MYSTERIOUS COGNITIONS.
[TO THY EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.") Sin,—Your article on " The Secret Transmission of News " in the Spectator of August 16th raises an interesting question. Mysterious cognitions of events transpiring at a distance, and not known at the time through ordinary or explicable means, have been less infrequent than is generally supposed. They appear to have been mostly associated with special sym- pathies, or relationships, between the parties concerned. The biographies of members of the Society of Friends have, in particular, furnished many instances. Thus in the early part of last century there were two Quaker ministers in Hertford- shire who were closely connected by a long friendship. One of the two, named Special West, woke up his wife in the middle of the night, on October 15th, 1808, and exclaimed : "My dear our friend William Allen is dead." The next morning he walked to Ware, five miles distant, to visit his deceased comrade's family. On the way he met Mr. Allen's son, whom he informed, to the amazement of the latter, that he already knew the nature of the message which be was bringing,—namely, the news of the sudden death of Mr. Allen during the night just past. A similarly sympathetic friend- ship existed between two other Quaker ministers, named Horne and Dillwyn. The former had been on a missionary visit to the United States in 1812, and had, on its accomplishment, sailed for England. Some weeks later, Mr. Dillwyn, at the conclusion of a meeting for worship, held at Burlington, near Philadelphia, rose and announced, to the astonishment of the gathering, that his friend had just landed safely in Great Britain. And subsequent information received by letter long afterwards proved the accuracy of the statement. I believe that the celebrated " seer," Emanuel Swedenborg, attributed some of the remarkable intimations of distant events which he received to the instrumentality of sympathising spirits. Tl?e late Mr. W. M. Wilkinson, a solicitor, of 44 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, informed me that he once had a client named Captain Wheatcroft, who was summoned to. join his regiment in India on the occasion of the Mutiny in 1857. On Novem- ber 14th of that year he was killed in action. The same day Mrs. Wheatcroft, who was residing at Cambridge, dreamed that she saw her husband looking so pale and ill that she im- mediately awoke with the impression that he was either killed or seriously wounded. Two months later Mr. Wilkinson received an official certificate from the War Office formally stating that the Captain had been killed on November 15th. But the occurrence of Mrs. Wheatcroft's dream on the previous day led to further inquiry, resulting in a second certificate from the War Office corrected to the 14th of the month. This incident is also related in that curious book, " Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," by Robert Dale Owen, formerly United States Minister at the then Court of Naples, and it is referred to, I believe, in one of William Howites books ; but I had the particulars direct from Mr. Wilkinson. And fifty years ago I knew a Quaker gardener in Somersetshire, named Joseph Stephens, who mentioned to me some mysterious cognitions communicated to himself without ordinary instrumentality. Similar occur- rences have been fairly numerous; and different persons may form varying opinions respecting their nature and causes; but of their actual happening there is abundant reliable evidence. —I am, Sir, &c.,
WILLIAM TALLACK.
Upper Clayton, N.E.
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