In short, the farce of dreams is of a piece,
Chimeras all; and more absurd, or less."

It is probable, at the same time, that a trivial degree of indigestion will give rise to very fantastic dreams in a fanciful mind; while on the other hand a good orthodox repletion is necessary towards a fanciful creation in a dull one. It shall make an epicure, of any vivacity, act as many parts in his sleep as a tragedian, "for that night only.” The inspirations of veal in particular are accounted extremely Delphic: Italian pickles partake of the spirit of Dante; and a butter-boat shall contain as many ghosts as Charon's.

There is a passage in Lucian which would have made a good subject for those who painted the temptations of the saints. It is a description of the City of Dreams, very lively and crowded. We quote after Natalis Comes, not having the True History by us. The city, we are told, stands in an immense plain, surrounded by a thick forest of tall poppy trees, and enormous mandragoras. The plain is also full of all sorts of somniculous plants; and the trees are haunted with multitudes of owls and bats, but no other bird. The city is washed by the river Lethe, called by others the Night-bringer, whose course is inaudible and like the flowing of oil. (Spenser's follower, Browne, has been here :

"Where consort none other fowl
Than the bat and sullen owl;
Where flows Lethe without coil,
Softly, like a stream of oil."

Inner Temple Mask.)

There are two gates to the city: one of horn, in which almost everything that can happen in sleep is represented, as in a transparency; the other of ivory, in which the dreams are but dimly shadowed. The principal temple is that of Night; and there are others, dedicated to Truth and Falsehood, who have oracles. The population consists of Dreams, who are of an infinite variety of shape. Some are small and slender; others

distorted, humped, and monstrous; others very proper and tall, with blooming, good-tempered faces. Others again have terrible countenances, are winged, and seem eternally threatening the city with some calamity; while others walk about in the pomp and garniture of kings. If any mortal comes into the place, there is a multitude of domestic Dreams, who meet him with offers of service; and who are followed by some of the others, that bring him good or bad news, generally false; for the inhabitants of that city are for the most part a lying and crafty generation, speaking one thing, and thinking another.This is having a new advantage over us. Only think of the mental reservation of a Dream!

If Lucian had divided his city into ranks and denominations, he might possibly have classed them under the general heads of Dreams Lofty, Dreams Ludicrous, Dreams Pathetic, Dreams Horrible, Dreams Bodily Painful or Pleasant, Dreams of Common Life, Dreams of New Aspects of Humanity, Dreams Mixed, Fantastic, and utterly Confused. He speaks of winged ones; which is judicious, for they are very common; but unless Natalis Comes, who is not a very bright person, misrepresents him, he makes them of the melancholy class, which in general they are not.

"In sanguine airy dreams aloft we bound."

Nothing is more common, or usually more pleasant, than to dream of flying. It is one of the best specimens of the race; for, besides being agreeable, it is made up of the dreams of ordinary life, and those of surprising combination. Thus the dreamer sometimes thinks he is flying in unknown regions, sometimes skimming only a few inches above the ground, and wondering he never did it before. He will even dream that he is dreaming about it; and yet is so fully convinced of its feasibility, and so astonished at his never having hit upon so delightful a truism, that he is resolved to practise it the moment he wakes. "One has only," says he, “just to give a little spring with one's foot— so-and-oh it's the easiest and most obvious thing in the world.

I'll always skim hereafter." We once dreamt that a woman set up some Flying Rooms, as a person does a tavern. We went to try them; and nothing could be more satisfactory and commonplace on all sides. The landlady welcomed us with

a curtsey, hoped for friends and favours, &c., and then showed us into a spacious room, not round, as might be expected, but long, and after the usual dining fashion. "Perhaps, sir," said she, "you would like to try the room;" upon which we made no more ado, but sprung up and made two or three genteel circuits, now taking the height of it like a house-lark, and then cutting the angles like a swallow. "Very pretty flying indeed," said we, "and very moderate."

