From the way in which this anecdote is introduced we learn that Talleyrand had some strong leaning to the Celtic superstition known as the second sight, which, in the adust imagination of a Frenchman, is closely allied to fatalism, and which, we fear, loses its interest, as it certainly does its virtue, when transported into sunnier regions from "the land of the mountain and the flood." In ancient times Augustus Caesar,[18] and in modern Samuel Johnson, Napoleon, and Walter Scott, were all, more or less, and after the manner of their several idiosyncracies, the victims of this imaginary belief; and if we knew the apocalyptic tendencies of obscure, as well as we do those of celebrated individuals, we should probably, discover that this weakness was much more prevalent than is generally supposed. We have no great difficulty in understanding how a fanciful notion of this kind should attach itself to minds of a certain conformation, or be even generated by them, and that it should exercise a considerable, though unseen influence over the secret convictions of men of ability, and of women of vivid religious emotions; but we do not so readily comprehend how such persons as Napoleon and Talleyrand should have embraced a delusion which was utterly irreconcilable with their skeptical natures, and which necessarily presupposed an immaterial state of existence, and the providential superintendence of human affairs by a benevolent order of beings, whose powers must have been deputed to them by a superior and over-ruling Intelligence. It was the part of an ancient Roman, like Augustus, to believe in portents and omens, however insignificant; it might even require some philosophy to despise them; and among ourselves in modern times it will be found, if we mistake not, that strong poetical sensibilities, or a peculiarly impressible temperament, is the foundation of what can be regarded in no other light than an hallucination. The world of spirits, with all its shadowy tenants and imaginary impulses, might be a reality to Scott, whose demonology never for one moment obscured the lucid perceptions of a singularly clear and masculine intellect; while the Rosicrucianism of so vigorously-minded a man as Samuel Johnson was the plain result of that constitutional melancholy under which he labored--fortified, it may be, by theological tenets which bordered on the mystical: but what could Napoleon mean by Fate, or Talleyrand by Destiny? They were both of them unbelievers in spiritualism of any kind; and whence could those intimations come of which Talleyrand, at least, conceived himself to be the recipient? He was obviously possessed by the idea that numerous premonitions had been vouchsafed to him; and what chiefly moved in him a desire to visit Scotland was, not its scenery, its lakes, its mountains, or its people, but a wish to inquire into the (as he supposed) natural faculty of divination. The dream may be of Jove[19]--Homer is a sound heathen