intimations of the death of
absent persons, there may have been at the bottom of them a relation
established between the minds or nervous systems of the distant parties.

I will now go a step further, and throw out the conjecture, that the
mind may occasionally assert the power of penetrating into futurity, not
through a shrewd calculation of what is likely to come to pass, but by
putting itself in relation with some other source of knowledge.

For I think it cannot be doubted that there is something in the
superstition of second-sight, which formerly prevailed so extensively in
Scotland, in the northern islands, and Denmark. Every one has heard and
read of this pretended gift. I have no evidence, I must confess, to
offer of its reality beyond that which is accessible to every one. But I
have heard several instances told, which, if the testimony of sensible
people may be taken in such marvellous matters as readily as on other
subjects, evinced _foreknowledge_. The thing foretold has generally been
death or personal misfortune. Sometimes the subject has been more
trivial. A much-respected Scottish