any conception of
the manner in which she had become acquainted with that language; but,
after much inquiry, it was discovered that in her childhood she had a
nurse, a native of a district on the coast of Brittany, the dialect of
which is closely analogous to Welsh. The lady at that time learned a
good deal of this dialect but had entirely forgotten it for many years
before this attack of fever."

[Sidenote: _Living Past Experiences Over Again_]

Dr. Carpenter relates the following incident in his "Mental Physiology":
"Several years ago, the Rev. S. Mansard, now rector of Bethnal Green,
was doing clerical duty for a time at Hurstmonceaux, in Sussex; and
while there he one day went over with a party of friends to Pevensey
Castle, which he did not remember to have ever previously visited. As he
approached the gateway he became conscious of a very vivid impression
of having seen it before; and he 'seemed to himself to see' not only the
gateway itself, but donkeys beneath the arch and people on top of it.
His conviction that he must have visited the castle on some former
occasion--although he had neither the slightest remembrance of such a
visit nor any knowledge of having ever been in the neighborhood
previously to his residence at Hurstmonceaux--made him inquire from his
mother if she could throw any light on the matter. She at once informed
him that being in that part of the country, when he was but _eighteen
months old_, she had gone over with a large party and had taken him in
the pannier of a donkey; that the elders of the party, having brought
lunch with them, had eaten it on the roof of the gateway, where they
would have been seen from below, whilst he had been left on the ground
with the attendants and donkeys."

"An Italian gentleman," says Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, "who died of
yellow fever in New York, in the beginning of his illness spoke English,
in the middle of it French, but on the day of his death only Italian."

Striking as these instances are, they are not unusual. Everyone on
reflection can supply similar instances. Who among us has not at one
time or another been impressed with a mysterious feeling of having at
some time in the past gone through the identical experience which he is
living now?

[Sidenote: _The "Flash of Inspiration"_]

On such occasions the sense of familiarity is sometimes so persistent as
to fill one with a strange feeling of the supernatural and to incline
our minds to the