202 VISIT TO DENMARK AND SCANDINAVIA. [1799. 



ing up an agreement, icrittcn with our blood, to the 

 effect, that whichever of us died the first should 

 appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we 

 had entertained of the " life after death." After we 



had finished our classes at the college, G went to 



India, having got an appointment there in the civil 

 service. Pie seldom wrote to me, arid after the lapse 

 of a few years I had almost forgotten him ; moreover, 

 his family having little connection with Edinburgh, I 

 seldom saw or heard anything of them, or of him 

 through them, so that all the old schoolboy intimacy 

 had died out, and I had nearly forgotten his existence. 

 I had taken, as I have said, a warm bath ; arid while 

 lying in it and enjoying the comfort of the heat, after 

 the late freezing I had undergone, I turned my head 

 round, looking towards the chair on which I had 

 deposited my clothes, as I was about to get up out of 

 the bath. On the chair sat G , looking calmly at 

 me. How I got out of the bath I know not, but on 

 recovering my senses I found myself sprawling on 

 the floor. The apparition, or whatever it was, that 

 had taken the likeness of G , had disappeared. 

 This vision produced such a shock that I had no in- 

 clination to talk about it, or to speak about it even 

 to Stuart; but the impression it made upon me was 

 too vivid to be easily forgotten ; and so strongly was 

 I affected by it, that I have here written down the 

 whole history, with the date, 19th December, and all 

 the particulars, as they are now fresh before me. No 

 doubt I had fallen asleep ; and that the appearance 