A house for the purpose of taking flights in, when the open air was to be had for nothing, is fantastic enough; but what shall we say to those confoundings of all time, place, and substance, which are constantly happening to persons of any creativeness of diaphragm? Thus you shall meet a friend in a gateway, who besides being your friend shall be your enemy; and besides being Jones or Tomkins, shall be a bull; and besides asking you in, shall oppose your entrance. Nevertheless, you are not at all surprised; or if surprised, are only so at something not at all surprising. To be Tomkins and a bull at once, is the most ordinary of commonplaces; but that, being a bull, he should have horns, is what astonishes you; and you are also amazed at his not being in Holborn or the Strand, where he never lived. To be in two places at once is not uncommon to a dreamer. He will also be young and old at the same time, a school-boy and a man; will live many years in a few minutes, like the Sultan who dipped his head in the tub of water; will be full of zeal and dialogue upon some matter of indifference; go to the opera with a dish under his arm, to be in the fashion; talk faster in verse than prose; and ask a set of horses to a musical party, telling them that he knows they will be pleased, because blue is the general wear, and Mozart has gone down to Gloucestershire to fit up a house for Epaminondas.

It is a curious proof of the concern which body has in these vagaries, that when you dream of any particular limb being in pain, you shall often have gone to sleep in a posture that affects it. A weight on the feet will produce dreams in which you are rooted to the ground, or caught by a goblin out of the earth. A cramped hand or leg shall get you tortured in the Inquisition; and a head too much thrown back, give you the sense of an interminable visitation of stifling. The night-mare, the heaviest punisher of repletion will visit some persons, merely for lying on their backs; which shows how much it is concerned in a particular condition of the frame. Sometimes it lies upon the chest like a vital lump. Sometimes it comes in the guise of a horrid dwarf, or malignant little hag, who grins in your teeth and will not let you rise. Its most common enormity is to pin you to the ground with excess of fear, while something dreadful is coming up, a goblin or a mad bull. Sometimes the horror is of a very elaborate description, such as being spell-bound in an old house, which has a mysterious and shocking possessor. He is a gigantic deformity, and will pass presently through the room in which you are sitting. He comes, not a giant, but a dwarf, of the most strange and odious description, hairy, spiderlike, and chuckling. His mere passage is unbearable. The agony rises at every step. You would protest against so malignant a sublimation of the shocking, but are unable to move or speak. At length, you give loud and long-drawn groans, and start up with a preternatural effort, awake.

Mr Coleridge, whose sleeping imagination seems proportioned to his waking, has described a fearful dream of mental and bodily torture. As the beautiful poems of "Christabel," &c., which accompany it, seem to have been too imaginative to be understood by the critics, and consequently have wanted the general attention which the town are pleased to give or otherwise according to the injunctions of those gentlemen, we shall indulge ourselves in extracting the whole of it. It is entitled "The Pains of Sleep."

"Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,

My spirit I to love compose,

In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation,

No wish conceiv'd, no thought express'd!
Only a sense of supplication,

A sense, o'er all my soul imprest,
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, everywhere,
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.

"But yester-night I pray'd aloud In anguish and in agony,

Upstarting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,

Sense of intolerable wrong,

And whom I scorn'd, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mix'd,
On wild or hateful objects fix'd.
Fantastic passions! mad'ning brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which, all confused, I could not know
Whether I suffer'd, or I did:

For all seem'd guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same,
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame!

"So two nights pass'd: the night's dismay Sadden'd and stunn'd the coming day. Sleep, the wide blessing, seem'd to me Distemper's worst calamity.

The third night, when my own loud scream Had waked me from the fiendish dream, O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild, I wept as I had been a child;

And having thus by tears subdued

My anguish to a milder mood,

Such punishments, I said, were due

To nature's deepliest stain'd with sin:

For aye entempesting anew

Th' unfathomable hell within,