Legend
< Voluntary Trances (continued from page 3-140) >
him, and said no more.”
The next two subjects taken up by Dr. Sexton in the paper were somnambulism and clairvoyance, and under these heads he quoted a great number of cases of an astounding character. He then went on to the subject of—
Y. Prevision.—Of this faculty there are innumerable cases on record. Wordsworth seems to have referred to this power in his preface to The Excursion, where he thus invokes the presence of the spirit:—
Descend prophetic spirit! that inspirest |
The same power is also referred to by Campbell, in which he makes the Seer exclaim, in defence of the prediction he has just uttered:—
For dark and despairing my sight I may soal, |
The whole scene of the Pretender and his legions flying from the bloody fields of Culloden are present to the mind of the seer. Among the German peasantry the power of prescience seems to have been very common. A collection of prophecies obtained from this source was published in Blackwood's Magazine for 1850, from which I select the following: “A Westphalian shepherd, by the name of Jaspers, a sincere and devout man, predicted in 1830, before the construction of the first English railway, that just before his death a great road would be carried through the country from west to east, which will be passed through the forest of Bodelschwing. On this road carriages will run without horses, and cause a dreadful noise. At the commencement of this work great scarcity will prevail.... Before this road is quite completed a frightful war will break out, in which a small Northern power will be conqueror.”
Almost all great events in history, and frequently small ones, have been predicted by some gifted seer. The whole future life of Joan of Arc lay clear before her in vision in her early years—a fact which is paralleled hundreds of times in history. There is a marvellous prophecy on record by Friar Bacon, six hundred years old, which I will read to you. “Bridges unsupported by arches will be made to span the foaming current. Man shall descend to the bottom of the ocean, safely breathing, and treading with firm step on the golden sands, never brightened by the light of day. Call but the sacred powers of Sol and Luna into action, and behold a single steersman sitting at the helm guiding the vessel, which divides the waves with greater rapidity than if she had been fitted with a crew of mariners toiling at the oars; and the loaded chariot no longer encumbered by the panting steeds shall dart on its course with resistless force and rapidity. Let the simple elements do the labour, bind the eternal forces and yoke them to the plough.” Here you perceive we have a clear prophecy of the future discovery of the suspension bridge, the diving bell, steam navigation, the railroad, and the steam plough.
After quoting several other very interesting cases of Prevision, Dr. Sexton concluded as follows:—
Classical scholars will recollect the dream of Hecuba, in the first month of her pregnancy with Paris, that she had brought into the world a burning torch, which had destroyed her husband’s palace, and reduced the city of Troy to ashes; how the soothsayers explained the dream as applying to the child not yet born; how to avert the calamity this infant was ordered to be destroyed as soon as it came into the world, but was afterwards exposed on Mount Ida, suckled by a she-bear, found by shepherds, and brought up amongst peasants; and how, after all, the prophetic dream was fulfilled literally, according to the interpretation of the soothsayers. Not less to the point is the dream of Calphurnia, the wife of Julius Caesar, who, the night before her husband’s murder, dreamed that the roof of the house had fallen in, and that he had been stabbed in her arms; in consequence of which dream she vainly endeavoured to detain him at home. The literature of all times, and of every country, abounds with cases of this kind. Hence the great truth expressed by Cicero— “Multa oraculis declarantur, multa vaticinationibus, multa somniis.”
Such is the country over whose existence |
An Amiable Fiend
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An Important Question
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Editor's notes
