board one of her Majesty's ships lying off Portsmouth, the officers being one day at the mess-table, a young lieutenant suddenly laid down his knife and fork, pushed away his plate, and turned extremely pale. He then rose from the table, covered his face with his hands, and retired. The president of the mess, supposing him to be ill, sent to make inquiries. At first he was unwilling to reply; but on being pressed, he confessed that he had been seized by a sudden and irresistible impression that a brother he had in India was dead. "He died," said he, "on the 12th of August, at six o'clock; I am perfectly convinced of it." No argument could overthrow his conviction, which in due course of time was verified to the letter.

Events of this kind, in the minds of many, seem to point to a mysterious sympathy and harmony between two personalities, while others explain them as simply the result of "fancy and coincidence. Any one, it is argued,* may fall into a brown study, and emerge from it with a stare and the notion that he heard his name spoken. That is the part of fancy, and the simultaneous event, death, is the part of coincidence. Against this it will always be argued that these coincidences are too many to be accidental, and this position will, says a writer in the Daily News, always be met by efforts to weaken the evidence for each individual case, and so to reduce the cumulative evidence to nothing. Taking into consideration, however, the countless instances which are on record of this kind—many too on evidence beyond impeachment—we must, while giving them the credence they deserve, honestly admit they are beyond the limits of human explanation.

Again, the wraith, or spectral appearance of a person shortly to die, is an object of belief in this country as well as abroad. In Ireland these apparitions are called "fetches," in Cumberland "swarths," and in Yorkshire "waffs."

Popular omens of death are innumerable. One, perhaps, which is more fully believed in than any other, is the "death-watch." This, although known to be caused by a certain beetle, belonging to the timber-boring genus, Anobium,

* Daily News, September 12, 1876.

This superstition is mentioned by Baxter in his "World of Spirits," which obtained currency for its belief upward of a century. He says: "There are many things that ignorance causeth multitudes to take for prodigies. I have had many discreet friends that have been affrighted with the noise called a death-watch, whereas I have since, near three years ago, oft found by trial that it is a noise made upon paper by a little. nimble, running worm, just like a louse, but whiter and quicker, and it is most usually behind a paper pasted to a wall, especially to wainscot; and it is seldom if ever heard but in the heat of summer. It is generally agreed by entomologists to be the call of these insects to one another, which is caused in the following way: The insect raises itself upon its hind legs, with the body somewhat inclined, and beats its head with great force upon the surface near it, and its strokes are so powerful as to make a considerable noise. In Lancashire, we are informed that the death-tick must only tick three times on each occasion.

Another almost equally popular omen of death is the howling of a dog at night -a very old superstition, and not confined to our own country. It is mentioned by Virgil in allusion to the Roman misfortunes in the Pharsalic war; and Pausanias relates how, before the destruction of the Messenians, the dogs set up a fiercer howling than at other times. According to a quaint German idea, if a dog howls looking downward it portends a death, but if upward, then a recovery from sickness. Shakespeare includes the howling of the dog among omens. Thus, in 3 Henry VI. (v. 6), the king says:

"The owl shriek'd at thy birth, an evil sign; The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempests shook down trees."

It is curious how even an uneducated person could suppose that things which God, in His merciful providence, has hidden from mortal gaze, should be revealed to objects of the lower creation. Mrs. Latham, in her "West Sussex

Superstitions," recorded in the "FolkLore Record" (i. 56), says that no slight consternation was caused at Worthing a few years ago by a Newfoundland dog, the property of a clergyman in the neighborhood, lying down on the steps of a house and howling piteously, refusing to be driven away. As soon as it was known that a young lady, long an invalid, had died there, so much excitement took place that the occurrence reached the owner of the dog, who came to Worthing to inquire into the truth of it. It turned out, however, that the dog had accidentally been separated from his master in the evening, and had been seen running here and there when in search of him, and howling at the door of the stable where he put up the horse, and other places which he often visited in Worthing. It happened also that his master had been in the habit of visiting the particular house where the young lady had died, which at once accounted for the apparent mystery. Another omen of death is the hovering of birds around a house, and their tapping against the window-pane. The crowing of the cock, too, at the dead of night is regarded as equally ominous. Mice are also said to portend death. On one occasion a poor old woman in Devonshire, when speaking about the mice in her room, exclaimed, "I pray God at a night, when I hears them running about, to keep 'em down." It is a common notion that to kill a cricket is highly unlucky. Thus Gay, in his "Pastoral Dirge," among many prognostications of death, gives the following:

'And shrilling crickets in the chimney cried."

