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NUG.E LlTERARI.fi. 

 A CHAPTER ON DREAMS, 



HAVE you ever wandered into the bright fairy land of dreams ? Has your 

 mind ever risen from its dark ashes of wearisoraeness into that glorious 

 atmosphere of ideal magnificence ? How many of the dull cold hours of 

 midnight have sullenly flitted on, while you lay steeped in all the wild 

 witcheries of dreamy romance ! But who equipt you with your plumes ? 

 I would fain discourse a little on this subject. 



Causaubon informs us, that the word dream is derived from ^a//.a rS < ; 

 i. e. the " comedy of life." But this seems rather fanciful than correct. 

 He appears to contend, that the ideas of dreams have no archetypes in 

 actual life. With him they are wonderful and fantastic combinations of 

 unreal scenery : he would needs assign to them a distinct province from 

 the ordinary realities of e very-day existence. But here his hypothesis 

 fails : for who knows not that, in a vast majority of instances, the aspect 

 of dreams is on the past occurrences of life? And there are many extra- 

 ordinary and well-attested narratives of dreams, which have even antici- 

 pated the course of human events, and met with a most marvellous 

 corroboration. 



" Dreaming," says Locke, V is the having ideas while the outward 

 senses are stopped not suggested by any external objects, or known 

 occasion, nor under the rule or conduct of the understanding." This last 

 seems the distinguishing characteristic of dreams freedom from the control 

 of judgment. In the day-time, all the faculties of the mind are exactly 

 balanced : at night, the equipoise is destroyed. Judgment slumbers on its 

 lofty throne, while imagination makes head against it, and carries away 

 captive all its fellow-laculties. Assuming the general fact that the 

 majority of dreams are of a pleasing character I have often thought that, 

 as the body requires repose after its physical exhaustion, so the mind seeks 

 a respite from its severer duties, by wandering, unfettered, amidst the 

 unbounded latitude of dreams. It is a well-known fact, that men are often 

 visited with the most enchanting dreams, after suffering a complete prostra- 

 tion of their mental and physical energies. I remember it was said of the 

 murderer Thurtell, that, on the morning of his execution, to a person who 

 inquired whether he had not been dreaming about his death, he replied, 

 " Far from it ; I have dreamed very pleasantly of past times ;'' or words 

 to that effect. 



Many of the phenomena of dreaming are very obscure and difficult to 

 be accounted for. This interesting branch of mental philosophy is too 

 generally neglected. Men commonly will not think twice on a subject, 

 whose apparently irreconcileable anomalies occasioned them, at first 

 thought, perplexity and disappointment. Who can tell what parts of a 

 human body are exercised in dreaming ? Why do we sometimes, but not 

 always, dream ? In short, why do we dream at all ? 



I go, at midnight, into a bed-chamber, where all, is silent except the 

 ticking of a watch ; I gently draw aside the dusky drapery of the bed 

 and there is disclosed to me the figure of a man pale, noiseless, motion- 

 loss closely hugged in the embraces of death's mimic in a word, asleep. 

 1 examine him more narrowly ; it is evident that his senses those inlets 



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