MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS.

“Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.”

Ev.Iwould rather echo the benevolent precept of Horace, to ensure the bliss of ignorance on this point:

“Tu ne quæsieris, scire (nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi,Finem Dii dederint.”

“Tu ne quæsieris, scire (nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi,

Finem Dii dederint.”

in other words: “Seek not to know the destiny that awaits us.”

And Milton’s wisdom, too:

“Let no man seekHenceforth, to be foretold what shall befallHim or his children: evil, he may be sure,Which, neither his foreknowing can prevent;And he the future evil shall, as lessIn apprehension than as substance, feelGrievous to bear.”

“Let no man seek

Henceforth, to be foretold what shall befall

Him or his children: evil, he may be sure,

Which, neither his foreknowing can prevent;

And he the future evil shall, as less

In apprehension than as substance, feel

Grievous to bear.”

Listen to the melancholy influence of the dream and death of Glaphyra, as told by Josephus:

“She was married when she was a virgin to Alexander, the son of Herod, and brother of Archelaus, but since it fell out so that Alexander was slain by his father, she was married to Juba, the King of Lydia; and when he was dead, and she lived in widowhood in Cappadocia with her father, Archelaus divorced his former wife Mariamne, and married her, so great was his affection for this Glaphyra, who during her marriage to him saw the following dream:—she thought she saw Alexander standing by her, at which she rejoiced and embraced him with great affection, but that he complained of her, and said to Glaphyra: ‘Thou provest that saying to be true, which assures us that women are not to be trusted. Didst not thou pledge thy faith to me? and wast thou not married to me when thou wast a virgin? and had we not children between us? Yet hast thou forgotten the affection I bare to thee out of a desire for a second husband. Nor hast thou been satisfied with that injury thou didst me, but thou hast been so bold as to procure thee a third husband, and hast been married to Archelaus—thy husband and my brother. However, I will not forget my former affection for thee, but will set thee free from every such reproachful action, and cause thee to be mine again as thou once wast.’ When she had related this to her female companions, in a few days’ time she departed this life.”

The fatality which coincided with the prophetic warning of Lord Lyttelton, might well be adduced as another illustration, were it not for some imputation of suicidal disposition in that nobleman, which would more forcibly invalidate the prophetic dignity of his dream.

I may relate another story, not remotely illustrative of this influence, from Brand’s “Popular Antiquities.”—“My friend, the late Captain Mott, R. N., used frequently to repeat an anecdote of a seaman under his command. This individual, who was a good sailor and a brave man, suffered much trouble and anxiety from his superstitious fears. When on the night watch, he would see sights and hear noises, in the rigging and the deep, which kept him in a perpetual fever of alarm. One day the poor fellow reported upon deck, that the devil, whom he knew by his horns and cloven feet, stood by the side of his hammock on the preceding night, and told him that he had only three days to live. His messmates endeavoured to remove his despondency by ridicule, but without effect. And the next morning he told the tale to Captain Mott, with this addition, that the fiend had paid him a second nocturnal visit, announcing a repetition of the melancholy tidings. The captain in vain expostulated with him on the folly of indulging such groundless apprehensions. And the morning of the fatal day being exceedingly stormy, the man, with many others, was ordered to the topmast to perform some duty among the rigging. Before he ascended, he bade his messmates farewell, telling them that he had received a third warning from the devil, and that he was confident he should be dead before night. He went aloft with the foreboding of evil on his mind, and in less than five minutes he lost his hold, fell upon the deck, and was killed upon the spot.”

Were an aversion to these gloomy fancies inculcated, it might avert many a fatal foreboding, which, even in our own enlightened era, has closely resembled the fate of the African victims of Obi; that magic fascination, which its Syriac namesake, Obh, works by spell, until the doomed one pines to death, with the deep conviction that he is under the ban of an enchanter.

MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS.

“Iago.Nay, this was but his dream.Othello.But this denoted aforegone conclusion;’Tis a shrewd doubt, tho’ it be but a dream.”Othello.

“Iago.Nay, this was but his dream.

