“After a moment of dead silence the great Catherine raised her voice and ordered her guard to advance and fire on the apparition.  The order was obeyed, a mirror beside the throne was shattered, the vision had disappeared, and the Empress, with no sign of emotion, took the chair from which her semblance had passed away.”  It is a striking barbaric scene!

“Spirits of the living” of this kind are common enough.  In the Highlands “second sight” generally means a view of an event or accident some time before its occurrence.  Thus an old man was sitting with a little boy on a felled tree beside a steep track in a quarry at Ballachulish.  Suddenly he jerked the boy to one side, and threw himself down on the further side of the tree.  While the boy stared, the old man slowly rose, saying, “The spirits of the living are strong to-day!” He had seen a mass of rock dashing along, killing some quarrymen and tearing down the path.  The accident occurred next day.  It is needless to dwell on second sight, which is not peculiar to Celts, though the Highlanders talk more about it than other people.

These appearances of the living but absent, whether caused by some mental action of the person who appears or not, are, at least, unconscious on his part. {88} But a few cases occur in which a living person is said, by a voluntary exertion of mind, to have made himself visible to a friend at a distance.  One case is vouched for by Baron von Schrenck-Notzig, a German psychologist, who himself made the experiment with success.  Others are narrated by Dr. Gibotteau.  A curious tale is told by several persons as follows:—­

AN “ASTRAL BODY”

Mr. Sparks and Mr. Cleave, young men of twenty and nineteen, were accustomed to “mesmerise” each other in their dormitory at Portsmouth, where they were students of naval engineering.  Mr. Sparks simply stared into Mr. Cleave’s eyes as he lay on his bed till he “went off”.  The experiments seemed so curious that witnesses were called, Mr. Darley and Mr. Thurgood.  On Friday, 15th January, 1886, Mr. Cleave determined to try to see, when asleep, a young lady at Wandsworth to whom he was in the habit of writing every Sunday.  He also intended, if possible, to make her see him.  On awaking, he said that he had seen her in the dining-room of her house, that she had seemed to grow restless, had looked at him, and then had covered her face with her hands.  On Monday he tried again, and he thought he had frightened her, as after looking at him for a few minutes she fell back in her chair in a kind of faint.  Her little brother was in the room with her at the time.  On Tuesday next the young lady wrote, telling Mr. Cleave that she had been startled by seeing him on Friday evening (this is an error), and again on Monday evening, “much clearer,” when she nearly fainted.