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 declined to put the case too forward in his reader's eye, from the solemnity of the circumstances, and the private interest to himself and his own family, of the subsequent event. The case was this:--Mr. William Wardlaw Ramsay, the companion (and we believe relative) of Lord Lindsay, a man whose honorable character, and whose intellectual accomplishments speak for themselves, in the posthumus memorabilia of his travels published by Lord L., had seen an array of objects in the desert, which facts immediately succeeding demonstrated to have been a mere ocular _lusus_, or (according to Arab notions) phantoms. During the absence from home of an Arab sheikh, who had been hired as conductor of Lord Lindsay's party, a hostile tribe (bearing the name of Tellaheens) had assaulted and pillaged his tents. Report of this had reached the English travelling party; it was known that the Tellaheens were still in motion, and a hostile rencounter was looked for for some days. At length, in crossing the well known valley of the _Wady Araba_, that most ancient channel of communication between the Red Sea and Judea, &c., Mr. Ramsay saw, to his own entire conviction, a party of horse moving amongst some sand-hills. Afterwards it became certain, from accurate information, that this must have been a delusion. It was established, that no horseman _could_ have been in that neighborhood at that time. Lord Lindsay records the case as an illustration of 'that spiritualized tone the imagination naturally assumes, in scenes presenting so little sympathy with the ordinary feelings of humanity;' and he reports the case in these pointed terms: --'Mr. Ramsay, a man of remarkably strong sight, and by no means disposed to superstitious credulity, distinctly saw a party of horse moving among the sand-hills; and I do not believe he was ever able to divest himself of that impression.' No--and, according to Arab interpretation, very naturally so; for, according to their faith, he really _had_ seen the horsemen; phantom horseman certainly, but still objects of sight. The sequel remains to be told--by the Arabian