“Sir,--I beg to acquaint you of a very singular event which occurred here yesterday. On Saturday night a villager named Andrew Scott dreamed of being along the coast on S. Cyrus’ Sands, and finding a man among the rocks under Whitson Houses. On Sabbath morning after breakfast he cleaned himself, and told his wife he would go and see if there was anything in his dream, taking another man with him to whom he made known his errand; and on arriving at the spot where he expected to find the man, sure enough there was the drowned man, washing amongst the rocks, just as seen in his dream. He was taken ashore, reported to the S. Cyrus’ authorities, and to-day he is to be interred. He is supposed to be one of the men belonging to the ‘Providence,’ wrecked on Dec. 19. I have the honour to be, sir, your most obedient servant, “Daniel Hamilton. “Johnshaven, Kincardineshire, Jan. 20.” “At an inquest held on Monday afternoon at James Bridge, near Wolverhampton, on the body of a collier named Samuel Tinley, who had been killed in a pit there by a fall of rock strata, it transpired that during the previous night he awoke, saying he had a ton of rock on his head, though he had no headache. He was convinced it boded ill, and was reluctant to go to work. Upon being urged to go by his wife, he went to his child and saying, ‘Let me have my last kiss,’ went to the pit and was killed. It was further shown that a cousin of his, who is a close friend, was returning home from working a night-shift, when he said he saw the deceased standing before him in the road. Instead of going home to bed he went to the deceased’s house, to which place the news of the death had just been brought, but altogether unknown to the cousin.[134] At the inquest a yet more remarkable case, that had come before the same coroner in the same locality, was mentioned.” So much as to examples and records of extraordinary Dreams, Warnings by Visions, and Presentiments. The subject of Omens may now be briefly touched upon. An “omen” has been defined to be “a token or sign of good or ill;” “a boding or foreboding;” “a prognostic.” Some of the following are of such a character as that they are very suitably considered both in connection with events already described and with those yet to be narrated. It has been forcibly and appropriately remarked, though not perhaps in any marked or specific Christian spirit, that Omens constitute the poetry of history. They cause the series of events which they are supposed to declare to flow into epical unity, and the political catastrophe seems to be produced, not by prudence or by folly, but by the superintending destiny.