water, and his lungs were once more inflated
with atmospheric air. But he may not have
reached the point at which the memory is
preternaturally excited. It is not difficult to believe
that the last action of the brain may be a supreme
resumption of its own impressions. The
concentration of a whole life in a single moment or
two is indeed marvellous; but the sense of time
seems to have very little to do with the actual
duration of time. The idea of eternity, or of
the lapse of infinite ages, is often experienced
in the course of a dream which can only have
lasted a very short period. This is especially
the case with opium-eaters; but it will occur
even to those who never indulge in that
perilous narcotic. Moslem writers affirm that
the miraculous journey of Mahomet from Mecca
to Jerusalem, and thence through the whole of
the Seven Heavens, was performed in so
infinitesimal a fraction of time, that the Prophet, on
awaking from his trance, was able to arrest the
fall of a water-jar which the angel Gabriel had
knocked over with his wing in the act of their
departure. Another Oriental legend tells of an
infidel Caliph, who, doubting the truth of this
relation, was directed by a certain conjuror to
plunge his head in a bucket of water, and withdraw
it with the greatest speed possible. He did
so, and in that momentary interval had a dream
or vision of a long life abounding in vicissitudes
and extraordinary incidents. These, of course,
are fables; but they are based upon
psychological mysteries such as are known to exist.

Hardly less wonderful is the connexion
between particular odours and specific recollections
or trains of ideas. Thousands have felt
this, and it is one of the most beautiful
instances of what may be called the magic of
memory. Hazlitt used to refer to a remark made
by Mr. Fearn, a metaphysical writer of his
time, to the effect that certain associations of
ideas always brought back to him, with the
vividness of an actual impression on the
sensorium, the smell of a baker's shop in Bassora.
This is just the reverse of the ordinary experience;
but we can readily understand it. The
late Mr. P. G. Patmore, who records this
circumstance in his work entitled My Friends and
Acquaintance, avers that, in his own case, tastes
were even more powerful than smells in producing
similar effects. "I could never taste green
mustard and cress," he writes, "without its calling
up to my mind, as if by magic, the whole
scene of my first school-days, when I used to
grow it in my little bit of garden in the inner
playground; that every individual object there
present used to start up before me with all the
distinctness of actual vision, and to an extent
of detail which no effort of memory could
accomplish without this assistance; and that
nothing but the visible objects of the scene
presented themselves on these occasions." As the
flavour died away, the vision would fade from the
mental sight, but would be instantly renewed
by tasting the herb once more. It is easy to
refer the explanation of such facts to mere
association of ideas.

An unhealthy or depressed bodily condition
has doubtless much to do with mystical impressions.
To the man who goes to bed early and rises
early, the time of sunrise is invigorating and
inspiriting; but to him who has been up all night,
especially when pursuing intellectual work, the
return of light is often peculiarly mournful,
oppressive, and spectral. It is the true ghost season
—far more than midnight; and especially so in
the hushed and empty thoroughfares of a great
city, with its vast circles of suspended life. The
empty street, stretching before you in dim
perspective, is a phantom land at such moments;
the familiar holds strange intercourse with the
unfamiliar, and is weirdly suggestive. We have
known an instance of a man who, returning
home early one summer morning from a night
of mental labour, was oppressed by an intense
and preternatural sense of a hundred years in
advance; that is to say, by some singular,
unbidden trick of the mind, he seemed to contemplate
the existing time—himself and all—as
something that had passed for a century. Fatigue
was the cause of this; but the fancy opens a
strange glimpse into the vague and shadowy
regions of morbid experience.

The most astounding and solemn feeling
of this nature is the impression, amounting
at the moment to conviction, that we have lived
before in some remote age, and that all the
circumstances and accessories now surrounding
us, even to the most minute and insignificant,
surrounded us at that former period. Lord
Lindsay, in his Letters from the East, describes
this feeling with a literal exactness which will
be at once recognised by all who have ever
undergone it. He says: "We saw the river
Kadisha, like a silver thread, descending from
Lebanon. The whole scene bore that strange
and shadowy resemblance to the wondrous
landscape delineated in Kubla Khan that one
so often feels in actual life, when the whole
scene around you appears to be reacting after a
long interval; your friend seated in the same
juxtaposition, the subjects of conversation the
same, and shifting with the same 'dream-like
ease' that you remember at some remote and
indefinite period of pre-existence. You always
know what will come next, and sit spell-bound,
as it were, in a sort of calm expectancy." It
would have been more correct to say that we
seem to know what will come next, for it is
certainly doubtful whether we really know it. But
the effect on the mind is that of all absolute
foreknowledge, so that, when anything is said,
it appears to be precisely what was anticipated.
The feeling is, in truth, as Lord Lindsay
admirably expresses it, one of "calm expectancy,"
and, apart from the sense of strangeness, is
rather soothing and agreeable than unpleasant.
This, however, is supposing that it be not
prolonged. When it continues to haunt the mind,
it becomes horribly oppressive, and is a clear
sign that cerebral disorder has set in. Sir
Walter Scott was thus troubled towards the
latter end of his life, when he was overworked
and harassed by difficulties. He states in his