"Still it never struck me that it was anything strange; I was only rather curious to see the woman who was so like me. I saw her in an unexpected manner. Going into my room one night, I happened to glance down at my bed, and saw a form there. I thought it strange, yet was not startled. I bent over it, and recognised my own features distinctly. I was in perfect health at the time, and no disaster followed."
Queen Elizabeth's Double.
In a volume published by Macmillan & Co., entitled "Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celt," I find the following references to the Double:—
"If this phantom be seen in the morning it betokens good fortune and long life to its prototype; if in the evening a near death awaits him. This superstition was known and felt in England even in the reign of Elizabeth. We quote a passage from Miss Strickland's account of her last illness:—
"'As her mortal illness drew towards a close, the superstitious fears of her simple ladies were excited almost to mania, even to conjuring up a spectral apparition of the Queen while she was yet alive. Lady Guildford, who was then in waiting on the Queen, leaving her in an almost breathless sleep in her privy chamber, went out to take a little air, and met her Majesty, as she thought, three or four chambers off. Alarmed at the thought of being discovered in the act of leaving the Royal patient alone, she hurried forward in some trepidation in order to excuse herself, when the apparition vanished away. She returned terrified to the chamber, but there lay the Queen still in the same lethargic slumber in which she left her.'"
PART III.
CLAIRVOYANCE—THE VISION OF THE OUT OF SIGHT.
"Moreover, the spirit lifted me up and brought me unto the East gate, and, behold, at the door of the gate five-and-twenty men, among whom I saw," etc.—Ezekiel xi. 1.