proverbially superstitious. The leisure they frequently have favors the recital of marvelous experiences; and battles depend upon so many contingencies, and are liable to be controlled by such inexplicable circumstances, as to give to even the bravest of men a tinge of superstition. It has been observed that most unrighteous battles, fought against an oppressed people, have been attended by victories turning upon circumstances that may have been accidental; and that the most heroic patriotism has been defeated in the same way. That soldiers should have presentiments is not strange; and that those who have been exceedingly fortunate through a score of battles should sometimes in moments of depression conclude that they would die in the next battle is not extraordinary. In these voluminous narratives we find little or nothing of presentiments of certain escape, though they too are often fulfilled and as often disappointed.
A correspondent of "Notes and Queries," second series, thirty-fourth volume, having spent several months in the Crimea during the severest period of the bombardment, says: "I can state that many cases of presentiment were fulfilled; as also that some were falsified. There were also many deaths without any accompanying presentiment having been made known." The great Turenne exclaimed, "I do not mean to be killed to-day"; but a few moments afterward he was struck down in battle by a cannon-ball.
The possibilities of chance in the fulfilment of presentiments are incomputable, as a fact which occurred in this country during the civil war, and which is known by thousands yet living to be true, may serve to show. Joseph C. Baldwin, a young gentleman residing in Newark, N. J., was a journalist of more than local fame. He wrote under several pseudonyms,
