The researches of M. Charcot, M. Richet, and other psychologists do not at present help us much in the matter of veridical second sight. It is not a hallucination “suggested” to a hypnotised subject, but an impression produced by a remote person or event on a subject who has not been hypnotised at all. For example, Dr. Adam Clarke, in his _Life_ (vol. ii. p. 16) tells us of Mr. Tracy Clarke, who, being in the Isle of Man with his son, dreamed that he had visited his wife in Liverpool. He told his son that Mrs. Clarke was looking very well, but, contrary to her habit, was sleeping in the best bedroom. On the day when Mr. Clarke said this, Mrs. Clarke, who had been sleeping in her best bedroom, told the little son who lay in her room that she had heard his father ride up to the house, stable his horse, open the door, come upstairs, and walk round her bed, but that she could not see him. This is a case at least of second hearing, and has no hypnotic explanation. We end in the candid spirit of Dr. Johnson, as far as the Polter-Geist and second sight are concerned—willing to be convinced, but far indeed from conviction. As to the Fairy belief, we conceive it to be a complex matter, from which tradition, with its memory of earth-dwellers, is not wholly absent, while more is due to a survival of the pre-Christian Hades, and to the belief in local spirits—the Vuis of Melanesia, the Nereids of ancient and modern Greece, the Lares of Rome, the fateful Mœræ and Hathors—old imaginings of a world not yet “dispeopled of its dreams.”[29] [Illustration: Puss-in-Boots smells a rat.] AN ESSAY OF The Nature and Actions of the Subterranean (and, for the most Part,) Invisible People, heretofoir going under the name of ELVES, FAUNES, and FAIRIES, or the lyke, among the Low-Country Scots, as they are described by those who have the SECOND SIGHT; and now, to occasion further Inquiry, collected and compared, by a Circumspect Inquirer residing among the Scottish-Irish in Scotland. Secret Commonwealth, OR, A Treatise displayeing the Chiefe Curiosities as they are in Use among diverse of the People of Scotland to this Day; SINGULARITIES for the most Part peculiar to that Nation. A Subject not heretofore discoursed of by any of our Writters; and yet ventured on in an Essay to suppress the impudent and growing Atheisme of this Age, and to satisfie the desire of some choice Freinds. _Then a Spirit passed before my Face, the Hair of my Flesh stood up; it stood still, but I could not discerne the Forme thereof; ane Image was before mine Eyes._—Job, 4. 15, 16.