nd
secondly, that if the crowd of purely casual spectres were so great that it
is no wonder that, now and then the person should have died at or near the
moment, we ought to expect a much larger proportion of cases in which the
spectre should come at the moment of the death of one or another of all the
cluster who are closely connected with the original of the spectre. But
this, we know, is almost without example. It remains then, for all, who
speculate at all, to look upon the asserted phenomenon, think what they may
of it, the thing which is to be explained, as a _connection_ in time of the
death, and the {48} simultaneous appearance of the dead. Any person the
least used to the theory of probabilities will see that purely casual
coincidence, the _wrong spectre_ being comparatively so rare that it may be
said never to occur, is not within the rational field of possibility.

The purely casual coincidence, from which there is no escape except the
actual doctrine of special providences, carried down to a very low point of
special intention, requires a junction of the things the like of each of
which is always happening. I will give three instances which have occurred
to myself within the last few years: I solemnly vouch for the literal truth
of every part of all three:

In August 1861, M. Senarmont,[93] of the French Institute, wrote to me to
the effect that Fresnel[94] had sent to England, in or shortly after 1824,
a paper for translation and insertion in the _European Review_, which
shortly afterwards expired. The question was what had become of that paper.
I examined the _Review_ at the Museum, found no trace of the paper, and
wrote back to that effect at the Museum, adding that everything now
depended on ascertaining the name of the editor, and tracing his papers: of
this I thought there was no chance. I posted this letter on my way home, at
a Post Office in the Hampstead Road at the junction with Edward Street, on
the opposite side of which is a bookstall. Lounging for a moment over the
exposed books, _sicut meus est mos_,[95] I saw, within a few minutes of the
posting of the letter, a little catch-penny book of anecdotes of Macaulay,
which I bought, and ran over for a minute. My eye was soon caught by this
sentence: "One of the young fellows immediately wrote to the editor (Mr.
Walker) {49} of the _European Review_." I thus got the clue by which I
ascertained that there was no chance of recovering Fresnel's paper. O