ory's case, he draws out the wrong one, and leaves the aching tooth in statu quo. A blister applied to the head is highly suggestive of being scalped by Indians, especially if Mayne Reid's ghastly details are at all fresh in the memory.

Coming to dreams which seem only capable of being referred to the mind and the memory, some very curious theories have been put forth to explain them. The body is perfectly at rest, and there certainly appears in these cases to be but a slender connection between the soul and its material dwelling-place. And hence has arisen the notion that the mind does actually leave the body and witness the events of which we dream. If so, vast distances are traversed in a moment, if indeed space can be spoken of in connection with the disembodied soul. In the middle ages many and ingenious were the attempts to account for infinite spaces being passed over in infinitesimal times. Some were daring enough to assert that by a single effort of the will they were first at one place and then at another without having passed through the intervening space. The movements of angels on their missions to mankind offered ample scope for the play of fancy, which in those days often became as erratic as the wildest dreams. And this is saying a great deal, for the majority of dreams are as incoherent and improbable as they are numerous. Ideas chase and jostle each other like a mob of rioters. Time, place, circumstances, are alike violated, and we do not feel in the least astonished at the incongruity. We walk in the streets arm-in-arm with people who never have met and who never can meet in this world. Bacon, Shakespeare, and other venerable characters will accompany us down Regent Street and make no remarks on the march of progress. But every one will admit that other dreams are just the reverse of these. Trains of thought sometimes follow each other with a regularity and a coherence which simply astound the dreamer in his waking hours. Condorcet, the French philosopher, whose frigid manners but warm heart caused him to be likened to a volcano covered with snow, seemed able to freeze the “airy sprite " even in sleep; and it is said that some of his most abstruse calculations were accomplished in dreams. We hear, too, of a certain lawyer seriously perplexed with a complicated law case, whose troubled soul sought refuge in sleep. In the night, his wife saw him get up, walk to a writing-table, compose an elaborate "opinion," place it carefully in a drawer, and return to bed. Next morning he remembered nothing of his dream, and could not believe it till his wife gave him ocular demonstration of the fact by pointing out the drawer where the "opinion" lay complete. Students and poets are often indebted to dreams for their brightest ideas,

and the marvelous composition of the fragment "Kubla Khan" by Coleridge will occur to every reader. He says that he had fallen asleep in his chair while reading in Purchas's Pilgrimage" of a palace built by Khan Kubla, and remained asleep about three hours, during which time he "could not have composed less than two or three hundred lines." The images rose up before him as things, and with them the corresponding expressions, "without any sensation or consciousness of effort." When he awoke he instantly sat down to commit his composition to paper, but was called away by a person on business; and when he returned to resume the poem it had utterly vanished from his memory. Languages long forgotten, or apparently but imperfectly known in waking life, have been known to recur in dreams and delirium. Abercrombie relates several authenticated instances of this sort; and the writer knew an able clergyman who, when a boy, preached over in his sleep the sermon he had last heard, seemingly word for word, and it was no uncommon occurrence for his friends to gather round his bedside to hear his discourse. But he was endowed with a marvelous memory in his waking hours; and, on one occasion, it is said, he learned three books of Euclid on his way home from school. Missing documents and forgotten places are sometimes recovered in dreams. Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to "The Antiquary," speaks of a gentleman sorely troubled in his mind because he was pressed for the payment of some tithe-money which he believed was unjustly charged, and which he had a confused recollection of as having been bought out by his deceased father many years ago. In his dreams he thought the shade of his father appeared to him and inquired the cause of his grief. Not at all startled at the apparition, he gravely stated the facts of the case. The shade told him that he must seek out an old lawyer who had retired from professional business and was now living at Inveresk. He gave the lawyer's name, and remarked that the papers relating to the purchase of the tithes were in his hands now, but that as the transaction had occurred many years ago, and this was the only one in which the lawyer was ever engaged on his account, it would be necessary to call it to his recollection by this token, that "when I went to pay his account there was a difficulty in getting change for a Portugal piece of gold, and we were forced to drink out the balance at a tavern." On reaching Inveresk, the gentleman called upon the lawyer, who could not remember the transaction till the incident of the Portugal coin was mentioned, when it all recurred to his memory. The documents were handed over to him and carried to Edinburgh to prove his case. Sir Walter Scott

himself disclaims all idea of a supernatural agency in this dream, and thinks it quite explicable on the assumption that the son had heard the details of the transaction from his father long before, and that the missing links were recovered in his dream by a complicated train of association.

