PRESENTIMENTS.
[To THZ EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:9
SIR, —There is a strange story in to-day's Times about the last victim [unfortunately no longer the last] to the Irish agitation, Mr. Herbert. A year ago, he got up one morning early, and told his friends that he had been greatly troubled by terrible dreams. He thought he was shot .clown on the road between his house and Castleisland, and had a presentiment on the subject, which has now been verified. It is not unnatural for people living in Ireland at present to dream of murder, and it may be thought little surprising that such presentiments should occasion- ally be fulfilled. However, Mr. Herbert's story reminds me of a very similar circumstance in my own experience, when though the scene is also laid in Ireland, it was before Mr. Gladstone's first Ministry, and the country was perfectly peace- able. I was visiting some friends in a beautiful part of County Wicklow, and had crossed Ashford Bridge in one of my excursions ; that night I suffered greatly from a dream, in which I imagined that some great, unexplained calamity had -suddenly befallen me at this bridge, and awoke with the feeling so strong on me, that it was a great relief to find it all unreal. But I was unpleasantly reminded of my terror some months later, when, after going home to England, I happened to be -called by business to Wicklow once more. My horse, a borrowed one, ran away with me and threw me at Ashford Bridge, break- ing my knee against the wall. As I lay in agony on the ground, the consciousness rushed back on my mind that I had gone through the very same sensations once before at that very place, in my well remembered dream. I do not attach importance to dreams or presentiments generally, but this was a curious coincidence.
Mr. Herbert seems to have been punished for doing his duty as a juryman, a thing naturally intolerable to the Kerry brigands. Some years ago I was in Italy, and when I visited Ravenna and Sicily, those places were disturbed by secret societies, and jurymen and magistrates were usually murdered, when they could not be bribed or intimidated.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Norton Vicarage, Evesham, April 3rd. N. G. BATT.
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