In the North of England a swallow flying down the chimney is very ominous; while in most places the breaking of a looking-glass is a certain forerunner of death. Among the countless other superstitions associated with man's decease may be mentioned one prevalent in Lancashire, where it is believed that to build, or even to rebuild, a house, is always fatal to one member of the family -generally to the one who may have been the principal promoter in wishing for the building or alteration. Fires and candles afford presages of death-coffins flying out of the former, and winding

sheets guttering down the latter. A Sussex piece of folk-lore tells us that if the church clock strikes twelve while a hymn is being sung in the morning service, a death will most surely follow during the following week.

High spirits have been considered a presage of death, a notion alluded to by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet (v. 3). "How oft, when men are at the point of death, Have they been merry! Which their keepers call

A lightning before death."

Indeed there are numerous instances on record of this belief, which still remains a psychological question. Tytler, in his "History of Scotland, "History of Scotland," speaking of the death of King James I., says: "On the fatal evening (February 20, 1436), the revels of the court were kept up to a late hour. The prince himself appears to have been in unusually gay and cheerful spirits. He even jested, if we may believe the contemporary manuscript, about a prophecy which had appeared that a king should that year be slain." In the evidence given at the inquest upon the bodies of four persons killed by an explosion at a firework inanufactory in Bermondsey, October 12, 1849, one of the witnesses stated: "On Friday night they were all very merry, and Mrs. B. said she feared something would happen before they went to bed, because they were SO happy."

From a very early period there has existed a belief in the existence of the power of prophecy at that period which precedes death. It took its origin in

the assumed fact that the soul becomes divine in the same ratio as the connection with the body is loosened. It has been urged in support of this theory that, at the hour of death, the soul is, as it were, on the confines of two worlds, and may possibly at the same moment possess a power which is both prospective and retrospective. Shakespeare in his Richard II. (II. 1), makes the dying Gaunt, alluding to his nephew, the young and self-willed king exclaim:

"Methinks I am a prophet new inspired, And thus, expiring, do foretell of him."

Again in Henry IV., the brave Percy, when in the agonies of death, conveys the same idea in the following words:

Curious to say, this notion may be traced as far back as the time of Homer. Thus Patroclus prophesies the death of Hector (Iliad," ii. 852): You yourself are not destined to live long, for even now death is drawing nigh unto you, and a violent fate awaits you-about to be slain in fight by the hands of Achilles, the irreproachable son of Oacus. Again, Aristotle tells us that "the soul, when on the point of taking its departure from the body, foretells and prophesies things about to happen."' Others have even sought for the foundation of this belief in the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis: "And Jacob called his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into his bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people." Whether, however, we accept this origin or not, at any rate it is very certain that the notion has existed from the earliest times, being alluded to also by Socrates, Xenophon, and Diodorous Siculus. The belief still exists in Lancashire and other parts of England.

Many families, it is said, take their special warnings of death, which assume special shapes. Thus, the ancient baro

net's family of Clifton, of Clifton Hall, in Nottinghamshire, is forewarned of approaching death by a sturgeon forcing its way up the River Trent, on whose bank their mansion is situated.

Prince, in his "Worthies of Devon," tells us that "there is a family of considerable standing, of the name of Oxenham, at South Tawton, near Okehampton, of which this strange and wonderful thing is recorded: That at the death of any of them, a bird with a white breast is seen for a while fluttering about their beds, and then suddenly to vanish. away."

Family omens of this kind are very common; and it is unfortunate that the great majority of them have been transmitted to us without the particulars that gave rise to them. In most cases it is impossible to find any connection between the omen and the family.

The superstitions associated with death are so extensive that a good-sized volume might be written on this deeplyinteresting subject. In the present paper I have therefore only been able to lay before the reader a brief description. of some of the most well-known ones; but these are sufficient to show their general character. They are valuable in so far as they illustrate the ideas of our fellow-creatures at that solemn and inexpressibly sacred moment which soon must overtake us all; and when it comes may it find us ready!-Leisure Hour.