Othello.But this denoted aforegone conclusion;

’Tis a shrewd doubt, tho’ it be but a dream.”

Othello.

Astr.We looked for more from you, Evelyn, than theseproofs of a negative.

I presume still to think your philosophy is very weak in controversion of theinspirationof a dream, and its supernatural causes.Icannot but believe, with Baxter, that dreams may be “spirits in communion with us.”

Ev.And you will define these shadowless ministers in the fashion of Master Richard Burthogge, Medicinæ Doctor, (in his book, printed by Raven, in the Poultry, in 1694.) I have a smack, you see, of medical bibliomania, Astrophel. Burthogge, although one of the most rational interpreters of dreams and spectres, thinks their internal causespurely metaphysical; and then refutes his own opinion point blank by this sophistry,—that “there are thingsincorporated, butinvisible, which we call spirits;” as who should say, with Shakspere’s fairies, “We have the gift of fern seed; we are invisible.”

No; we will account for the causes of dreams, Astrophel, without the ministry of spirits.

Analyzing, then, the notions of all, it is clear that the essence of the dream isrecurrence of ideas. In the words of Walpole,—“The memory retains the colouring of the day.”

Now memory is the first faculty to fail in age, and you know old people seldom dream: the same objects are applied, but there is little or no association, for the brain is dull and feeble; imbecility, indeed, ismad memory.

The two common periods associated with the dream, are the past and the future, involving memory and prognostication; the latter being but thememory of an intention,—an image excited in the mind by analogy. Even whenpresentsensations excite the dream, it is ever associated, as you remember, with somethingbefore seen or felt.

The waking thought will thus again modify the dream; and Dr. Abercrombie has a curious illustration of this combining of two minds,—one waking subject, one dream, and one disturbing cause.

The French invasion was the universal topic in Edinburgh; and the city was, indeed, one company of volunteers. It was decided that the tocsin of alarm on the approach of the enemy, was to be the firing of the castle guns, followed by a chain of signals. At two, an officer was awoke from a vivid dream of guns and signals, and reviews of troops, by his lady, who herself was affrighted by a similar dream, with a few associations of adifferentnature. And whence all this alarm?—the falling of a pair of tongs on the hearth, the noise of which was quite sufficient for the production of their dreaming associations.

Astr.It would seem to me that Evelyn was too anxious to find employment for the brain, in thus imputing so much tosubstantialcauses.

There is a funny scrap, I remember to have read, and of which I may shrewdly suspect my friend to be the scribbler. “Whence we may compare the powers of mind to a court of judicature:—the outward senses being as the solicitors that bring the causes; the common sense, as the master of requests, who receives all their informations; and phantasy (or imagination), like the lawyers and advocates that bandy the business to and fro in several forms, with a deal of noise and bustle; reason, as the judge, that having calmly heard each party’s pretensions, pronounces an upright sentence; and memory, as the clerk, records the whole proceedings.” But say, if the dream is but the memory of an impression, are metaphysics to be counted as acypher, in our discussion of the nature of intellect?

Ev.Nay, the psychologist must ever call metaphysics to his aid, especially when speaking of the health or disorder of mind: there is an intimate blending of metaphysics and philosophy. But believe not, Astrophel, that I presume to develope that mysterious influence which is going on between mind and matter, so essential to the manifestation of the former,during its earthly condition. The mystery will ever be a sealed letter to the intellect. It is enough that we have evidence of its existence without yearning for deeper insight offinal causes. I have assured you that I do not believe thought or reflection, or any act of mind to bematerial, and speak even with all due courtesy to the abstract metaphysician, and the divine who, doubtless from pure and holy motives, would seek to cut the Gordian knot of this sublime enigma.

Even Dr. Abercrombie is content with observing that the correction of illusions by the sane mind is by the comparing power of reason, but he leaves theillusion itself unexplained. Indeed, the most luminous of pathologists have ever feared to touch organization; Sir Humphrey Davy leaves his beautiful imaginings vague and inconclusive, because he stops short of the brain.

The mere psychologist will ever persevere in placing even thepalpablecauses of illusion beyond the reach of our inquiries.

