OMEN'S AND PRESENTIMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5628, 29 November 1879, Page 7

OMEN'S AND PRESENTIMENTS.

The ancients had the firmest balief in omens, and no calamity ever appears to have happened among them without a tribe of dismal warnings being recorded as having preceded it. Good fortune does not appear to have been heralded with equal care. Ctesar's death was foreshadowed by countless signs, but there was less stir in heaven and earth before his successe3. Some families are credited with possessing certain private aud peculiar omens of their own, but these nearly always foreshadow calamity only. The banshee only shrieks before a death in the household. Two families in the north of England are said to be warned of the approaching death of the heir of the line by the sudden fall of a bough from a particular tree, or the floating of a log oE wood on a lonely" pond. A Devonshire family receive their warning of death b.v the apparition of a bird with a white breast. The superstition that the clock of St. Paul's striking at an unusual hour forebodes a death jin the Royal Family is a very widely re ceived one ; and in JVbie.? ami Queries for 1861 attention was drawn to the fact that the great bell of Westminster, owiug to some derangement of the machinery, actually struck ten or twelve strokes at four in the morning, thu day the Duchess of Kent died.' Neither king or commoner was ever the subject of so many fatal omtts as Char es I, from tho unlucky colour of lih coronatiou robes to ihe blowing down of the Royal Standard when first set up a 5 .Newark, full particulars of all which sigaald of approaching calamity may be read in " Aubrey's Miscellanies." Presentiments of coming good and evil fortune are often said to have been experienced by some persons. Very frequently these may bo explained as tho natural speculations of a reflecting mind regarding probable future events. It wa3 less a spirit of prophecy than the observation of an acute man who noted-the "sign of the times," that induced Lord Chesterfield to foreahad)W the French Revolution forty years before it actually took place, when he wrote:—"The despotic government of France is now screwed up to the pitch; a revolution ia faat approaching, and thai rovolutiou I .!tn conviuc?:! wi.i '~<• "(Ileal and sanguinary," Hi?- intimate kjve-w----ledne o! the character ot his Royal master explains Sir Thomas Move's presentiment; of hi 3 fate, when in tko height nj )u3 prosperity, ho replied to thq congi-atub.Uo.i-s of hie ear. in-law —"I ttiKuk Gocl I find the King my marvellous good lord. Nevertheless, if my head would win hiu. a castle iu France, it ahouid not fail to go."— Glob?.