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ONE of Sainte-Beuve's secretaries has recently added a third volume, to the two volumes already published, of the Correspondance de Sainte-Beuve.". It will probably be the last, for the editor seems to have gone to the very bottom of the basket, and many of the letters which he has included in the volume contain nothing of interest but the signature. It was not to be expected that these letters, which have been collected so tardily, should contain revelations and surprises. But although they do not alter the general impression of Sainte-Beuve which we have obtained

from the first two volumes of his letters, there are nevertheless certain points on which they throw a new light. The let

ters to the Abbé Barbe, his old schoolmate and almost unique confidant, are of great interest and show us a side of Sainte-Beuve which we might perhaps have divined, but which he fully confided to the Abbé Barbe alone.

I find the following portrait of SainteBeuve in an unpublished letter of Ximenes Doudan, dated October 19, 1869 :

"Yes, I am sad at the death of poor SainteBeuve. He was, in certain matters, superior to all critics past and present. For a long time no book of importance will appear without our asking involuntarily what Sainte-Beuve would have thought of it. He had knowledge, taste, imagination, a free style, and an opinion and instincts that were thoroughly personal. had also virtues which the somewhat capricious vivacity of his hatreds caused to be dis

He

regarded. M. Paradol has well said that he died with the courageous serenity of an an

At this time, Sainte-Beuve had the

died of sickness. Zealous persons will translate that by saying that he died like a Pagan. It is also a singularity of mind and character to have so well understood the grand and sombre souls of Port-Royal, and to have entered boldly

and all alone into the little cell of Mount Par. nassus."

Sainte-Beuve's correspondence bears out Doudan's delicate portrait. Tnat which first strikes one, on reading his letters, is the fact that from the first page to the last there are traces of but one sole and constant passion, literature. We shall seek in vain for juvenile effusions, generous illusions, or youthful ardor. Sainte-Beuve was a man of precocious maturity and premature old age, and his life was from beginning to end full of bitterness, lassitude and ennui.

Still there is reason to believe that if the course of his domestic life had been different, we should not have been justified in saying that love disturbed his senses rather than his soul. In December 1831 he writes to the Abbé Barbe:

"I have had much grief within the last two months-grief of that kind which one avoids by getting into port in good time. I have felt that passion of which I had only caught a glimpse, but which I desired. It is cruel and fixed, and it has thrown into my life many necessitiesbitterness mingled with sweetness, and a duty of sacrifice which will have its good effect, though costing our nature dearly."

What this particular passion was we are not told, but in the previous year, after writing to the Abbé Barbe at length on his religious doubts, he says:

"After many excesses in philosophy, and after much doubting, I have arrived, I hope, at the belief that there is no true repose here below, except in religion; in the orthodox, Catholic religion, practised with intelligence and submission. But, alas! as yet, for me that is a simple theoretical result, or a result of internal experience; and I am far from regulating my life and actions by it as I should do. The perpetual instability of my condition; my want of fortune; my literary necessities-all that has thrown me into a manner of living in which there is nothing fixed or regulated; and after a few hours of good resolutions I very soon fall once again a prey to outside impressions, or, what is worse, to the abandonment of passions which no one perhaps has felt so cruelly as I have. That is what in my moments of half-leisure I have tried to paint in my poems, which I have always been ashamed to send to you, and which I beg you not to read until I have seen you in person and explained many things to you."

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIII., No. 3

fort exagéré en romantisme, as he says. He was indeed a prominent member of the famous Cénacle, over which Victor Hugo presided, in the Rue Notre-Damedes-Champs, and the ardor of the language and passions of the long-haired revolutionaries of literature may well have terrified a good abbé who had spent his whole life in the quiet town of Boulogne-sur-mer, and whose idea of love and passion had been obtained from the sentimental pastorals of the eight

eenth century.

that Sainte-Beuve apologized so gently much perhaps on account of the form for his poems; it was on account of the matter. As for the unfortunate passion to which he refers so frequently in his letters to the Abbé Barbe, there is no reason to believe that it was so ideal as he painted it. If it had been, and if he had got into port, as he puts it, in good time, his life might have been less unhappy. But we must remember, once for all, that in Sainte-Beuve there were two if not three men-there was the ex

quisite and profound critic; the poet with high aspirations; and a very ugly, shock-headed and red-haired animal man. The critic is universally known and appreciated, and his fame has almost utterly eclipsed that of the poet, high as was his inspiration, and elegant as was his versification. But it is the soul of Sainte-Beuve the poet that speaks in some of his best letters. Finally we come to the animal man, whose doings and instincts have been revealed only Unfortutoo freely since his death. nately Sainte-Beuve was endowed with an essentially amorous temperament, and cursed with an ugliness such as women cannot pardon.

