ever, overruled; but that same evening he was accidentally slain by the object of his fear. A singular dream, with its no less singular fulfilment, is related in the Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantes, vol. i. p. 270. The evening before the battle of Lonate, Junot, having been on horseback all the day, and ridden above twenty leagues in carrying the orders of the general-in-chief, lay down overwhelmed with fatigue without undressing, and ready to start up at the smallest signal. Hardly was he asleep when he dreamed he was on a field of battle surrounded by the dead and the dying. Before him was a horseman clad in armour, with whom he was engaged that cavalier, instead of a lance, was armed with a scythe, with which he struck Junot several blows, particularly one on the left temple. The combat was long, and at length they seized each other by the middle; in the struggle the vizor of the horseman fell off, and Junot perceived that he was fighting with a skeleton. Soon the armour fell off, and Death stood before him armed with his scythe. "I have not been able to take you," said he, "but I will seize one of your best friends. Beware of me!" Junot awoke in a cold perspiration. The morning was beginning to dawn, and he could not sleep from the impression he had received. He felt convinced that one of his brother aides-de-camp, Muiron or Marmont, would be slain in the approaching fight. In effect it was so. Junot received two wounds, one on the left temple, which he bore to the grave, and another on the breast, but Muiron was shot through the heart!

These are but specimens of a very numerous class of dreams. They were verified; but,except in the last case, the meaning was only known when the prediction had been accomplished. The same observations we shall see, by and by, applying with an equal degree of force to oracles.

3. Dreams which are said to have caused their own fulfilment.

When the mother of Archbishop Abbott was very near her confinement,* she dreamed that, though a poor woman herself, if she could eat a pike, her son would be a great man. She sought accordingly with much zeal, till at last she saw one in some water that ran near

* Theory of Dreams, vol. ii. p. 6. Theory of Dreams, vol. i. p. 52.

her house at Guilford; she seized upon it and immediately devoured it. This circumstance being much talked about, several persons of wealth and influence offered to be sponsors to the child when born; and those who did so, kept him both at school and at the university, till he arrived at distinction. The following, unless it were a political contrivance, may be placed in the same class. Antigonus, king of Macedonia, dreamed that he sowed gold in a field, and that the seed sprung up, flourished, and ripened; but that soon after the golden harvest was reaped, and nothing left but the worthless stubble; and that then he heard a voice proclaim that Mithridates was fled to the Euxine Sea, carrying with him all the harvest. The king being now awakened, was exceedingly terrified: he resolved to cut off Mithridates, and communicated his intention to Demetrius, exacting from him a previous oath of silence. Demetrius, who was favourably disposed towards Mithridates, was only prevented by a reverence for his oath from telling him the danger in which he stood. Taking him, however, aside, he wrote on the sand with the point of his spear, “Fly, O Mithridates!" Warned by the counsels of his friend, Mithridates fled, and founded in Cappadocia a kingdom which long survived that of Macedonia. This relation is taken from Plutarch.

4. Dreams which have apparently failed of their effect.

Among such may be classed that very curious relation given by Cicero, § of the two Arcadian friends who, travelling together, arrived at Megara, and there one lodged at an inn, the other at a friend's house. The latter, in his first sleep, appeared to behold his friend supplicating for aid against the innkeeper, who was preparing to murder him. He started up in alarm, but not thinking the dream merited attention, he again composed himself to sleep. His friend again appeared, telling him that assistance was now useless, for the intended murder had been committed; but conjured him that, although he had afforded no suecour to the living, he at least would not permit the crime to go unavenged. The murdered person also stated that the body had been thrown into a cart

+ That of Pontus. § De Divin. lib, ii. c. 68.

and covered with dung, and that it was in contemplation to carry it out of the city very early the next morning. These instructions were obeyed, the cart was stopped, the body found, and the innkeeper brought to justice. Here, supposing the truth of the relation, the object of the dream was not to cause the execution of the innkeeper, but to save the life of the traveller; and if we divide the vision into two parts, and contend that the object of the latter was accomplished, we must grant that the former altogether failed of its effect.

