Concerning the faculty of presensation, it is worth while to say a little more.  The early mesmerists made a great point of the power of some patients to diagnose the condition of another.  Dr. Puysegur’s patient Joly, mentioned above, possessed the faculty to an unusual degree.  He was an educated man, of good position, and could express himself intelligibly:—­

C’est une sensation veritable que j’eprouve dans un endroit correspondant a la partie qui souffre chez celui que je touche:  ma main va naturellement se porter a l’endroit de son mal, et je ne peux pas plus m’y tromper que je ne pourrois le faire en portant ma main ou je souffrirois moi-meme.

Now, the following experiment has been carried out by Charcot at La Salpetriere.  A young girl suffering from hysterical hemiplegia (paralysis of one side) came up one day from the country.  She was placed in a chair behind a screen and a hypnotic patient sent for from the wards.  The latter was placed on the other side of the screen and hypnotised.  Neither of the patients was aware of the other’s presence.  At the end of a minute the hypnotised patient was found to have acquired the other’s hemiplegia.  The experiment was repeated every day, and in four days the new comer was relieved of her trouble, which had lasted over a year.  The same experiment was tried in many cases, and always succeeded, although in some of them the affections imitated were of a very complex character, such as paralysis of half the tongue.  With these facts in view, the alleged experiences of the older mesmerists appear by no means impossible.

APPENDICES

I. IN DEFENCE OF A GREAT AND BELOVED POET WHOSE CHARACTER IS
     DELINEATED IN THIS STORY.

II.  A KEY TO “AYLWIN,” BY THOMAS ST. E. HAKE,
     REPRINTED FROM “NOTES AND QUERIES.”

APPENDIX I

D. G. R.

Thou knewest that island, far away and lone,
Whose shores are as a harp, where billows break
In spray of music and the breezes shake
O’er spicy seas a woof of colour and tone,
While that sweet music echoes like a moan
In the island’s heart, and sighs around the lake,
Where, watching fearfully a watchful snake. 
A damsel weeps upon her emerald throne.

Life’s ocean, breaking round thy senses’ shore,
Struck golden song, as from the strand of Day: 
For us the joy, for thee the fell foe lay—­
Pain’s blinking snake around the fair isle’s core,
Turning to sighs the enchanted sounds that play
Around thy lovely island evermore.

Certain remarks that have been made upon the character of D’Arcy in Aylwin have rendered it an imperative—­nay, a sacred—­duty for the author to seize an opportunity that may never occur again of saying here a few words upon the subject.

It is universally acknowledged that characters in fiction are not creations projected from the author’s inner consciousness, but are founded more or less upon characters that he was brought into contact with in real life.