To his intense disgust women always offered him their friendship when he asked for their love. He had a fine and subtle soul; but the casket in which it was stored was coarse and unpleasing. At first he tries a reconciliation of soul

26

and body, from which attempt sprang his poems and novels, so strangely intermingled with sensuality and mysticism. At last, he finds a reconciliation impossible; a divorce takes place; his soul becomes more and more refined and more and more melancholy and weary in its isolation, while the body abates none of its exigencies and abrogates none of its rights. Hence the curious contrasts and contradictoriness of his life. His letters show that there really was an admirable unity of spirit in his existence. His will was always free; his character, sensitive, disappointed and independent, and his well-balanced intellect brought a rare lucidity to everything that it touched. He remained, as he himself says, clearsighted even in his weaknesses."

It must not be supposed that, because Sainte-Beuve allowed the purely animal man to have his way, he lost any of those ideal qualities which are expressed by the word heart. On the contrary, his ardor touched by constantly increasing melancholy became converted into sentimentality. The numerous letters which he wrote to Mdme. Desbordes-Valmore, the poetess, and the Comtesse de Fontanes show of what his heart was capable. Later in life he regrets that he had extinguished his flame (for reasons which we have seen above), but he proudly declares that he never perverted his heart.

The culte of the mother has always been one of the most charming sides of French family life. The romantics following therein the example set by their master, Victor Hugo, carried the literary expression of this mother-worship to the highest degree of ideality. It became, if we may say so without disrespect, the fashion to celebrate one's mother in verse. Now Sainte-Beuve, who, it must not be forgotten, was a poet of a very high order, and who is always cited by Théophile Gautier, the impeccable master, side by side with Hugo, Lamartine, de Vigny, and Alfred de MussetSainte-Beuve was a singular exception to this rule. A hostile critic has even gone to the pains of searching SainteBeuve's poems, in which he found on the subject nothing but the following comically dry line and a half :

Et ma mère aussi m'aime, Elle mourra pourtant."

Given the prevalent fashion, the critic concludes that the inspiration was wanting. The inference is perhaps somewhat hasty. Mdme. Sainte-Beuve was an ordinary bourgeoise; her chief care was to repair her son's socks, and her only anxiety was that he had chosen a precarious and unlucrative profession, to wit, that of literature. On the other hand there was no limit to her devotion, and from the day of his birth until the day of her death Sainte-Beuve was hardly ever out of his mother's sight. It was she who brought him to Paris and who put a heavy strain on her narrow means in order that he might complete his studies.

Mdme. Sainte-Beuve died in December 1850, after having lived to see her son famous and independent. SainteBeuve was then forty-six years of age. The terms in which he tells the sad news to his friend the Abbé Barbe do not bear out the conclusion that all the affection had been on the side of the mother:

44

"The death of my poor mother," he writes, 'although not unexpected, considering her age, has been another blow for me; it was so sudden. . . . I used to think that I was lonely before; and I perceive now, for the first time, that I am truly alone, and that I have no one behind me."

Then he continues in the usual tone of ennui :

"No more have I any one before me, for I have let pass the season of marriage and of those ties which bind us to the future. Of late, I have thrown myself more than ever into my work. It is a manner of deceiving life, and if in the eyes of those who, like you, have a sublime belief, it is only a palliative, it is, at least, the most honorable and least prejudicial that The labor to which I have one could choose.

subjected myself is so severe that I have not a minute for the agreeable relations of life, and scarcely even for the indispensable duties of society.' ("Nouvelle Correspondance,' 124.)

P.

The letters to the Abbé Barbe, which have been published for the first time in this new volume, are particularly interesting on account of the confessions which Sainte-Beuve makes concerning his religious doubts. In his first letter to the Abbé from Paris, dated 1819, the writer, being then fifteen years of age, speaks of religion as his great consola