s not met persons for the first time, whose
presence awakened memories of a past lying far back in the misty ages
of long ago? Who has not been seized at times with the consciousness of
a mighty "oldness" of soul? Who has not heard music, often entirely new
compositions, which somehow awakens memories of similar strains,
scenes, places, faces, voices, lands, associations and events, sounding
dimly on the strings of memory as the breezes of the harmony floats
over them? Who has not gazed at some old painting, or piece of
statuary, with the sense of having seen it all before? Who has not
lived through events, which brought with them a certainty of being
merely a repetition of some shadowy occurrences away back in lives
lived long ago? Who has not felt the influence of the mountain, the
sea, the desert, coming to them when they are far from such
scenes--coming so vividly as to cause the actual scene of the present
to fade into comparative unreality. Who has not had these
experiences--we ask_?

Writers, poets, and others who carry messages to the world, have
testified to these things--and nearly every man or woman who hears the
message recognizes it as something having correspondence in his or her
own life. Sir Walter Scott tells us in his diary: "I cannot, I am sure,
tell if it is worth marking down, that yesterday, at dinner time, I was
strangely haunted by what I would call the sense of preexistence, viz.,
a confused idea that nothing that passed was said for the first time;
that the same topics had been discussed and the same persons had stated
the same opinions on them. The sensation was so strong as to resemble
what is called the mirage in the desert and a calenture on board ship."
The same writer, in one of his novels, "Guy Mannering," makes one of
his characters say: "Why is it that some scenes awaken thoughts which
belong as it were, to dreams of early and shadowy recollections, such
as old Brahmin moonshine would have ascribed to a state of previous
existence. How often do we find ourselves in society which we have
never before met, and yet feel impressed with a mysterious and
ill-defined consciousness that neither the scene nor the speakers nor
the subject are entirely new; nay, feel as if we could anticipate that
part of the conversation which has not yet taken place."

Bulwer speaks of "that strange kind of inner and spiritual memory which
so often recalls to us places and persons we have never seen before,
a