384 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



the very conception of the miraculous) to believe in 

 supernatural intervention, than to reject such an ex- 

 planation on the score of antecedent improbability. 

 Horace's rule, ' Nee deus intersit nisi dignus vindice 

 nodus, 9 remains sound when we write 'Deus 9 for 

 6 deus 9 



Now there have been cases so remarkable, yet so 

 obviously unworthy of supernatural intervention, that 

 we are perplexed to find any reasonable explanation of 

 the matter. The following, adduced by De Morgan, 

 will, I have no doubt, recall corresponding cases in 

 the experience of readers of these lines: 'In the 

 summer of 1865,' he says, 'I made myself first ac- 

 quainted with the tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and 

 the first I read was about the siege of Boston in the 

 "War of Independence. I could not make it out : 

 everybody seemed to have got into somebody else's 

 place. I was beginning the second tale, when a parcel 

 arrived : it was a lot of odd pamphlets and other 

 rubbish, as he called it, sent by a friend who had lately 

 sold his books, had not thought it worth while to send 

 these things for sale, but thought I might like to look 

 at them, and possibly keep some. The first thing I 

 looked at was a sheet, which, being opened, displayed 

 " A plan of Boston and its environs, showing the true 

 situation of his Majesty's army, and also that of the 

 rebels, drawn by an engineer, at Boston, October 1775." 

 Such detailed plans of current sieges being then un- 

 common, it is explained that " The principal part of 

 this plan was surveyed by Eichard Williams, Lieu- 



