to a dream actually occurring, exclaims: "Now my dream is out." The superstition of dreams should not be encouraged by those who cultivate the minds of youth. The Witch of Endor is an evidence of no more than a common profession among old women for purposes of gain. Witchcraft has been a trade in all ages of the world, and was no more worth a thousand years ago than it is at present. The race still exists, so strong is the desire for supernatural revelations. The witch and wizard tribe of old have been succeeded by the spiritualist in modern days, and have divided the imposture with them.

Fortune-tellers and dream-interpreters still abound. It will take a long time yet to banish the power of expounding dreams, the interpretation of omens, and the influence of them from the social body, because that body is not ruled by reason, but custom. But, in regard to dreams, we are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleep, since the slumber of the body only seems to be, in the time of dreams, the awakening of the soul. A century or two ago the faith of the common people in dreams was extraordinary, and that of princes no less. Thus, the great Emperor, Charles V., having a fever raging in his army on service, dreamed that it could be cured by a decoction of dwarf thistle. Of course it was tried and succeeded; but then this was a "royal" dream, the more useful as leaving them to be sent into the other world by the sword, in that sense useful to a crowned head, that wished his men to be useful to him in articulo mortis, as well as in the time of peace. Thus it is seen, too, that crowned heads have faith in dreams.

Perhaps dreaming is a species of play with the reflections, or with reflected scenes of our waking hours; but if so, how is it that dreams never combine themselves anew, and arrange themselves so consistently as would be sometimes the case in concurrence with sound reasoning. We find nothing supernatural is concerned in a dream. It is ever the recurrence of a waking idea. The mind also appears to have a less perfect action when uncombined with the power of sensation. The chamber of dreams as a receptacle and digest of the impression received through the organs of the senses, converts the material things of to-day into immaterial images on the morrow, that occupy no space, of course, and yet are no more limited in extension than space itself. During the body's inaction only, dreams play their part. The senses are inert. Is dreaming an action of the soul alone?

Our forefathers often registered their dreams when fulfilled, but when not, they passed them by as not realised, being pretty much on a par with the law of chances, or a thousand to one, a prodigal concession to the solitary superstition. Gold nuggets are no

doubt the burden of Australian dreams, and stock in the city of London, both having fast hold of the souls of the dreamers.

A certain dean of Canterbury, long ago gathered to his fathers, and a strict ecclesiastic, used to tell a story of a strange woman who one day met him and told him that she was his mother's spirit, whom he had never known when living. She added that, his father having left all his property to his children by his second wife, there was still one estate which he might secure, and that the writings were in the hands of an individual whom she designated. A year or two afterwards his father died, and the property was left as the woman had stated. Upon this, the dean called upon the individual designated in his dream some time before, and found all was left in the state he had been led to expect, and he ultimately obtained it. A most apocryphal story, notwithstanding one related by a dean.

In another case, a man dreamed that a sum of money was buried in a certain ruin. He went, and digging there, found a vessel full of coins. Now all this was very "terrestrial," very earthy in the nature of the revelations. Spirits do not trouble themselves about money save in the nether sphere. Similar relations, however, show that not spiritual so much as temporal things engrossed the minds even of those who would be supposed to be occupied with more elevated things.

Dreams stimulating to the performance of great and worthy actions may occasionally happen, but few exist whose minds are thus occupied if they are classed as superior spirits. Such have nothing to do with dreams that are of an order no higher than that of instigators to search ruins or dung-hills for treasure, or for the hoards of the "least created spirits that fell."

The ruling passion thus governs the dreams of humanity, and even those in place of revelations, are often good or evil in character, according to the state of the digestive organs. The nightmare is apt to ride on the strangled sleep of the dreamer, attended by "Gorgons, hydras, and chimeras dire." Such too familiar spirits distress those sleepers fearfully who are fond of rich dishes and choice condiments. Then it is that ghosts hover over the pillow of slumber, and the aldermanic glutton pays dear for his dignity.

Aristotle tells us it is best to come at the knowledge of some things above us in the heavens than to be incapable of giving uncertain demonstrations relating to things below. Great minds can only comprehend this sentiment. Dreams, however, are exceptions to the appearances called supernatural, in that they never trouble any one broad awake in manner of spirit, of which Glanville gives us so large a collection in his dissertation on ghostly appear

ances. The dreams which thus haunt us are, after all, but shadowy resemblances, and we need not trouble ourselves overmuch about shadows while we can keep substances at a distance.

Lady Seymour took a fancy to Lord Winchelsea, and dreamed that she found a nest with nine finches in it. Lord Winchelsea not long afterwards demanded her in marriage. His name was Finch, and by him she had nine children, and her dream came true. The question is, how many false dreams the lady had to the solitary "one" which came out true?

Whether awake or asleep, our ideas being very similar, we find both pain and pleasure much more acute in a dream than in reality, as before remarked. We awake sometimes in a state of unutterable suffering, and feel happy it is over. Yet the painfulness or pleasure of the idea, one or the other, was owing to the difference in the perfect health or the momentary disarrangement of the bodily system.

