And as surely as the couplet about the bridge argues great
foresight in the man that wrote it, so surely does the englyn prove
that its author must have been possessed of the faculty of second
sight, as nobody without it could, in the middle of the seventeenth
century, when the powers of steam were unknown, have written
anything in which travelling by steam is so distinctly alluded to.
Truly some old bard of the seventeenth century must in a vision of
the second sight have seen the railroad bridge across the Menai,
the Chester train dashing across it, at high railroad speed, and a
figure exactly like his own seated comfortably in a third-class
carriage.
And now a few words on the second sight, a few calm, quiet words,
in which there is not the slightest wish to display either
eccentricity or book-learning.
The second sight is the power of seeing events before they happen,
or of seeing events which are happening far beyond the reach of the
common sight, or between which and the common sight barriers
intervene, which it cannot pierce. The number of those who possess
this gift or power is limited, and perhaps no person ever possessed
it in a perfect degree: some more frequently see coming events, or
what is happening at a distance, than others; some see things
dimly, others with great distinctness.
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