s mind was occasionally thrown into direct relation with that
of a chance visitor through favourable influences; that the soul of
Arnod Paole, as he lay in his grave alive, in the so-called
vampyr-state, may have drawn into communion the minds of other persons,
who were thereupon the subjects of sensorial illusions of which he was
the theme;--that the mind of Joan of Arc may by possibility have been
placed in relation with a higher mind, which foreknew her destiny, and
in a parallel manner displayed it to her.

Individual facts may be disputed or attributed to more coincidence, but
as soon as their number and singularity and authentication take them out
of that category, the explanation offered above cannot be put aside as
_prima facie_ absurd. Like other first hypotheses, indeed, it will, if
received for a time, have ultimately to make way for a correcter notion.
Still it will have helped to lead to truth. I am quite indifferent to
its fate. But I am not indifferent to the reception the facts themselves
may meet with, which I have adduced it to explain. It is true that
nothing can be more trivial and useless than the character in which they
present themselves. Disconnected objectless outbreaks, they seem, of
some obscure power, they may be compared to the attraction of light
bodies by amber after friction, and are as yet as unmeaning and
valueless as were the first indications of the electric force.
Therefore, doubtless, are they so commonly disregarded.

It is not indeed unlikely that, on looking closer, a number of other
incidents, turning up on trifling or important occasions, may be found
to depend on the same cause with those we have been considering--things
that seem for a moment odd and unaccountable, something more than
coincidences, and are then forgotten. The simultaneous suggestions of
the same idea to two persons in conversation, the spread of panic-fears,
sympathy in general, the attraction or repulsion felt on first
acquaintance, the intuitive knowledge of mankind which some possess, the
universal fascination exercised by others, may be found, perhaps, in
part to hinge on the same principle with Zschokke's seer-gift.

Among the odd incidents which this train of reflection brings to my
mind, (which you are at liberty to explain in the way you like best,) I
am tempted to select and mention two that were communicated to me by
Admiral the Honourable G. Dundas, then a Lord of the Admiralty, and in
constant c