towards his offspring, will sometimes dream often enough of his neighbor's children, but seldom, or perhaps, never, of his own. Try to dream on a given subject-resolve and fix the attention upon it-going to sleep, and no sooner are our eyelids closed, than fantastic fancy will conjure up the most opposite and incongruous imagery. We have heard this dream-problem explained by referring it to a principle of antagonism, which, waking or sleeping, may be observed in the animal economy. If a limb become fatigued by remaining too long in one position, it will be relieved by being thrown into the very opposite condition; if the eye fatigue itself by gazing intently on the disc of any bright color, and the eyelids close, the very opposite or antagonistic color will be depicted upon the retina: in like manner, when our waking thoughts-in connection with the nerve matter, which is their material instrument-have exhausted their energy, we can easily conceive how the very opposite condition will be produced. Hence the most unconnected and preposterous train of imagery may arise from the very earnestness with which we desire a contrary effect. We dream of events which do not concern us, instead of those in which we are most deeply interested; we dream of persons to whom we are indifferent, instead of those to whom we are attached. But in the midst of all this curious and perplexing contrariety, it is remarkable-and may be esteemed a proof of the immateriality of the mind-that we always preserve the consciousness of our own identity. No man dreams that he is woman, or any other person than himself; we have heard of persons who have dreamt they were dead, and in a spiritual state; but the spirit was still their own-they maintained their identity. Sir Thomas Lawrence once made an interesting observation on this subject to Mrs. Butler-then Miss Fanny Kemble: he pointed out, in conversation, that he never heard of any lady who ever dreamed that she was younger than she really was. We retain in our dreams even the identity of our age. It has been said-we think by Sir Thomas Browne-that some persons of virtuous and honorable principles will commit, as they fancy, actions in their dreams which they would shudder at in their waking moments; but we cannot believe that the identity of moral goodness can be so perverted in the dreaming state. We can, however, readily conceive that, when the mind is oppressed, or disturbed by the recollection of some event it dreads to dwell upon, it may be disturbed by the most terrific and ghastly images. A guilty conscience, too, will unquestionably produce restlessness, agitation, and awe-inspiring dreams. Hence Manfred, in pacing restlessly his lonely Gothic gallery at midnight, pictures to himself the terrors of Sleep: "The lamp must be replenished; even then But close to look within." Contrition and remorse oppose his rest. If we remem ber right, it was Bishop Newton, who remarked that the sleep of innocence differed essentially from the sleep of guilt. The assistance supposed to be sometimes furnished in sleep towards the solution of problems which puzzled the waking sense, opens up a curious subject of investigation. Cases of the kind have been recorded upon undoubted authority. Hence some philosophers, like Sir Thomas Browne and Addison, have been induced to suppose that the soul in this state is partially disengaged from the encumbrance of the body, and therefore more intelligent, which is a mere fancy-a poetical fiction. Surely it is absurd to suppose that the soul, which we invest with such high and perfect attributes, should commit such frivolous and irrational acts as those which take place so constantly in our dreams. "Methinks," observed Locke, "every drowsy nod shakes this doctrine." All we remark, is, that some of the ordinary mental faculties act in such cases with increased energy. But beyond this we cannot go. We are informed by Cabains, that Franklin on several occasions mentioned to him that he had been assisted in his dreams on the issue of many affairs in which he was engaged. So, also, Condillac, while writing his "Cours d'Etudes," states that he was frequently obliged to leave a chapter incomplete, and retire to bed and that on waking, he found it, on more than one occasion, finished in his head. Condorcet upon leaving his deep and complicated calculations unfinished, after having retired to rest, often found their results unfolded to him in his dreams. Voltaire assures us that he, like La Fontaine, composed verses frequently in his sleep, which he remembered on awaking. Doctor Johnson states that he once in a dream had a contest of wit with some other person, and that he was very much mortified by imagining that his opponent had the better of him. Coleridge, in a dream, composed the wild and beautiful poem of "Kubla Khan," which was suggested to him by a passage he was reading in “Purchas's Pilgrimage" when he fell asleep. On awaking he had a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines which have been so much admired. One of the most striking circumstances connected with the human mind is the extreme lightning-like rapidity of its thoughts, even in our waking hours; but the transactions which appear to take place in our dreams are accomplished with still more incalculable rapidity; the relations of space, the duration of time, appear to be alike annihilated; we are transported in an instant to the most distant regions of the earth, and the events of ages are condensed into the span of a few seconds. The accidental jarring of a door, or any noise, will, at the same moment it awakens a person, suggest the incidents of an entire dream. Hence some persons-Lord Brougham in particular-have supposed that all our dreams take place in the transition or interval between sleep and waking. A gentleman dreamt that he had enlisted as a soldier, joined his regiment, deserted, was apprehended, carried back, tried, condemned to be shot, and, at last, led out for execution. After all the usual preparations a gun was fired; he awoke with the report, and found that a noise in the adjoining room had, in the same moment, produced the dream and awakened him. The same want of any notion of the duration of time occurs, more or less, in all dreams; hence our ignorance when we awake of the length of the night. A friend of Dr. Abercrombie's dreamt that he crossed the Atlantic and spent a fortnight in America. In embarking, on his return, he fell into the sea, and, awaking with the fright, discovered he had not been ten minutes asleep. "I lately dreamed," says Dr. Macnish, "that I made a voyage-remained some days in Calcutta-returned home-then took ship for Egypt, where I visited the cataracts of the Nile, Grand Cairo, and the Pyramids; and, to crown the whole, had the honor of an interview with Mahomet Ali, Cleopatra, and Alexander the Great." All this was the work of a single hour, or even a few minutes. In one of the dreams which Mr. De Quincey describes when under the influence of opium"the sense of Space and in the end of Time were," he states, "both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to a sense of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of Time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or one hundred years in one night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium, passed in that time; or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience." One of the miracles of Mahomet appears to be illustrative of the same phenomenon. We read, in the Koran, that the angel Gabriel took Mahomet, one morning, out of his bed to give him a sight of all things in the Seven Heavens and in Paradise; and, after holding ninety thousand spiritual conferences, he was brought back again to his bed; all which was transacted in so small a space of time that Mahomet, upon his return, found his bed still warm. Are dreams so much varied as is generally supposed? Or, taking into consideration our different mental and physical constitutions, is there not rather a remarkable sameness in them? It is certainly a very unusual circumstance to hear of any dream that does violence to the common experience of mankind. One class of dreams, which may be termed RETROSPECTIVE, is of frequent occurrence. These are characterized by the revival of associations long since forgotten. The faculty of Memory appears to be preternaturally exalted; the veil is withdrawn which obscured the vista of our past life; and the minutest events of childhood pass in vivid review before us. There can be no doubt that something analogous to this occurs in drowning; when after the alarm and struggle for life has subsided, sensations and |