"Everybody was whispering: 'You see he is mad, for he was perfectly serious. It is easy to see that he is joking, and he always introduces the marvellous into his jests.' ' Yes,' replied Chamfort, 'but his marvellous is not gay; it savors too much of the gallows. But when is all this to happen?' 'Six years will not have passed before all that I say will be accomplished.' 'You talk of miracles (and now it was I who spoke), and do I go for nothing?' 'You will then be a miracle no less wonderful, for you will be a Christian.' At this there were many exclamations of surprise. ' Ah!' said Chamfort; ' I am relieved; if we shall only perish when La Harpe becomes a Christian, we shall be immortal.' 'As for us,' then, said Madame la Duchesse de Grammont, 'women are very happy, to rank for nothing in revolutions; when I say for nothing, I do not mean to say that we do not meddle a little; but our sex is exempt.' 'Your sex, Madame, will not save you, this time; meddle how you will, you will all be treated as men without the least difference.' 'But what do you mean, Monsieur Cazotte? You are preaching to us the end of the world.' 'I know nothing about that; but what I do know, Duchess, is, that you will be taken to the scaffold; you, and many other ladies with you, in the executioner's cart, with your hands tied behind your back. ' Ah! I hope that in that case I shall at least have a carriage hung with black.' 'No, Madame; ladies of higher rank than yourself will, like you, go in a cart, with their hands bound behind them.' 'Of higher rank! what! princesses of the blood?' 'Of still higher rank.' At this the company began to be agitated, and the brow of the host grew dark! All began to feel that the joke grew serious. In order to dispel the cloud, Madame de Grammont, instead of noticing this reply, said, in a lively tone, 'You see, he will not even let me have a confessor.' 'No, Madame, neither you nor any one else will have one. The last of the condemned who will have one, as a special favor, will be' - he hesitated. 'Well, who is the happy mortal that will enjoy this privilege?' 'It is the last that will remain to him; it will be the King of France.'

"The master of the house hurriedly arose, and all was confusion. Approaching M. Cazotte, he said to him impressively: 'My dear Monsieur Cazotte, we have had enough of this mournful farce. You carry it too far, and will not only compromise yourself, but the whole company.' Cazotte made no reply, but prepared to depart; when Madame de Grammont, who was always merry, turned towards him and said: ' Sir Prophet, you have told us all our good fortunes, but you have said nothing of your own.' He mused for some time with his eyes cast down. 'Madame, have you read The Siege of Jerusalem, by Josephus? 'Oh, certainly; who has not? But tell me, as though I had not read it.' ' Well, Madame, during the siege, there was a man, who, for seven days and nights, walked the ramparts incessantly in the sight of besieged and besiegers, shouting out in a sad and loud voice: 'Woe to Jerusalem!' and on the seventh day he cried, 'Woe to Jerusalem ! Woe to myself!' at which moment an enormous stone, cast by the enemy's machines, struck him and crushed him to death.'

"On saying this, Cazotte bowed and retired." The phenomena of second sight, the belief in which is so prevalent in Scotland and in some other countries, belongs to prevision. It is true that philosophy and physiology agree in 16 rejecting this idea; but the evidence of many sensible men in its favor seems to justify a closer examination of the subject

We are far from placing implicit faith in all that we have heard related bearing upon these phenomena; we will give the following case only, which Ferriar, Hibbert, and Abercrombie have considered in different aspects: -

Case ciii. "An officer of the English army, connected with my family," says Ferriar, "was quartered, towards the middle of the last century, in the neighborhood of a Scotch gentleman who was gifted with second sight. One day, when the officer, who had made his acquaintance, was reading a play to the ladies, the host, who was pacing the floor, suddenly stopped, and appeared like one inspired. He rang the bell, and ordered the servant to saddle a horse, and ride immediately to a neighboring castle, and ask after the health of the lady, and, if the reply was satisfactory, to go on to another house that he named, and inquire after a lady there.

"The officer closed the book, and entreated his host to explain these sudden orders, which he attributed to second sight. He hesitated, but finally owned that the door had opened and admitted a little woman without a head, whose figure resembled the two ladies to whom he had sent. He added that the apparition was a sign of the sudden death of some person of his acquaintance.

"The servant returned some hours afterwards with the information that one of these ladies had died suddenly of apoplexy at the moment of the apparition.

"On another occasion, during a stormy night, it happened that the gentleman was sick in bed, and the officer reading to him; the fishing-boat was out at sea. The old gentleman, after exhibiting several times much uneasiness for his people, cried out: 'The boat is lost!' 'How do you know it?' inquired the Colonel. 'I see,' said the invalid, 'two boatmen, who carry a third drowned; they stream with water, and now place him close beside your chair.' At night, the fishermen returned with the dead body of their comrade."*

Ferriar justly attributes this vision to hallucinations; according to Abercrombie, it was the reminiscence of a forgotten dream. We think that it should be classed with the hallucinations experienced daring ecstasy. We must also class the ecstatic visions of cold countries with hallucinations, as also the cases of second sight common to the Laplanders, Samoiedes, Ostiaks, and Kamtschatdales. Hibbert has given many curious cases.*

* Ferriar, op. cit. p. 67.