"The dreams of avarice," says the author of the Theory of Dreams, quoting Holinshed, "have seldom been produc tive of much good. A rich man in Wales having dreamed three nights successively that there was a chain of gold hidden under the headstone of a well named St. Barnard's Well, went to the place, and, putting his hand into the hole, was bitten by an adder; and not many years since, as the interesting recluses of Llangollen would testify, a deluded cobbler was digging, in consequence of a dream, among the ruins of the Castle of Dinas Brune, which overhangs the vale, in search of gold."

Two curious dreams, shewing the effect of an evil conscience on the sensorium are related by Proclus in his doubts concerning Providence: they may be found at pp. 63 and 64 of Taylor's Translation.

"For they say that Apollodorus the Tyrant saw himself in a dream scourged and boiled by certain persons, and his heart exclaiming from the kettle, I am the cause of these thy torments;' but Ptolemy, who was called Thunder (Ceraunus), thought he was, in a dream, called to judgment by Seleucus, and that vultures and wolves sat there as his judges. Such are the preludes to the wicked of impending punishment."

These examples will suffice, and for the most part they require no comment. Generally speaking, we shall find that any remarkable coincidence between dreams and real transactions may be accounted for by the fact well known to all-that we are most likely to dream of that which has the greatest share of our waking thoughts. It will hardly be quite fair to the author of the Theory of Dreams not to state what that theory is. The book is an amusing collection of anecdotes, and the writer says,*"' "The

* Vol, i. p. 152.

general theory to which the author is inclined is, that no dreams, excepting those involved with the history of revelation, can have any necessary connexion with, or can afford any assistance towards discovering the secrets of futurity."

We must not dismiss the subject of dreams without noticing the means to which the ancients had recourse in order to obtain prophetic dreams. The skins of animals offered in sacrifice belonged to the priest. This was the case under the Mosaic law,† from which many of the most interesting ceremonies among the heathen were borrowed. It is probable that the Jews, in the days of their apostasy, and it is quite certain that the heathens put these skins to a superstitious purpose. Virgil gives an instance of this in the following lines:

"First on the fleeces of the slaughtered sheep,

By night the sacred priest dissolves in sleep;

When in a train before his wondering eye,

Thin airy forms and wondrous visions fly;

He calls the powers who guard the infernal floods,

And talks, inspired, familiar with the gods;

To this dread oracle the prince withdrew,

And first a hundred sheep the monarch slew;

Then on their fleeces lay, and from the wood

He heard distinct these accents of the god."-PITT'S Æn. b. viii.

"The Highlanders of Scotland," says Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to the Lady of the Lake, like all rude people, had various superstitious modes of inquiring into futurity. One of the most noted was the togharm. A person was wrapped up in the skin of a newly slain bullock, and deposited beside a waterfall, or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some other strange, wild, and unusual situation, where the scenery around him suggested nothing but objects of horror. In this situation he revolved in his mind the question proposed, and whatever was im

pressed upon him by his exalted imagination, passed for the inspiration of disembodied spirits who haunt these desolate Mr. Alexander Cooper, minister of North Uist, told me that one John Erach, in the Isle of Lewis, as

recesses.

+ Levit. viii. 8.

sured him it was his fate to be led by his curiosity with some who consulted this oracle, and that he was a night within the hide above-mentioned, during which time he felt and heard such terrible things that he could not express them. The impression made on him was such as would never go off; and he said, for a thousand worlds he would not again be concerned in the like performance, for it had disordered him to a high degree."

Such superstitions might be expected from a race of men so imaginative as the Highlanders; nor will it appear very surprising, that similar means, only less terrific, should have been occasionally resorted to in the convent.* The Franciscans, among whom supernatural visions were peculiarly abundant, used to note with great care the mat upon which any brother had lain while in a state of ecstasy. A portion of the spirit which rested upon him was believed to hallow the very straw upon which he lay, and those who afterwards slept upon it expected to be visited with celestial dreams. Pliny, in his Natural History, mentions several ways of obtaining or repelling peculiar dreams. The shoulder of a chamelion, for example, enabled a person who possessed it to dream of whatsoever he pleased. Aniset hung about a bed drove away disagreeable visions; and on the contrary, an herb called pycnocomon, § caused them. Nor must the recipe of Robert Burton be forgotten; which cannot, however, be exactly recommended. "Piso commends frications; Andrew Borde, a good draught of strong wine before one goes to bed. I say a nutmeg and ale,

