hat the portrait was an
original portrait of a real person? and how many portraits of
mediaeval people does he suppose to exist in English country houses?
Taking the Middle Ages as lasting till the beginning of the reign of
Henry VIII., say till Holbein, we can assure Mr. Sully that they
have left us very few portraits indeed. But perhaps it was a modern
picture, a fanciful study of a man in mediaeval costume. In that
event, Mr. Sully's case is greatly strengthened, but he does not
tell us whether the work of art was, or was not, contemporary with
the Middle Ages. Neither does he tell us whether the lady was in
the habit of seeing hallucinations.

The weakest point in the whole anecdote and theory is in the
statement, 'oddly enough, she now learned for the first time that
the house at which she was staying had the reputation of being
haunted' by the mediaeval personage. It certainly would be very odd
if one picture in a house troubled 'the inter-somnolent moments' of
a succession of people, who, perhaps, had never seen, or, like the
lady, never attended to it. Such 'troubles' are very rare: very
few persons have seen a dream which, in Mr. Sully's words, 'left
behind, for an appreciable interval after waking, a vivid after-
impression, and in some cases, even the semblance of a sense
perception'. Mathematicians may calculate the chances against a
single unnoticed portrait producing this very rare effect, in a
series of cases, so as to give rise to a belief in haunting, by mere
casual coincidence. In the records of the Psychical Society, one
observer speaks of seeing a face and figure at night, which he
recognises next morning in a miniature on his chimney-piece. But,
in this case, there was no story of haunting, there had been no
series of similar impressions on successive occupants of the room,
_that_ is the circumstance which Mr. Sully finds 'odd enough,' a
sentiment in which we may all agree with him. This is exactly the
oddity which his explanation does not explain.

While psychological science, in this example, seems to treat matters
of evidence rather laxly, psychical conjecture, on the other hand,
leaves much unexplained. Thus Mr. Myers puts forward a theory which
is, in origin, due to St. Augustine. The saint had observed that
any one of us may be seen in a dream by another person, while our
intelligence is absolutely unconscious of any communication. Apply
this to ghosts in haunted houses. We ma