Second sight is, like all similar magic phenomena, frequently mentioned in the writings of the ancients. Homer mentions a case in his "Odyssey" (xx. v. 351). Apollonius of Tyana was delivering an oration at Ephesus, when he suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence and beheld in a vision the Emperor Domitian at Rome, in the act of succumbing to his murderers. He fell into a kind of trance, his eyes became fixed, and he exclaimed in an unnatural voice: "Down with the tyrant!" (_Vita Apoll. Zenobis Anolo interprete._ Paris, 1555, l. viii. p. 562.) Henry IV., when still Prince of Navarre, saw on the eve of St. Bartholomew several drops of blood falling upon the green cloth of the card-table at which he was seated in company with several courtiers; the latter beheld the fearful and ominous sight as well as he himself. German writings abound with instances of men having seen their own funeral several days before their death, and in many instances the warning is reported to have had a most salutary effect in causing them to repent of their sins and to prepare for the impending summons. One of the most remarkable instances is that of a distinguished professor of divinity, Dr. Lysius, in Königsberg. He had inherited special magic powers through many generations from an early ancestor, who saw a funeral of very peculiar nature, with all the attending circumstances, long before it actually took place. He himself had his first revelation when, lying in bed awake, he saw suddenly his chamber quite light, and something like a man's shadow pass him, while on his mind, not on his ear, fell the words: _Umbra matris tuæ_. Although his mother had just written to him that she was in unusually good health and spirits, she had died that very night. On another occasion he astonished his friends by telling them what a superb new building he had seen erected in Königsberg, giving all the details of church and school-room to a little gate in a narrow alley. Many years afterwards such a building was really erected there, and he himself called to occupy part of it, when that little gate became his favorite entrance. Although he had many such visions, and his wife, succumbing to the contagious influence of magic powers, also foresaw more than one important event, he sternly refused to attach any weight to his own forebodings or those of other persons. Thus a poor woman, possessing the gift of second sight, once came to some members of his family and told them she had seen seven funerals leave his house; when this was reported to him, he denounced the superstition as unchristian, and forbade its being mentioned again in his presence. But, although there was not a sick person in the house at the time, and even the older members of the family were unusually hale and hearty, in a few weeks every one in the house was dangerously ill, the head of the family alone excepted, and as three only escaped, the seven deaths which had been foreseen actually took place.