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There are not a few instances of that action of the brain at the moment before death by which long-buried impressions rise again like ghosts or visions; but we have known none so striking as this, from the lapse of time, the peculiarity of the case, and the unquestionable blank between.

There are flashes of faculty now and then in the midst of the twilight of idiot existence -- without waiting for the moment of death. One such, to the last degree impressive, is recorded by the late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, in his account of the great Morayshire floods, about a quarter of a century since. An innkeeper, who, after a merry evening of dancing, turned out to help his neighbors in the rising of the Spey, carelessly got upon some planks which were floated apart, and was carried down the stream on one. He was driven against a tree, which he climbed, and his wife and neighbors saw him lodged in it before dark. As the floods rose, there began to be fears for the tree; and the shrill whistle which came from it, showed that the man felt himself in danger, and wanted help. Every body concluded help to be out of the question, as no boats could get near; and they could only preach patience until morning, to the poor wife, or until the flood should go down. Hour after hour the whistle grew wilder and shriller; and at last it was almost continuous. It suddenly ceased; and those who could hardly bear it before, longed to hear it again. Dawn showed that the tree was down. The body of the innkeeper was found far away -- with the watch in his fob stopped at the hour that the tree must have fallen. The event being talked over in the presence of the village idiot, he laughed. Being noticed, he said he would have saved the man. Being humored, he showed how a tub fastened to a long rope would have been floated, as the plank with the man on it was floated, to the tree. If this poor creature had but spoken in time, his apparent inspiration would have gone some way to confirm the Scotch superstition, which holds -- with that of the universal ancient world of theology -- that "Innocents are favorites of Heaven."

It is for us to act upon the medium view sanctioned alike by science and morals -- neither to cast out our idiots, like the savages who leave their helpless ones to perish; nor to worship them, as the pious Egyptians did, and other nations who believed that the gods dwelt in them, more or less, and made oracles of them -- a perfectly natural belief in the case of beings who manifest a very few faculties in extraordinary perfection, in the apparent absence of all others. Our business is, in the first place, to reduce the number of idiots to the utmost of our power, by attending to the conditions of sound life and health, and especially by discountenancing, as a crime, the marriage of blood relations; and, in the next place, by trying to make the most and the best of such faculties as these imperfect beings possess. It is not enough to repeat the celebrated epitaph on an idiot, and to hope that his privations here will be made up to him hereafter. We must lessen those privations to the utmost, by the careful application of science in understanding his case; and of skill, and inexhaustible patience and love, in treating it. Happily, there are now institutions, by aiding which any of us may do something toward raising the lowest, and blessing the most afflicted, members of our race.