reply that possibly in an elevated state of health and spirits the soul
may outrun the body, and literally foresee coming events both real and
ideal. But we must leave this to the Psychical Society for a judgment
upon the famous Horatian philosophy of "more things in heaven and
earth," &c.

* * * * *

On Mr. Galton's topic of hereditary talent I have little to report as to
myself. Neither father nor mother had any leanings either towards verse
or prose; but my mother was an excellent pianiste and a fair landscape
painter both in oils and water-colour; also she drew and printed on
stone, and otherwise showed that she came of an artistic family. As to
my father's surroundings, his brother Peter, a consul-general in Spain,
wrote a tragedy called Pelayo; and I possess half-a-dozen French songs,
labelled by my father "in my late dear father's handwriting," but
whether or not original, I cannot tell. As a Guernseyman, he might well
be as much French as English. They seem to me clever and worthy of
Beranger, though long before him: possibly they are my grandsire's. A
very fair judge of French poetry, and himself a good Norman poet, Mr.
John Sullivan of Jersey writes and tells me that the songs are
excellent, and that he remembers them to have been popularly sung when
he was a boy.

About the matter of hereditary bias itself, we know that as with animals
so with men, "fortes creantur fortibus, et bonis;" this so far as bodies
are concerned; but surely spirits are more individual, as innumerable
instances prove, where children do not take after their parents. If,
however, I may mention my own small experience of this matter, literary
talent, or at all events authorship, _is_ hereditary, especially in