Dreams are sometimes said to be the reflex of our waking thoughts, and the exponents of the soul's character. Evil propensities will produce evil dreams. The sleeping culprit writhes as he listens to the reproaches and accusations that disturb his slumber, and his mind is far more distracted by night than by day. The midnight cravings of love, blighted by a hapless fate, are portrayed by Pope in Eloisa's passionate appeal to Abelard :

"When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day, Fancy restores what vengeance snatched away, Then conscience sleeps, and, leaving nature free, All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee. . . I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms, And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms."

So powerful an influence do they exert on her conduct and daily life that the ceremonial pomp of the convent in which she is hopelessly immured fails to hold her wandering thoughts, and she exclaims:

"I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee;

Thy image steals between my God and me;
Thy voice I seem in every hymn to hear;
With every bead I drop too soft a tear.
When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll,
And swelling organs lift the rising soul,
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight-
Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight."

Many little sins and secret inclinations which seem to escape us awake are disclosed to us in our dreams; and any particular tendency in a man's character may be strengthened by the repeated action of dreams. Sir Benjamin Brodie says that, as they are an exercise of the imagination, "we may well conceive them as tending to increase that faculty during our waking hours," and possibly also to serve a much higher purpose. It is therefore of some importance to study the art of procuring pleasant dreams, and Dr. Franklin has some very pertinent remarks in his essay on this subject. Unpleasant dreams, too, need to be banished; and the horrible propensity for precipices and yawning chasms which some dreamers have is well known. Dr. Beattie found himself once, in a dream, standing in an uncomfortable situation on the parapet of a bridge. Recollecting that he was never given to pranks of this sort, he fancied it might be a dream, and so determined to throw himself headlong, hoping that this would rouse him. It not only roused him,

but cured the mischievous propensity. Dr. Reid, too, after suffering much in the same way, adopted the same plan; and for forty years afterward he was not even sensible of dreaming at all! Pas'cal, "one of the sublimest spirits of the world," had much faith in the influence of dreams, and said, "If we dreamed every night the same thing, it would doubtless affect us as powerfully as the objects which we perceive every day,” and proceeds to propound the problem of the king and artisan which Addison borrowed. We must look well into our hearts and lives if we would have pleasant dreams; and not delude ourselves like the Irishman who took the mirror to bed to see how he looked when he was asleep.

Leaving what may be called "sensational " and "mental" dreams, there remains what, in default of a better term, we have called supernatural dreams. But here we tread on dangerous ground, and must be cautious; for skeptics have eyes like the eagle, weapons of opposition keen and sharp-edged, and are as jealous and solicitous about the uniformity of nature's laws as a lover of his mistress. It must be frankly admitted that powers and influences of a natural kind may be at work in producing dreams of which we are ignorant, but which may some day be discovered by the ever-brightening eye of Science. But provisionally, at all events, we must claim for some dreams a higher origin. By such dreams as these, great and crushing evils have been avoided, the innocent spared, and the guilty detected. Some years ago, it is related, a peddler was murdered in the north of Scotland, and the crime remained for a long time a mystery. At length a man came forward, and declared that he had had a dream in which there was shown to him a house, and a voice directed him to a spot near the house where was buried the pack of the murdered man; and, on search being made, the pack was actually found near the spot. At first it was thought that the dreamer was himself the murderer, but the man who had been accused confessed the crime, and said that the dreamer knew nothing about it. It turned out afterward that the murderer and the dreamer had been drinking together for several days a short time after the murder. It has been suggested, as a possible solution, that the murderer allowed statements to escape him while under the influence of drink which had been recalled to the other in his dream, though he had not the slightest remembrance of them in his sober hours.* A gentleman dreamed his house was on fire; and the dream made so vivid an impression that he immediately returned, saw it on fire indeed, and was just in time to save one of his children from the flames.† A lady dreamed * Abercrombie, "Intellectual Powers." + Ibid.

