servant complained of this apparent negligence, which laid him open to
suspicion of thefts that might be committed by others. 'He need feel
no anxiety,' said Swedenborg, smiling. 'But I do not wonder at his
fear; he cannot see the guardian who protects my door.' In fact, no
matter in what country he made his abode he never closed his doors,
and nothing was ever stolen from him. At Gottenburg--a town situated
some sixty miles from Stockholm--he announced, eight days before the
news arrived by courier, the conflagration which ravaged Stockholm,
and the exact time at which it took place. The Queen of Sweden wrote
to her brother, the King, at Berlin, that one of her ladies-in-waiting,
who was ordered by the courts to pay a sum of money which she was
certain her husband had paid before his death, went to Swedenborg
and begged him to ask her husband where she could find proof of the
payment. The following day Swedenborg, having done as the lady
requested, pointed out the place where the receipt would be found. He
also begged the deceased to appear to his wife, and the latter saw her
husband in a dream, wrapped in a dressing-gown which he wore just
before his death; and he showed her the paper in the place indicated
by Swedenborg, where it had been securely put away. At another time,
embarking from London in a vessel commanded by Captain Dixon, he
overheard a lady asking if there were plenty of provisions on board.
'We do not want a great quantity,' he said; 'in eight days and two
hours we shall reach Stockholm,'--which actually happened. This
peculiar state of vision as to the things of the earth--into which
Swedenborg could put himself at will, and which astonished those about
him--was, nevertheless, but a feeble representative of his faculty of
looking into heaven.

"Not the least remarkable of his published visions is that in which he
relates his journeys through the Astral Regions; his descriptions