whose eyes are once opened to the discernment of these phantoms. To see
them, or to hear them, even where the traveller is careful to refuse
their lures, entails the certainty of death in no long time. This is
another form of that universal faith which made it impossible for any
man to survive a bodily commerce, by whatever sense, with a spiritual
being. We find it in the Old Testament, where the expression, 'I have
seen God and shall die,' means simply a supernatural being; since no
Hebrew believed it possible for a nature purely human to sustain for a
moment the sight of the Infinite Being. We find the same faith amongst
ourselves, in case of _doppelgaenger_ becoming apparent to the
sight of those whom they counterfeit; and in many other varieties. We
modern Europeans, of course, laugh at these superstitions; though, as
La Place remarks, (_Essai sur les Probabilites_,) any case,
however apparently incredible, if it is a recurrent case, is as much
entitled to a fair valuation as if it had been more probable
beforehand.[Footnote: _'Is as much entitled to a fair valuation,
under the lans of induction, as if it had been more probable
beforehand'_--One of the cases which La Place notices as entitled to
a grave consideration, but which would most assuredly be treated as a
trivial phenomenon, unworthy of attention, by commonplace spectators,
is--when a run of success, with no apparent cause, takes place on heads
or tails, (_pile ou croix_) Most people dismiss such a case as
pure accident. But La Place insists on its being duly valued as a fact,
however unaccountable as an effect. So again, if in a large majority of
experiences like those of Lord Lindsay's party in the desert, death
should follow, such a phenomenon is as well entitled to its separate
valuation as any other.] This being premised, we who connect
superstition with the personal result, are more impressed by the
disaster which happened to Lord Lindsay, than his lordship, who either
failed to notice the _nexus_ between the events, or possibly