4 MAY 1901, Page 14

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SID,—,1 have read

with interest your article on " Vastness and Isolation " in the Spectator of April 20th, having myself experienced the sensation described on several occasions. When the trance came upon me I seemed to be standing alone on the edge of a great abyss ; gradually all idea of material objects faded away, and I felt myself as it were reduced to a mere point in the centre of an infinite space, retaining only the consciousness of self and of the awful depth and width and height of space around me. The horror of this isolation became more and more intense, and the per- ception of the vastness of space more and more acute, until the trance ended abruptly, and I found myself once more conscious of surrounding objects, but oppressed with a feeling of intense terror, such as is only produced by the incom- prehensible. My experience, therefore, differs essentially from that of your correspondent "E. G. F.," and tallies more nearly with the descriptions quoted from Kinglake and