Extraordinary physical phenomena generally precede extraordinary catastrophes. Everybody has heard of the warning blue lights. During the night which preceded a storm, in which seven men of a seaside village were lost, an aged man, I have been assured, saw seven blue lights passing in solemn procession from the roofs of their cottages towards their grave-yard. He entreated the men to stay at home, and not to go to sea. But they were obstinate, and went. He told some old and some young people, who would listen to him, what he had seen, and had scarcely finished his vaticination when the lightning leaped high into the sky, the thunder pealed, and a hurricane lashed the sea into furious madness. The boats were not far from the shore, but before they could reach it a boat capsized, and seven men were lost within sight of their families. A week afterwards, at the very hour of the day corresponding to the hour of the night of the procession of the blue lights, the funeral procession of the seven fishermen was seen going from their cottages by the very way the lights had gone; and beneath the very spots where the lights stood in the churchyard the corpses rested for evermore. The law of the elders in these villages is, that no boats ought to go to sea when the old men say they have seen the blue lights. The blue lights are possibly electrical facts. The traditions respecting their direction are as variable as the winds. The guess is not a very hazardous one, that science would agree with the old men in warning the fishers against going to sea when the air was charged with electricity after midnight, in the coldest hours of the twenty-four. When the Footdee fishers were found in the last century to be no more scrupulous than other people respecting custom-house oaths, an oath was framed for them, founded upon their superstitious fears, which proved to be far more effectual than the ordinary one. It concluded with these words: “If I do not speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, may my boat be a bonnet to me.”