or a good draught of muscadine, with a toast and nutmeg; or a posset of the same, which many use in a morning; but methinks for such as have dry brains, are much more proper at night." Afterwards he quotes a story rather more to the purpose. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, asked one of the seventy interpreters what was the best way of securing pleasant dreams, and was told to use celestial meditations and honest actions when awake. It will hardly be necessary to make any recapitulation of the contents of these two chapters. We have seen that there was, and still is, a metaphysical theory, well known to the ancients, and embraced by some very distinguished men even among moderns; that, according to this theory, it is possible that dreams may be the expatiations of a spirit for a season disembodied, possibly capable of having some glances into futurity, and therefore not to be despised. Knowing this, however different our own opinions may be, we shall hesitate before we visit with our contempt those among the ancients who believed in oneiromancy. The practice was, no doubt, always fallacious, and often contemptible, but we must not confound the theories of philosophers with the practices of mountebanks. In many respects we are not much better informed as to the nature of spirit or the properties of matter than the ancients; that we are free from many of their errors is to be attributed quite as much to our greater knowledge of the limits set to human science, as to our more successful investigation of natural phenomena.

Book xxvi. c. 8.

¶ Ibid.

pieces is merry satyrs dancing round a girl asleep. So that dancing is still, as it were, a necessary appendix to lovematters. Young lasses are never better pleased than when, as upon a holyday, after even-song, they may meet their sweethearts, and dance about a Maypole, or in a town-green, under a shady elm.'

So sings the grave Democritus, who died a victim to the melancholy he loved to describe and investigate. Burton was a master in all the mysteries of the ancient and modern toilet. When treating, in the Anatomy, of artificial allurements, he denounces, with eloquent indignation, those votaries of fashion who "crucify" themselves in their dresses; sometimes lavishing a hundred yards upon a sleeve, of which the "bishops," now gone out of vogue, was a weak imitation. He continues, in the same bitter and taunting strain :

"Now long tails, and then short; up, down, high, low, thick, thin; now little or no bands; then as big as cart-wheels; now loose bodies; then great fardingals and close girt."

Modern ball-dresses seem to be constructed the advice of Ovid: upon "Pars humeri tamen ima tui, pars summa lacerti

Nuda fit, a læva conspicienda manu."

The reader who is acquainted with the antiquities discovered at Herculaneum, will remember the wonderful and unwearied ingenuity which the ancients devoted to make the sensual subservient to the beautiful. The figures of their dancing girls embody all the refined abandonment of the most poetical imagination. The transparent dresses surpass any at Almack's. Seneca speaks of the pellucida vestis; and Ovid, with characteristical grace, clothes the Hours in painted garments. Apuleius, in his charming allegory of Psyche, describes the veil, which only shadowed the form of Venus, of an azure hue, in allusion to her having risen from the sea. The manufacturers of these fashionable vests had a distinct title: they were called rougyou and tenuarii. Purple was the favourite colour; and has received an additional brilliancy from the pencil of Virgil, who arrayed Dido in it. Plautus, in his amusing comedy, the Aulularia, among the trades peculiarly appropriated to female luxury, mentions the

violarii, persons who dyed dresses with the colour of the violet. Aristo

phanes describes the variegated purple robes by a very beautiful line in the Plutus, where Poverty assures Chremylus that he will no longer be able to anoint his bride with liquid odours, or bring her home in that expensive apparel. This costly dye was manufactured at Miletus. Theocritus calls the πορφυρίοι ταπητες softer than sleep. But purple was not the only colour patronised by persons of quality. Cyprian and Tertullian, in the treatises which those learned fathers directed against the extravagance of ladies, particularly notice tints of green and vermilion. Spenser assigns a green habit to Cupid, which Warton considered to be an unwarrantable innovation. Yellow drapery must not be forgotten, since it was the colour selected by Bacchus after his transformation into a girl; as any young lady, who has learned Greek on the Hamiltonian system, may read in the nineteenth book of the Donysiacs of Nonnus. It seems to have suited the complexion of heroes also. Lucian says that Hercules adopted it during his degrading visit to Omphale. White had, also, its admirers. Tibullus mentions a lady who inflamed the beholder alike in purple or in white. Spenser recommended it to young maidens

"Lo! where she comes along with portly