DREAM. 121 



prediction which proved incorrect. ' About the middle 

 of September this year I had a singular dream, the par- 

 ticulars of which retain even to this day as firm a hold 

 of my memory as if they had been those of a real inci- 

 dent. I dreamed that my friend William Ross had died, 

 and that I was watching the corpse in a large darkened 

 apartment. I felt sad and unhappy. Suddenly there 

 appeared near the couch where the body lay an upright 

 wreath of thin vapour, which gradually assumed the 

 figure of my deceased friend. The face of the spectre 

 was turned towards the body, and the robes of white in 

 which it was dressed appeared, compared with the 

 winding-sheet beside it, as a piece of cambric exposed to 

 the rays of the sun would to another piece hung up in 

 the shade. The figure turned round and I spoke to it, 

 but though, from the splendour of the dress it wore and 

 the placid expression of the face, which was of feminine 

 beauty, I inferred it to be a spirit of heaven, by one of 

 those inconsistencies common in dreams, my question to 

 it regarded the state of the damned. " I know nothing," 

 it said, " of the damned." " Then describe to me," I 

 rejoined, "the happiness of the blest." The reply was 

 strong and pointed. " Live a good life, and in seven 

 days, seven weeks, and seven years, you shall know." 

 I must add that I have since thought much oftener of 

 the prediction than of the advice.' No particular in- 

 cident of any kind appears to have taken place in the 

 history of Miller at the time specified. 



The work at the manse completed, Miller removed, 

 with two of his brother workmen, to a village in the 

 neighbourhood, to build a house for an innkeeper. 

 Their lodging here was as bad as at the place they left. 

 One half of a large cellar used for storing salt, of which 

 half had been pulled down to furnish materials for the 



