Opposite to this, is the account of fish :

Add Herrings, 7. which are brought pickled, and Place, 8. and Cod, 9. which are brought dry;

and the sea-monsters, &c.

Adde Haleces, 7.

qui salsi,

et Passeres, 8. cum Asellis, 9. qui adferuntur arefacti ;

et monstra marina, &c.

Of a similar aspect of complacency is his account of

So in the Tormenting of Malefactors, he speaks of torture in a parenthesis, and talks of pulling traitors

in pieces in the style of a nota-bene. They that have their life given them" appear to be still worse off.

constringuntur Numellis, 16. luxantur, 17.

are set upon a Wooden Horse, imponuntur Equuleo, 18.

LVII.-OF DREAMS.

THE materialists and psychologists are at issue upon the subject of dreams. The latter hold them to be one among the many proofs of the existence of a soul: the former endeavour to account for them upon principles altogether corporeal. We must own, that the effects of their respective arguments, as is usual with us on these occasions, is not so much to satisfy us with either, as to dissatisfy us with both. The psychologist, with all his struggles, never appears to be able to get rid of his body; and the materialist leaves something extremely deficient in the vivacity of his proofs, by his ignorance of that primum mobile, which is the soul of every thing. In the mean time, while they go on with their laudable enquiries (for which we have a very sincere respect), it is our business to go on recommending a taste for results as well as causes, and turning every thing to account in this beautiful star of ours, the earth. There is no reason why the acutest investigator of mysteries should not enjoy his existence, and have his earthly dreams made as pleasant as possible; and for our parts, we see nothing at present, either in body or soul, but a medium for a world of perceptions, the very unpleasantest of whose dreams are but warnings to us how we depart from the health and natural piety of the pleasant ones.

What seems incontrovertible in the case of dreams

is, that they are most apt to take place when the body is most affected. They seem to turn most upon us when the suspension of the will has been reduced to its most helpless state by indulgence. The door of the fancy is left without its keeper, and forth issue, pell-mell, the whole rout of ideas or images, which had been stored within the brain, and kept to their respective duties. They are like a school let loose, or the winds in Virgil, or Lord Anson's drunken sailors at Panama, who dressed themselves up in all sorts of ridiculous apparel.

We were about to say, that being writers, we are of necessity dreamers; for thinking disposes the bodily faculties to be more than usually affected by the causes that generally produce dreaming. But extremes appear to meet on this, as on other occasions, at least as far as the meditative power is concerned; for there is an excellent reasoner now living, who telling another that he was not fond of the wilder parts of the Arabian Nights, was answered with great felicity, "Then you never dream." It turned out that he really dreamt little. Here the link is impaired that connects a tendency to indigestion with thinking on the one hand, and dreaming on the other. If we are to believe Herodotus, the Atlantes, an African people, never dreamt, which Montaigne is willing to attribute to their never having eaten any thing that died of itself. It is to be presumed that he looked upon their temperance as a matter of course. The same philosopher, who was a deep thinker, and of a

delicate constitution, informs us that he himself dreamt but sparingly; but then when he did, his dreams were fantastic though cheerful. This is the very triumph of the animal spirits, to unite the strangeness of sick dreams with the cheerfulness of healthy ones. To these exceptions against the usual theories we may add, that dreams, are by no means modified of necessity by what the mind has been occupied with in the course of the day, or even of months; for during our two years' confinement in prison, we did not dream more than twice of our chief subjects of reflection, the prison itself not excepted.* The two dreams were both connected with the latter, and both the same. We fancied that we had slipped out of jail, and gone to the theatre, where we were horrified by seeing the faces of the whole audience unexpectedly turned upon us.

It is certain enough, however, that dreams in general proceed from indigestion; and it appears nearly as much so, that they are more or less strange according to the waking fancy of the dreamer.

All dreams, as in old Galen I have read,
Are from repletion and complexion bred,
From rising fumes of indigested food,
And noxious humours that infect the blood.

-When choler overflows, then dreams are bred.
Of flames, and all the family of red.

* See a remarkable coincidence in the Essay on Dreams, in Mr. Hazlitt's Plain Speaker.