Thus the rhapsodies of Lucretius were a series of professed fables, and the theories of Macrobius a tissue of capricious distinctions, as you may learn from his classification.

1st. ονειρος,somnium, dream. A figurative vision to be interpreted.

2nd. οραμα,vision. A vision which has afterwards been exactly fulfilled.

3rd. χρηματισμος,oraculum. An intimation in sleep of what we ought to do.

(I suppose as the shade of Hector appeared to Æneas, warning him, the night before, to escape from the flames of Troy.)

4th. ενυπνιον,insomnium. A sort of night-mare.

5th. φαντασμα,visusandincubus.

Here is a perfect jumble of classification, the first three only being vaunted as prophetic, or inspired; the fourth a night-mare; and the fifth, if it be any thing, a spectral illusion.

Others have deemed themselves mighty wise in discovering dreams to be the “action of intellect on itself.”

Abercrombie, the most learned analyst of the mind since Reid and Stewart, has four varieties of the dream:

1st. From wrong association of new events.

2nd. Trains of thought from bodily association.

3rd. Revival of old associations.

4th. Casual fulfilment of a dream!

You perceive the first and third are merely memory, with right and wrong arrangements; the second, excitement of ideas from present sensations; the fourth, if it be not a mere coincidence, is the result, as I have explained, of imparted impetus, or deep thinking onsubjects presented to the mind. The eccentricities of dreaming are not more curious than those of the reminiscent faculty whenawake; indeed, memory itself may seem to be sometimes dreaming, and at others evenfast asleep. Those who survived the plague in Athens (as we read in Thucydides), lost for a time the recollection of names, their own and those of their friends, and did not regain it until their health was re-established.

Mori, during his frequent moods of excitement, quite lost his memory of music, so that, for many minutes, he could neither read a note nor play from memory.

There have been persons who have very suddenly forgotten their own names, which they were about to announce on a visit to a friend.

“Mr. Von B——, envoy to Madrid, and afterwards to Petersburg, a man of a serious turn of mind, yet by no means hypochondriacal, went out one morning to pay a number of visits. Among other houses at which he called, there was one where he suspected the servants did not know him, and where he consequently was under the necessity of giving in his name, but this very name he had at that moment entirely forgotten. Turning round immediately to a gentleman who accompanied him, he said, with much earnestness, ‘For God’s sake, tell me who I am.’ The question excited laughter, but as Mr. Von B—— insisted on being answered, adding that he had entirely forgotten his own name, he was told it; upon which he finished his visit.”

The eccentric impressions of this faculty will be oftenintermittent, or marked by sudden yet regular remissions.

There is a very curious case on record, of a lady whose “memory was capacious, and well stored with a copious stock of ideas. Unexpectedly, and without any forewarning, she fell into a profound sleep, which continued several hours beyond the ordinary term. On waking, she was discovered to have lost every trait of acquired knowledge; her memory was a blank. All vestiges, both of words and things, were obliterated and gone; it was found necessary for her to learn every thing again. She even acquired by new efforts the art of spelling, reading, writing, and calculating, and gradually became acquainted with the persons and objects around, like a being for the first time brought into the world. In these exercises she made considerable proficiency; but, after a few months, another fit of somnolency invaded her. On rousing from it, she found herself restored to the state she was inbefore the first paroxysm; but she was wholly ignorant of every event and occurrence that had befallen her afterwards. The former condition of her existence she now calls theoldstate, and the latter thenewstate; and she is as unconscious of her double character as two distinct persons are of their respective natures. For example, in her old state, she possesses all her original knowledge; in her new state, only what she acquired since. If a lady or gentleman be introduced to her in the old state, andvice versâ(so indeed of all other matters), toknow themsatisfactorily she must learn them in both states. In the old state she possesses fine powers of penmanship, while in the new she writes a poor awkward hand, not having had time or means to become expert! During four years and upwards, she has had periodical transitions from one of these states to the other. The alterations are always consequent upon a long and sound sleep. Both the lady and her family are now capable of conducting the affair without embarrassment; by simply knowing whether she is in the old or new state, they regulate the intercourse, and govern themselves accordingly!”

