his life he did not know it, and that if it were not for the positive assertions of others, he would be forced to disbelieve in dreams.

Locke relates an incident of a gentleman who never dreamed until he was twenty-six years of age, when he had a fever and dreamed for the first time.

On the authority of Plutarch, we learn that Cleon and Thrasymedes, both of whom lived to an advanced age, never experienced the phenomenon of Dreaming. Upham, in his Mental Philosophy, refuses to admit the possibility of such cases, arguing that they may have dreamed and forgotten, but adds, undoubtedly such persons dream very seldom. Kant inclines to the same opinion, and says that those who fancy they have not dreamed, have forgotten their dreams. The truth is, we know so little about Dreaming that it is almost useless to speculate on the subject.

Nearly all the ancient philosophers and moralists believed in the Divine or spiritual character of dreams. Plato believed that all dreams could be trusted when the body and mind are in a healthy condition. The sublimest illustrations, however, of the prophetic character of dreams are found in the Bible. For instance, those of Saul, Solomon, Abimelech, and Daniel, in the Old Testament, and those of the wise men of the East, of Joseph, and of the wife of Pilate, in the New Testament. The following passage from the Scriptures seems to proclaim the prophetic character of dreams: "In slumbering upon the bed, God openeth the ears of men and sealeth their understanding."

The dream of Calphurnia the night before the assassination of her husband, Julius Cæsar, is perhaps the most extraordinary example we have in profane history of this kind of dreaming.

Columbus dreamed that a voice said to him, “God will give to thee the keys of the gates of the ocean.”

The theory that dreams are but the continuation of our waking thoughts is very popular in Germany and France, and, indeed, one of the most distinguished savans of the latter country asserts that some of his most profound and abstruse calculations were left in an unfinished state, and completed in his dreams after he had went to bed. While on the subject of the relation of dreams to our waking thoughts, we will relate Coleridge's story of the composition of one of his most beautiful poems, "Kubla Khan.”

In the summer of 1797, Coleridge retired to a farmhouse on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. He was ill, and had taken an anodyne. He fell asleep in his chair while reading the following lines in "Purchas's Pilgrimage":"Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto, and thus ten miles of fertile ground were enclosed with a wall.”

He continued to sleep very profoundly for several hours, during which he composed not less than two to three hundred lines of poetry. On waking he endeavored to write out what he had composed, but was called away on business just as he had written that part of the poem he has given us in his published works. When he returned he was unable to finish the poem ; but what he wrote ere the charm was broken contains a world of beauty.

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground,

With walls and towers were girded round,

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree,

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.'

Coleridge then pictures a wild, romantic chasm, where huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, amid the tumult of which Kubla Khan heard from afar,

'Ancestral voices prophesying war."

The poem concludes with a description of a dome of pleasure, in which an Abyssinian maid sings with the sweetest symphony of Mount Abora.

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight would win me,
That with music loud and long

I would build that dome in air;

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair;

Weave a circle around him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise."

One of the most singular things connected with Dreaming is the rapidity with which time seems to pass while in that state.

Dr. Carpenter relates an incident of a clergyman falling asleep in his pulpit during the singing of a psalm before the sermon, and awaking with the conviction that he must have slept for at least an hour, and that the congregation had been waiting for him, but on referring to his book he was consoled by finding that his slumber had lasted only during the singing of a single line.

The apparent reality of dreams has often occasioned many ridiculous blunders in leading persons to relate their dreams as actual occurrences. One of the most religious and truthful men we ever knew on one occasion assured us that he had traveled in Russia, when we were satisfied that he had scarcely been outside of the confines of the

neighborhood in which he lived. We have also heard a distinguished professor in a leading medical college of Kentucky say that he had dreamed so much about the catacombs at Paris that it was impossible for him to tell whether he had actually visited them or not. This, however, is not so bad as the story of the man who dreamed that his head had been cut off, and refused to believe otherwise until allowed the privilege of looking at himself in the glass. However, none of these examples are any more extraordinary than a dream of our own which we will relate.

A few years ago, after a severe and continued spell of sickness, we dreamed that we had received a letter from a friend in Europe. It was written at Geneva. It was written at Geneva. The scenery of the surrounding country was glowingly described. Nearly all the famous names in history with which this romantic place is associated, including those of Gibbon, De Stael, Necker, Kemble, Rousseau, and Voltaire, were recalled and commented upon with singular clearness and beauty. We had the most vivid impression of reading the letter over and over again, and of putting it in the drawer of our writing-desk, with the intention of perusing it again after breakfast. On waking the impression was not dispelled. It became for a time an actual event in life, as palpable to the senses as what we feel and touch.

We were mortified beyond endurance an hour or two afterwards, when we related the supposed fact of having received the letter to a friend, who informed us that the gentleman had not gone to Europe, but contemplated doing so in the course of a few months.

Fortunately, however, we are not often troubled with the difficulty of being unable to distinguish between our waking and sleeping thoughts, and when we are, we console ourselves with the reflection that those who never dream never think.

DANTE.

DANTE has been fortunate in his translators. Cary and Longfellow have perhaps furnished the best and truest to the spirit of the original. Either of them will give the reader a better idea of the genius of the great Florentine than Carlyle's literal prose version.

In 1867 Dr. James Parsons published the first canto of the "Divina Commedia," in which he substituted the decasyllabic quatrain for the triple rhyme of the Italian with tolerable effect, but his work is regarded in no other light than as a free translation.

Cary's translation is even better known in this country than Longfellow's. Prescott said of it :—“If DANte could have foreseen it he would have given his translator a place in his ninth heaven."

But notwithstanding this praise, and the popularity of the work, it lacks the music, the terza rima, the "continuous interchanging harmony" of the original. Longfellow, in the opinion of our ablest critics, has given us a rigorous. adhesion to the words and idioms of the text, and at the same time has preserved all its delicious and entrancing music. We rejoice to know that DANTE is now being more thoroughly read and studied than ever before. No poet who has ever lived has equaled him in intensity of feeling or surpassed him in fiery bursts of passionate eloquence. He has often been compared with Petrarch, but there is

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