the father and mother, of the son and daughter, of the rival lovers, of the compulsory marriage, and the attack made by the bride upon the hapless bridegroom, with the general catastrophe of the whole. _All these things he recollected_, just as he did before he took to his bed; _but he literally recollected nothing else_--not a single character woven by the romancer, not one of the many scenes and points of humour, not _anything with which he was himself connected_, as the writer of the work. Later, when Scott was breaking down under severe and long-continued labour, and first felt the approach of the illness which ultimately ended in death, he experienced strange mental phenomena. In his diary for February 17, 1829, he notes that on the preceding day, at dinner, though in company with two or three old friends, he was haunted by 'a sense of pre-existence,' a confused idea that nothing that passed was said for the first time; that the same topics had been discussed, and that the same persons had expressed the same opinions before. 'There was a vile sense of a want of reality in all that I did or said.' Dr. Reynolds related to Dr. Carpenter a case in which a Dissenting minister, who was in apparently sound health, was rendered apprehensive of brain-disease--though, as it seemed, without occasion--by a lapse of memory similar to that experienced by Sir Walter Scott. He 'went through an entire pulpit service on a certain Sunday morning with the most perfect consistency--his choice of hymns and lessons, and his _extempore_ prayer being all related to the subject of his sermon. On the following Sunday morning he went through the introductory part of the service in precisely the same manner--giving out the same hymns, reading the same lessons, and directing the _extempore_ prayer in the same channel. He then gave out the same text and preached the very same sermon as he had done on the previous Sunday. When he came down from the pulpit, it was found that he had not the smallest remembrance of having gone through precisely the same service on the previous Sunday; and when he was assured of it, he felt considerable uneasiness lest his lapse of memory should indicate some impending attack of illness. None such, however, supervened; and no _rationale_ can be given of this curious occurrence, the subject of it not being liable to fits of "absence of mind" and not having had his thoughts engrossed at the time by any other special pre-occupation.' It is possible that the explanation here is the simple one of mere coincidence. Whether this explanation is available or not would depend entirely on the question whether the preacher's memory was ordinarily trustworthy or not, whether in fact he would remember the arrangements, prayers, sermon, &c., he had given on any occasion. These matters becoming, after long habit, almost automatic, it might very well happen that the person going through such duties would remember them no longer and no better