One of the most remarkable cases of presentiment I know, is, that which occurred, not very long since, on board one of her majesty’s ships, when lying off Portsmouth. The officers being one day at the mess-table, young Lieutenant P—— suddenly laid down his knife and fork, pushed away his plate, and turned extremely pale. He then rose from the table, covering his face with his hands, and retired from the room. The president of the mess, supposing him to be ill, sent one of the young men to inquire what was the matter. At first Mr. P—— was unwilling to speak, but on being pressed, he confessed that he had been seized by a sudden and irresistible impression that a brother he had then in India was dead. “He died,” said he, “on the 12th of August, at six o’clock; I am perfectly certain of it!” No arguments could overthrow this conviction, which, in due course of post, was verified to the letter. The young man had died at Cawnpore, at the precise period mentioned. When any exhibition of this sort of faculty occurs in animals, which is by no means unfrequent, it is termed _instinct_; and we look upon it, as what it probably is, only another and more rare development of that intuitive knowledge which enables them to seek their food, and perform the other functions necessary for the maintenance of their existence and the continuance of their race. Now, it is remarkable, that the life of an animal is a sort of dream-life; their ganglionic system is more developed than that of man, and the cerebral less; and since it is, doubtless, from the greater development of the ganglionic system in women that they exhibit more frequent instances of such abnormal phenomena as I am treating of, than men, we may be, perhaps, justified in considering the faculty of presentiment in a human being as a suddenly-awakened instinct; just as in an animal it is an intensified instinct.