suppose the usual service expected by the kings of Babylon from their soothsayers included the interpretation of all dreams which had left a strong impression on the king's mind--dreams like the night visions of Eliphaz the Temanite, bringing fear and trembling, making all the bones to shake. It does not seem to have entered into the ordinary course of their duties to tell the king first what he had dreamed (when he had forgotten), and afterwards what the dream might signify. Indeed, though it is not a very uncommon occurrence to forget a dream, yet a dream which has been forgotten does not generally leave a very strong impression, and therefore would not require interpretation. It happened otherwise with Nebuchadnezzar. His spirit was troubled, and his sleep broke from him, because of his dream, but what he had dreamt he could not remember. His action hereupon was somewhat crazy but we must remember there was madness in his blood. He told the Chaldæans, that if they would not make known to him his dream and the interpretation thereof, they should be cut in pieces, and their houses made a dunghill.' This was precisely the way, one would imagine, to cause them to invent a dream for him (he could not have detected the truth very well), and to have devised a suitable interpretation, pleasing in the king's eyes-which to persons of their ingenuity should not have been very difficult.1

However, we must not further consider these more ancient dreams, but turn at once to the examination of some of those remarkable dreams of modern times which have been regarded as showing that dreams are really sent in some cases as forewarnings, or at any rate as foreshadowings of real events. I propose to consider these narratives with special reference to the theory that dreams which seem to be fulfilled are fulfilled only by accident: so many dreams occurring and so many events, that it would in fact be stranger that no such fulfilments should be recognised than that some among them should seem exceedingly striking.

There is one dream story which can hardly be explained by the coincidence theory, if true in all its particulars. It is related by Dr. Abercrombie as deserving of belief, though I must confess that for my own part I cannot but think the actual facts must have undergone considerable modification before the story reached

A great deal in the art of dream-interpretation for the rich and powerful must obviously have depended on ingenuity in making things pleasant. Thus, when an Eastern potentate dreamt that all his teeth fell out, and was told that he was to lose all his relatives, he slew the indiscreet interpreter; but when another and a cleverer interpreter told him the dream promised long life, and that he would survive all his relatives, he made the man who thus pleasantly interpreted the omen many rich and handsome presents.

its present form. Certainly the case does not illustrate the occurrence of dreams, as a warning, effective or otherwise according to circumstances, for the dream happened simultaneously with the event to which it was supposed to relate. The story runs as follows (Dr. Abercrombie gives the story in a somewhat, but not essentially, different form):

On the night of May 11, 1812, Mr. Williams, of Scorrior House, near Redruth, in Cornwall, woke his wife, and in great agitation told her of a strange dream he had just had. He dreamt he was in the lobby of the House of Commons, and saw a man shoot with a pistol a gentleman who had just entered the lobby, who was said to be the Chancellor. His wife told him not to trouble himself about the dream, but to go to sleep again. He followed her advice, but presently woke her again, saying he had dreamt the same dream. Yet a third time was the dream repeated; after which he was so disturbed that, despite his wife's entreaties that he would trouble himself no more about the House of Commons, but try to sleep quietly, he got up and dressed himself. This was between one and two o'clock in the morning. At breakfast, Mr. Williams could talk of nothing but the dream; and early the same morning he went to Falmouth, where he told the dream to all of his acquaintance whom he met. Next day, Mr. Tucker, of Trematon Castle, accompanied by his wife, a daughter of Mr. Williams, went to Scorrior House on a visit. Mr. Williams told Mr. Tucker the circumstances of his dream. Mr. Tucker remarked that it could only be in a dream that the Chancellor would be found in the lobby of the House of Commons. Mr. Tucker asked what sort of man the Chancellor seemed to be, and Mr. Williams minutely described the man who was murdered in his dream. Mr. Tucker replied, "Your description is not at all that of the Chancellor, but is very exactly that of Mr. Perceval, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.' He asked if Mr. Williams had ever seen Mr. Perceval, and Mr. Williams replied that he had never seen him or had any communication of any sort with him; and further, that he had never been in the House of Commons in his life. At this moment they heard the sound of a horse galloping to the door of the house; immediately after a son of Mr. Williams entered the room, and said that he had galloped from Truro, having seen a gentleman there who had come by that evening's mail from town, and who had been in the lobby of the House of Commons on the evening of the 11th, when a man called Bellingham had shot Mr. Perceval. After the astonishment which this intelligence created had a little subsided, Mr. Williams described most minutely the appearance and dress

of the man whom he had seen in his dream fire the pistol at the Chancellor, as also the appearance and dress of the Chancellor. About six weeks after, Mr. Williams, having business in town, went in company with a friend to the House of Commons, where, as has been already observed, he had never before been. Immediately that he came to the steps of the entrance of the lobby, he said, 'This place is as distinctly within my recollection, in my dream, as any room in my own house,' and he made the same observation when he entered the lobby. He then pointed out the exact spot where Bellingham stood when he fired, and also that which Mr. Perceval had reached when he was struck by the ball, where he fell. The dress both of Mr. Perceval and Bellingham agreed with the description given by Mr. Williams even to the most minute particulars.

