often gives us a taste of the quintessence of his humor, for in-
stance,-

66 Bickerstaff, Mr., account of his ancestors, 141. How his
race was improved, 142. Not in partnership with Lillie, 250.
Catched writing nonsense, 47.

"Dead men, who are to be so accounted, 247."

Sometimes he has a stroke of pathos, as touching in its brevity
as the account it refers to; as,

"Love-letters between Mr. Bickerstaff and Maria, 184-186.
Found in a grave, 289."

Sometimes he is simply moral and graceful; as,

"Tenderness and humanity inspired by the Muses, 258. No
true greatness of mind without it, ibid.'

At another he says perhaps more than he intended; as,

"Laura, her perfections and excellent character, 19. De-
spised by her husband, ibid."

The index to Cotton's Montaigne, probably written by the trans-
lator himself, is often pithy and amusing. Thus in volume 2d,
Anger is pleased with, and flatters itself, 618.

"Beasts inclined to avarice, 225.

"Children abandoned to the care and government of their
fathers, 613.

"Drunkenness, to a high and dead degree, 16.

"Joy, profound, has more severity than gaiety in it.

"Monsters, are not so to God, 612.

"Voluptuousness of the Cynics, 418."

Sometimes we meet with graver quaintnesses and curious re-
lations, as in the index to Sandys's Ovid:

"Diana, no virgin, scoft at by Lucian, p. 55.

"Dwarfes, an Italian Dwarfe carried about in a parrot's cage,
113.

"Eccho, at Twilleries in Paris, heard to repeat a verse without
failing in one syllable, p. 58.

Ship of the Tyrrhenians miraculously stuck fast in the sea,
p. 63.

"A Historie of a Bristol ship stuck fast in the deepe Sea by
Witchcraft; for which twentie-five Witches were executed,
ibid."

CHAPTER LVI.

An Old School-Book.

THERE is a school-book by the egregious John Amos Comenius, (who fixed the millenium for the year 1672) in which the learned author has lumped together, in a very singular way, all sorts of trades, pursuits, productions, merriments, and disasters. As everything which is saleable is on a level with booksellers, so everything which has a Latin word for it, was alike important to the creator of the Orbis Pictus: for so the book is called.

He sees with equal eye, as construing all,

A hero perish or a sparrow fall.

The tormenting of Malefactors, Supplicia Malefactorum, is no more in his eyes than the making of honey, or Mellificium. Shipwreck, being Naufragium, he holds in no graver light than a feast, which is Convivium; and the feast is no merrier than the shipwreck. He has wood-cuts, with numerals against the figures; to which the letter-press refers. In one of these, his "Deformed and Monstrous People" cut as jaunty a figure as his Adam and Eve, and seem to pique themselves on their titles of Deformes et Monstrosi. In another the soul of man is described by a bodily outline, standing against a sheet. He is never moved but by some point of faith. Thus, “Godliness,' he says, "treads reason under foot, that barking dog, No. 6." Oblatrantem Canem, 6. The translation, observe, is worthy of the original. Again :

Woe to the mad

Wizards and Witches,

who give themselves to the Devil

(being inclosed in a Circle, 7. calling upon him

with Charms)

they dally with him

and fall from God!

for they shall receive their reward with him.

Væ dementibus
Magis et Lamiis,

qui Cacodæmoni se dedunt
(inclusi Circulo, 7.
eum advocantes
incantamentis)
cum eo colludunt
et a Deo deficiunt!
nam cum illo
mercedem accipient.

But of the fall of Adam and Eve he contents himself with

Of a similar aspect of complacency is his account of the Last Judgment:

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

CHAPTER 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 endeavor to account for them upon principles altogether corporeal. We must own, that the effect 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 everything. In the mean time, while they go on with their laudable inquiries (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 everything 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