thing in which travelling by steam is so distinctly alluded
to.

Truly some old bard of the seventeenth century must in a vision of the
second sight have seen the railroad bridge across the Menai, the Chester
train dashing across it, at high railroad speed, and a figure exactly
like his own seated comfortably in a third-class carriage.

And now a few words on the second sight, a few calm, quiet words, in
which there is not the slightest wish to display either eccentricity or
book-learning.

The second sight is the power of seeing events before they happen, or of
seeing events which are happening far beyond the reach of the common
sight, or between which and the common sight barriers intervene, which it
cannot pierce. The number of those who possess this gift or power is
limited, and perhaps no person ever possessed it in a perfect degree:
some more frequently see coming events, or what is happening at a
distance, than others; some see things dimly, others with great
distinctness. The events seen are sometimes of great importance,
sometimes highly nonsensical and trivial; sometimes they relate to the
person who sees them, sometimes to other people. This is all that can be
said with anything like certainty with respect to the nature of the
second sight, a faculty for which there is no accounting, which, were it
better developed, might be termed the sixth sense.

The second sight is confined to no particular country, and has at all
times existed. Particular nations have obtained a celebrity for it for a
time, which they have afterwards lost, the celebrity being transferred to
other nations, who were previously not noted for the faculty. The Jews
were at one time particularly celebrated for the possession of the second
sight; they are no longer so. The power was at one time very common
amongst the Icelanders and the inhabitants of the Hebrides, but it is so
no longer. Many and extraordinary instances of the second sight have
lately occurred in that part of England generally termed East Anglia,
where in former times the power of the second sight seldom manifested
itself.

There are various books in existence in which the second sight is treated
of or mentioned. Amongst others there is one called "Martin's
Description of the Western Isles of Scotland," published in the year
1703, which is indeed the book from which most writers in English, who
have treated of the second sight, have derived their information. The