So runs the story. Of course, like the well-authenticated' ghost stories, this one is confirmed by a number of particulars which are open to no other disadvantage than that of depending, like the rest of the story, on the narrator himself. It would be utterly absurd to base any theory respecting dreams on a story of this sort. The fact that on the night in question Mr. Williams dreamt about a murder in the House of Commons depends on his own assertion and his wife's confirmation. The details of the dream, the description of Perceval and Bellingham, Mr. Williams's ignorance respecting Mr. Perceval's appearance and the arrangement of the rooms in the House of Commons, these and a number of other matters essential to the effect of the story, depend on trustworthy witnesses,' whose evidence has in point of fact never been taken. All these points are like the details which appear in the papers the first few days after the occurrence of some tragic event.' They may be true or not, but they are apt to undergo considerable alteration when the witnesses are actually examined.

If we accepted the story precisely as it stands, we should be led to some rather startling results. In the first place, the coincidences are too numerous to be explained as merely accidental. Mr. Williams, or any other among the millions who slept and dreamt on the night of the murder, might be readily enough believed to have had a startling dream about the murder of some member of Parliament high in office. Nor could the triple repetition of such a dream be surprising; for a dream which has produced a great effect on the mind is apt to be repeated. But that the event itself of Perceval's murder should be represented precisely as it occurred to a man who did not know Perceval or Bellingham from Adam, involves a multiplicity of relations which could not conceivably be all fulfilled

simultaneously. We should have to admit, if we accepted the story as it stands, that there was something, I will not say supernatural or preternatural, but outside the range of known natural laws, in the dreams of Mr. Williams of Scorrior House.

Now, the case does not fall under precisely the same category as those numerous stories told of the appearance of persons, at the moment of their death, to friends or relatives at a distance. In the first place, most of these stories are themselves open to grave doubt. The persons who relate them are by their own account of highly sensitive and readily excitable temperament, and we do not look for perfectly uncoloured narratives from such persons. But even if we accept the general theory that under certain conditions the mind. of a dying person may affect in some way the mind of a person at a distance who is in some way in sympathy with the moribund, we can hardly extend the theory to include strangers. It may not be utterly incredible, perhaps, that some physical mode of communication exists by which one brain may receive the same impressions which affect another-though I must confess I cannot see my own way to believe anything of the sort. But we can hardly imagine that the brain of a sleeping person in no way connected with a dying man could be affected by such brain-waves. Every story of the kind, truthful or otherwise, has described an impression produced on some dear friend or relative; so that we should be justified in thinking (if we believed these stories at all) that brainwaves are especially intended for the benefit of close friends or near of kin. It would be a new and startling thing if any man might have a vision of any other person who chanced to be dying; and, considering that not a minute passes without several deaths, while there are some 1,500 millions of living persons, scarcely a day might be expected to pass without some one or other of the multitudinous deaths of the day finding some one or other brain among the 1,500 millions in the proper frame for receiving the visionary communication by the brain-wave method.

Nor is it easy to imagine a religiously supernatural interpretation of the story. The dream was certainly not sent as a warning, for when Williams dreamt his dream, Perceval was either being murdered, or was already dead. The event could produce no beneficial influence on mankind generally, or on the English people specially, or the Cornish folk still more specially. The number of persons who could be certain that Mr. Williams was telling the truth (always on our present assumption that this was the case) were very few-in fact, only Mr. and Mrs. Williams, Mr. Tucker, and perhaps one or two friends who remembered that the details of the murder were communicated before the news could

One does not readily see how have reached Mr. Williams. Williams himself was to be beneficially influenced by his remarkable experience. Most of those who heard the story would sit in the seat of the scornful, and receive no benefit, but harm. The idea generally entertained, and most probably by Williams as well as the rest, would be simply this, that if it was worth while to let a miraculous vision of Perceval's murder appear to anyone, it would have been well to have let the vision appear before the event, and to some one not living quite so far from town. Not, indeed, that the warning might save Perceval; for in reality it is a bull of the broadest sort to imagine that a true vision of a murder can prevent the murder. But a warning dream might serve useful purpose without preventing the event it indicated. If a man dreamt that he was to die in a week, and believed the dream, he would have no hope from the advice of his doctor, or from any other precautions he might make against death; yet he would usefully employ the week in arranging his affairs. But it could be of no earthly use to Perceval, or anyone else, that a vision of his death should appear in triplicate to some one down in Cornwall on the very night when the tragedy occurred in London.

I imagine that the true explanation of the story is somewhat on this wise: Williams probably had three startling dreams about a murder; told them to his wife in the way related, and on the following morning to several friends. News presently came of the murder of Perceval on the night when Williams had had these dreams; and gradually he associated the events of his dreams with the circumstances of the murder. When six weeks later he visited the scene of the murder, he mistook his recollection of things told him about Perceval, the lobby of the House of Commons, &c., for the recollection of things seen in his dreams. The story actually related probably assumed form and substance after Williams's visit to London. In perfect good faith he, his wife, and his friends may have given to the story the form it finally assumed. Of course, the explanation is rendered a little easier if we Mr. Williams and his wife were not unwilling to colour suppose their story a little. If a phonograph could have received the first account of the dream as imparted to Mrs. Williams on the night of May 11, I fancy the instrument might have repeated a tale somewhat unlike that which adorns the Royal Book of Dreams,' and Mr. Abercrombie's treatise on the Intellectual Powers. But without any intentional untruthfulness a story of this kind is apt to undergo very noteworthy modifications.

Dr. Abercrombie himself vouches for the truth of the two following stories, that is to say, he vouches for his belief in both stories: