of sounds, of tastes and of odours, where such have no real existence from without.

Dreams are sometimes exceedingly obscure, and float like faint clouds over the spirit. We can then resolve them into nothing like shape or consistence, but have an idea of our minds being filled with dim, impalpable imagery, which is so feebly impressed upon the tablet of memory, that we are unable to embody it in language, or communicate its likeness to others.

At other times, the objects of sleep are stamped with almost supernatural energy. The dead, or the absent, whose appearance to our waking faculties had become faint and obscure, are depicted with intense truth and reality; and even their voices, which had become like the echo of a forgotten song, are recalled from the depths of oblivion, and speak to us as in former times. Dreams, therefore, have the power of brightening up the dim regions of the past, and presenting them with a force which the mere effects of unassisted remembrance could never have accomplished in our waking hours.

This property of reviving past images, is one of the most remarkable possessed by sleep. It even goes the length, in some cases, of recalling circum

The

stances which had been entirely forgotten, and presenting them to the mind with more than the force of their original impression. This I conceive to depend upon a particular part of the brain-that, for instance, which refers to the memory of the event-being preternaturally excited: hence forgotten tongues are sometimes brought back to the memory in dreams, owing doubtless to some peculiar excitement of the organ of Language. dreamer sometimes converses in a language of which he has no knowledge whatever when he awakes, but with which he must at one period have been acquainted. Phenomena of a similar kind occasionally occur in madness, delirium, or intoxication, all of which states have an analogy to dreaming. It is not uncommon, for instance, to witness, in the insane, an un. expected and astonishing resuscitation of knowledge -an intimacy with events and languages of which they were entirely ignorant in the sound state of their minds. In like manner, in the delirium attendant upon fevers, people sometimes speak in a tongue*

* A girl was seized with a dangerous fever, and, in the delirious paroxysm accompanying it, was observed to speak in a strange language which, for some time, no one could understand. At last it was ascertained to be Welsh-a tongue she was wholly ignorant of at the time she was taken ill,

they know nothing of in health; and in drunkenness events are brought to the memory which desert it in a state of sobriety.* Analogous peculiarities occur in dreams. Forgotten facts are restored to the mind. Sometimes those adhere to it and are remembered when we awake: at other times-as can be proved in cases of sleep-talking-they vanish with the dream which called them into existence, and are recollected no more.

I believe that the dreams of the aged, like their memory, relate chiefly to the events of early life, and less to those of more recent occurrence. My friend, Dr. Cumin, has mentioned to me the case

and of which she could not speak a single syllable after her recovery. For some time the circumstance was unaccountable, till, on inquiry, it was found she was a native of Wales, and had been familiar with the language of that country in her childhood, but had wholly forgotten it afterwards. During the delirium of fever, the obliterated impressions of infancy were brought to her mind, and continued to operate there so long as she remained under the mental excitation occasioned by the disease, but no longer; for so soon as the state of mind which recalled these impressions was removed, they also disappeared, and she was as ignorant of Welsh as before she was taken ill.

* Mr Combe mentions the case of an Irish porter to a warehouse, who, in one of his drunken fits, left a parcel at the wrong house, and when sober could not recollect what he had done with it; but the next time he got drunk, he recollected where he had left it, and went and recovered it.

of one of his patients, a middle-aged man, whose visions assumed this character in consequence of severe mental anxiety. Owing to misfortunes in trade, his mind had been greatly depressed: he lost his appetite, became restless, nervous and dejected; such sleep as he had was filled with incessant dreams, which at first were entirely of events connected with the earliest period of his life, so far as he recollected it, and never by any chance of late events. In proportion as he recovered from this state, the dreams changed their character, and referred to circumstances farther on in life; and so regular was the progression, that, with the march of his recovery, so was the onward march of his dreams. During the worst period of his illness, he dreamed of occurrences which happened in boyhood: no sooner was convalescence established than his visions had reference to manhood; and on complete recovery they were of those recent circumstances which had thrown him into bad health. In this curious case, one lateral half of the head was much warmer than the other. This was so remarkable as to attract the notice of the barber who shaved it.

One of the most remarkable phenomena of dreams is the absence of surprise. This, indeed, is not in

variable, as every one must occasionally have felt the sensation of surprise, and been not a little puzzled in his visions to account for the phenomena which present themselves; but, as a general rule, its absence is so exceedingly common, that, when surprise does occur, it is looked upon as an event out of the common order, and remarked accordingly. Scarcely any event, however incredible, impossible, or absurd, gives rise to this sensation. We see

circumstances at utter variance with the laws of nature, and yet their discordancy, impracticability and oddness seldom strike us as at all out of the usual course of things. This is one of the strongest proofs that can be alleged in support of the dormant condition of the reflecting faculties. Had these powers been awake, and in full activity, they would have pointed out the erroneous nature of the impressions conjured into existence by fancy; and shown us truly that the visions passing before us were merely the chimeras of excited imagination-the airy phantoms of imperfect sleep.

In visions of the dead, we have a striking instance of the absence of surprise. We almost never wonder at beholding individuals whom we yet know, in our dreams, to have even been buried for years. We see them among us, and hear them talk,