1627,] A Chapter on Dreams. Til 



This state of the mind has been happily compared, by an able writer, to a 

 person sitting at a window, who idly stares at the crowd passing before 

 him but has no influence on those who are running to and fro, passing and 

 repas4ng, or standing still before him. And " Tales sunt aqua," says 

 Pliny, somewhere in his Natural History, " qualis terra, per quam 

 Jiuunt" It is the same river whose surface glitters in the rich sunlight of 

 noon, and, in a few hours, booms through dreary darkness. The conso- 

 nance existing between one's sleeping and waking thoughts, is known to 

 every man's experience. The heated imagination of the lover transports 

 him into the presence of his, mistress ; and he chaunts, in the still moon- 

 light, beneath her vine-wreathed lattice ; the snaky statesman wriggles 

 his tortuous folds through the inexplicable labyrinths of his endless plots 

 and counterplots, and outwits half the courts of Europe in a night ; a 

 Napoleon climbs the blood-slippery hill of his ambition, timing his steps to 

 the thunder of the distant cannonade, and wakes while the laurel is binding 

 on his brow ; the philosopher returns to his h're-fed alembic, or confounds 

 himself with the fancied trisection of the triangle, or quadrature of the 

 cir.de ; the knave runs his customary round of chicanery, and awakes in 

 the pillory or the Ifalter. When "the pious and learned Chrysostom 

 dreamed 'immured in the solemn solitude of his monastic cell he did not 

 launch into the libidinous latitude of sensual indulgence, but trod in the 

 ensanguined footsteps of his bleeding Master fainting, though glorying, 

 in his " cross and reproach." The pale scholar does not tramp to the 



exchange or the market; nor does a R hunt, with aching brain, after 



the Greek metres, or the ./Solic digamma. 



Jt is also certain, that the state of a person's health, and the manner 

 in which the vital functions are carried on, exert a considerable influence 

 in determining the character of dreams. The atrabilarious invalid stares 

 with dim, jaundiced eyes on shrouds and funeral processions; and the 

 obese carcass of the dyspeptic alderman groans beneath the hideous 

 incubus of ten thousand turtles. A friend of mine a classical young 

 spark, as it were in a recent fit of the hypochondriasis, beheld, written 

 every where on night-cap, bed-clothes, curtains, wainscot, windows 

 every where grinned those hateful lines '* Pallida mors <zquo, pulsat 

 pede pauperum tabernas, regumque turres." If he sate down to dinner 

 if he went out his eye was sure to settle on something inscribed with 

 the hateful words, " Pallida mors /" Though this was a dream, he has 

 mortally loathed poor old Horace ever since. 



1 have often compared the mind, when dreaming, to a harp sending 

 forth fitful and mysterious melody, %eneath the superficial undulations of 

 the midnight wind ; but, at length, the impulse becomes gradually louder 

 and stronger- till, by the sudden and startling recollection of some thrilling 

 passage of past life, the whole internal mechanism of the mind is dis- 

 turbed, and the sleeper awakes in consternation. Or, it may be compared 

 to* a mirror, held up to some dim, mysterious, and unearthly scenery 

 and reflecting transient images of ghastly horror, or regal splendour, linked 

 and commingled with all that is ludicrous and grotesque in nature. An 

 ingenious friend near me, to whom I happened to mention the subject of 

 my thoughts, compares the mind to that once-popular plaything the 

 kaleidoscope ; in which tube the due collocation of a few simple pieces of 

 coloured glass, will afford an incalculable number of changes. 



There is one more fact connected with the economy of dreams, which 

 I cannot omit to notice. It is universally supposed, that, if the mind is 

 more than ordinarily occupied and excited with some subject of intense 