We have more than once imagined that we were moving through the air just above the head of a savage man, who was seeking to seize us as we glided a foot or two above the head of our terrible enemy. We have been on an imaginary journey, and in an inn without money, and the reality and freshness of the scene was wonderful, and terminated in awaking. Even suffering from incubus and surrounded by as formidable an array of spectres and fiends as ever perplexed St. Anthony, as some have told the story of his nocturnal visitants.

The dreams of the sick are affected by the nature of the complaint, and do not come under more than the general head. An alarming accident, or some affecting circumstance, witnessed even some time before the dream occurs, will seem to have lain dormant in some concealed corner of the mind, and to be drawn out, as it were, by sleep into a dream, either so perfect as to be traced, or imperfect, and yet with similitude sufficient to trace it to its source. We had a friend who, in the flotilla off Boulogne, was very near being killed by the bursting of a shell, of which he had preserved a jagged fragment. The incident produced painful but obscure dreams, not all defined. Nor could we think the piece of jagged iron could have originated painful dreams. We had seen much more impressive objects. It is but rarely that our dreams excite the action of the body. It is rather action bona fide that creates the mental image, and not the mere existence of it in the mind, where it is frequently first generated altogether and is an exceptional class.

We have walked alone in a fine summer evening in the fields, and dreamed in the night of green fields and beautiful landscapes, but the pictures it presented, as to the objects brought to the eye,

were always novel. It was as if they had been familiar without any recognised outline. It is rarely in proportion to the number of our dreams that they excite to any bodily action. Why they do or do not at times thus act is not to be easily explained. An inquiry would plunge us into a slough out of our depth if we attempted to account for it. In fact, in all similar difficulties in the different theories of dreaming put forth, we confess that we cannot establish any with certainty. Dreams, they tell us, go by contraries. This has long been held as sound doctrine; but it is no doubt a fallacy. Nothing can be more senseless than dream interpretations. Yet it has become time-consecrated. The old people, in case of distressing dreams, recommend a glass of ale and nutmeg in it on going to rest. This is treating incorporeality rather unceremoniously.

Dreams have so affected some persons as to produce fatal effects. This is for want of a right comprehension of their nature and origin. Yet the writer knew a young lady, a Miss Roberts, who dreamed that she heard a knocking at the door of her father's house. She got out of bed, and looking down at the door saw death standing there in his usual skeleton form. She demanded what he wanted, and he replied that he was come for her. She died a week or two afterwards, but she had been in a decline for some months, and the result was certain. The cause of her dream was no doubt to be found in her own contemplation of her end, for she had nursed no flattering hopes of a prolonged existence.

There is such a singular resemblance between the circumstance of the coin-the Otho related above-and that which follows, that it is hardly possible for one not to have been founded upon the other. It is related by Gassendi, in an account of his friend's life: "I was in the year 1610 travelling from Montpelier to Nismes. An individual of learning, whose name was Peiresk, was travelling with another named Ranier, and occupied the same room. Peiresk muttered something in his sleep. Ranier asked him what was the matter? He replied, 'I dreamed I was at Nismes, where a goldsmith offered me for four crowns a medal of Julius Cæsar. I was paying him for it when you awoke me, and all vanished.' The two travellers entered Nismes together, and while dinner was preparing they walked out, and, seeing a jeweller's shop, Peiresk entered, and asked if the shopkeeper had anything rare to show him. The jeweller replied that he had a Julius Cæsar in gold, and that the price was four crowns, which he paid the jeweller and took away with him."

For all these singular incidents Peiresk did not dream anything supernatural in the matter. He had been thinking much of a gold Julius Cæsar. He had been thinking of Nismes, where he

was to be the next day, and Roman antiquities were so plentiful. All these things might have been in the dreamer's mind, but their concurrence is the singular thing. Gassendi himself did not believe that there was anything supernatural in his dream, but that it was only the rareness of such fulfilments that created such a belief of the supernatural regarding them in the vulgar mind. The question is to be solved by the doctrine of chance. How many dreams have turned out to be true-that is, how have been realised compared with the number that have failed? CYRUS REDDING.

many

WHAT THE THISTLE LIVED TO SEE.

BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN.

TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH BY MRS. BUSHBY.

ATTACHED to the rich manor-house there was a beautiful garden with fine trees and rare flowers; the guests at the dwellinghouse warmly expressed their admiration of them. The people from the surrounding country and the neighbouring towns came on Sundays and holidays and begged permission to see the garden, and even whole schools ventured to make similar visits.

Outside of the garden, close by the paling which separated it from a pathway in the field, stood a tall thistle; it was so large, and had so many off-shoots from the root, that it was very broad, and might well be called a thistle-bush. Nobody looked at it except the old ass that drew the milkwoman's little cart. The ass stretched its neck out as far as it could towards the thistle, and said: "You are very tempting; I should like to eat you." But the milk-cart was too far away for the ass to reach the thistle to eat it.

There was a large party at the manor-house, nobles and other fashionable people from the metropolis, among whom were some very pretty girls. Of these, one young lady came from a distance -from Scotland; she was of high birth, and rich, possessing both lands and money. She would be a bride worth the winning, said many of the young gentlemen, and their prudent mothers also.

The young people amused themselves with playing croquet on the lawn, and sometimes they roamed about among the flowers,