COINCIDENCES AND SUPERSTITIONS. 385 



tenant, at Boston ; and sent over by the son of a noble- 

 man to his father in town, by whose permission it was 

 published." I immediately saw that my confusion 

 arose from my supposing that the king's troops were 

 besieging the rebels, when it was just the other way ' 

 (a mistake, by the way, which does not suggest that the 

 narrative was particularly lucid). 



Another instance cited by De Morgan is yet more 

 remarkable, though it is not nearly so strange as a 

 circumstance which I shall relate afterwards : c In 

 August, 1861,' he says, ' M. Senarmont, of the French 

 Institute, wrote to me to the effect that Fresnel had 

 sent to England in, or shortly after, 1824, a paper for 

 translation and insertion in the European Review, 

 which shortly after expired. The question was what 

 had become of the paper. I examined the Review 

 at the Museum, found no trace of the paper, and wrote 

 back to that effect, at the Museum, adding that every- 

 thing now depended on ascertaining the name of the 

 editor, and tracing his papers : of this I thought there 

 was no chance. I posted the letter on my way home, 

 at a post-office in the Hampstead Road, at the junction 

 with Edward Street, on the opposite side of which is a 

 bookstall. Lounging for a moment over the exposed 

 books, sicut meus est mos, I saw within a few moments of 

 the posting of the letter, a little catchpenny book of anec- 

 dotes of Macaulay, which I bought, and ran over for a 

 minute. My eye was so6n caught by this sentence : 

 6 One of the young fellows immediately wrote to the 

 Editor (Mr. Walker) of the European Review.' I thus 



C 