stabs in the very place where, a moment before, the throat of his friend lay." Professor Fischer* describes a remarkable case observed by himself and others when a boy at school. A young man, apparently of a hale constitution, and far from exhibiting any symptoms of a nervous temperament, was habitually subject to somnambulism. His fits came on regularly about ten o'clock at night. The scene was a large apartment, containing sixty beds in four rows. He ran about violently, romped, wrestled, and boxed with his companions, who enjoyed the sport at his expense. "I think," says the Professor, "I can perfectly well remember that, while running, he always held his hand before him, with his fingers stretched out. He was remarkably agile, and would leap over the beds, and his companions could scarcely ever catch him. When he escaped through the door, he flew through a long gallery to his own apartment. There he rested, frequently taking up a book, and reading softly or with a loud voice, conducting-if my recollection serves me accurately-his outstretched fingers over the lines. His eyes were alternately open and closed; but even when open they were incapable of vision, being convulsively drawn upward, showing only the white. The general belief that somnambulists see by means of the points of their fingers, as well as the observation that while running our somnambulist always carried his hands and outstretched fingers before him, as if these were his organs of sight, as also his reading (as it appeared to us) by means of the points of his fingers, led us to the idea of tying gloves upon his hands and stockings upon his legs. Besides, we had been informed that during his nightly wanderings he had been known to play at skittles, a game he was very fond of when awake, and that he had always accurately counted the number of pins knocked down by stretching out his fingers in a direction toward them, so correctly, indeed, that it was impossible to deceive or impose upon him. In short, we seized the opportunity of his most profound sleep and insensibility to tie on the gloves and stockings. At the usual time he rose up and sprang out of bed; but, although we began to tease and provoke him, he did not move from the spot, but appeared puzzled and perplexed, and groped and tumbled about like a blind or drunken man. At length he perceived the cause of his distress, and tore off the gloves with great violence. Scarcely were his hands uncovered when he started up in a lively manner, and threw the gloves with ironical indignation upon the ground, making a ludicrous observation upon the means taken to blind him; and then he began to run through the apartment as formerly." This af

* "Der Somnambulismus; von Professor Fischer." Basel, 1839.

fords a striking parallel to the phenomena described by the blind Dr. Blacklock* as his experience of distinguishing persons and objects in his dreams.

Some physiologists of course repudiate all supernatural agency in dreams, and Dr. Winslow dashes aside their romance in a few sentences. He says: "Soft dreams are a slight irritation of the brain, often in nervous fever announcing a favorable crisis. Frightful dreams are a sign of determination of blood to the head. Dreams of blood and red objects are signs of inflammatory conditions. Dreams about rain and water are often signs of diseased mucous membranes and dropsy. . . . Nightmare, with great sensitiveness, is a sign of determination of blood to the chest." And so on. But such causes are insufficient to account for coherent mental phenomena in dreams, the circumstances of which are marvelously verified by subsequent experience.

...

A dream of the day of judgment has converted many people, and changed the whole tenor of their lives. Some dreams, by their persistent character, have totally unhinged men's minds, and dreaming and somnambulism have lapsed into insanity; for the partition which separates them is often slight indeed. Physicians have frequently remarked the similarity between dreaming and insanity: “In insanity, the erroneous impressions, being permanent, affect the conduct; in dreaming, no influence on the conduct is produced because the vision is dissipated on awaking. Moreover, in dreams the bodily functions are generally shut up from outward impressions, whereas the maniac is often but too wide awake, and his actions become dangerous." When a dreamer imagines that “his body is stretched on a wisp of straw, and sheltered by the cobwebs of a barn, or else, when reclined on a couch of ivory, he sinks all helpless and distressed into a furious whirlpool," his nightly thoughts differ not much from the ravings of a lunatic, and, as he rises from his bed with the glorious sun streaming through his lattice, he needs to thank God that it was only a dream.

Hence we conclude that some dreams originate from ourselves, from our bodily sensations and mental proclivities, and as such are often vain and idle like ourselves, while some are positively devilish, and solicit us to evil. Others have a warning effect, and may point us to brighter and better things; and, if we believe with our great dramatist, that sleep it is which

"knits up the raveled sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast"

*Abercrombie.