re is the strange inconsistency.
I do not know what methods other people adopt, I daresay some of them
differ from mine, but I feel quite sure that, look at the crystal how
they will, it will invariably lie to them at times.

A day or so before the death of Lafayette, when I was concentrating my
whole mind on forthcoming events, I distinctly saw, in the crystal, a
stage with a man standing before the footlights, either speaking or
singing. In the midst of his performance, a black curtain suddenly fell,
and I intuitively realised the theatre was on fire. The picture then
faded away and was replaced by something of a totally different
character. Again, just before the great thunder-storm at the end of May,
when Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone, was struck, I saw, in the crystal,
a black sky, vivid flashes of lightning, a road rushing with brown
water, and a church spire with an enormous crack in it.

Of course, it is very easy to say these visions might have been mere
coincidences; but if they were only coincidences, they were surpassingly
uncommon ones.

_Talismans and Amulets_

Amulets, though now practically confined to the East, were once very
much in vogue throughout Europe.

Count Daniel O'Donnell, brigadier-general in the Irish Brigade of Louis
XIV., never went into battle without carrying with him an amulet in the
shape of the jewelled casket "Cathach of Columbcille," containing a
Latin psalter said to have been written by St Columba. It has quite
recently been lent to the Royal Irish Academy (where it is now) by my
kinsman, the late Sir Richard O'Donnell, Bart. Count O'Donnell used to
say that so long as he had this talisman with him, he would never be
wounded, and it is a fact that though he led his regiment in the thick
of the fight at Borgoforte, Nago, Arco, Vercelli, Ivrea, Verrua,
Chivasso, Cassano, and other battles in the Italian Campaign of 1701-7,
and at Oudenarde, Malplaquet, Arleux, Denain, Douai, Bouchain, and
Fuesnoy, in the Netherlands, he always came through scathless. Hence,
like him, I am inclined to attribute his escapes to the psychic
properties of the talisman.

The great family of Lyons were in possession of a talisman in the form
of a "lion-cup," the original of Scott's "Blessed Bear of Bradwardine,"
which always brought them good luck till they went to Glamis, and after
that they experienced centuries of misfortune.

Another famous talisman is the "Luck of Edenhall," in the possess