Other instances are more protracted; the impressionsprevious to a certain momentonly being capable of renewal.

Mrs. S——, an intelligent lady, belonging to a respectable family in the state of New York, some years ago undertook a piece of fine needle-work. She devoted her time to it almost constantly for a number of days; but before she had completed it she became suddenly delirious. In this state, without experiencing any material abatement of her disease, she continued for about seven years, when her reason was suddenly restored. One of the first questions which she asked on this convalescencerelated to her needle-work. It is a remarkable fact that, during the long continuance of her delirium, she said nothing, so far as was recollected, about her needle-work, nor concerning any such subjects as usually occupied her attention when in health.

We read in Dr. Abercrombie, of a lady reduced by disease, in whose mind thememory of ten years was lost. “Her ideas were consistent with each other, but they referred to things as they stood before her removal (to Edinburgh).”

In these instances it is probable that the fault may be referred to theoriginalimpression, some disorder or state of the brain causing it to be onlysuperficiallyimpressed during these ten years of oblivion.

There is a curious story in the history of the Royal Academy of Sciences, which Beattie has recorded in these words: —

“A nobleman of Lausanne, as he was giving orders to a servant, suddenly lost his speech and all his senses. Different remedies were tried, without effect, for six months; during all which time he appeared to be in a deep sleep or deliquium, with various symptoms at different periods, which are particularly specified in the narration. At last, after some chirurgical operations, at the end of six months his speech and senses were suddenly restored. When he recovered, the servant to whom he had been giving orders when he was first seized with the distemper, happening to be in the room, he asked whether he had executed his commission; not being sensible, it seems, that any interval of time, except, perhaps, a very short one, had elapsed during his illness.”

Ida.I have read two stories of melancholy romance, which are notmal-à-proposto your arguments, Evelyn, in which the memory of one intense impression has “gone into a being,” influencing the current of every after-thought, and the mind seeming ever after unconscious of all past or present,but the incident of one moment.

A gentleman, on the point of marriage, left his intended bride for a short time. He usually travelled in the stage-coach to the place of her abode; but the last journey he took from her was the last of his life. Anxiously expecting his return, she went to meet the vehicle, when an old friend announced to her the death of her lover. She uttered an involuntary scream, and one piteous exclamation, “He is dead!” From this fatal moment, forfifty years, has this unfortunate female daily, in all seasons, traversed the distance of a few miles to the spot where she expected her future husband to alight from the coach, uttering, in a plaintive tone, “He is not come yet; I will return to-morrow.”

A young clergyman, on the eve of marriage, received a severe injury. During his future life of celibacy, which was protracted to the 80th year, this one idea only possessed his mind, that his hour of happiness was approaching, and to the last moment he talked of his marriage with all the passion of a devoted lover.

Ev.Thanks to yourownmemory, Ida, for these incidents. That the possession of the faculty of thisimpressionof memory can be demonstrated, we might doubt, wereverbaldescriptiononlyemployed; but when we see the artist trace the features of a person long lost to usfrom memory, we know that such ideas existed, and were thenre-excitedin his mind.

The power of the intellect in retaining these impressions is wonderful. Cyrus is said to have remembered the names of all his soldiers, and Themistocles those of two thousand Athenians.

We have records from Seneca and others, that some will remember, after one perusal or hearing, very long poems; and even have repeated, word for word, the unconnected jumble of a newspaper. Pascal, as we are told by Locke,never forgot anything. Almost equally retentive was the memory of my excellent teacher, Sir Astley Cooper, and hence his nearly unexampled accumulation of facts. The memory of Ben Jonson was retentive to perfection, until the fortieth year of his age. In his youth, he could repeat an entire volume after its perusal; nay, even thewholeof his own works, or as he quaintly writes, “All that ever I made.” We know that Bloomfield composed his “Farmer’s Boy” in the bustle of a shoe manufactory, and wrote from his memory.

Astr.I have heard that the particles of the body are constantly changing: if so, how can memoryexistin the brain?

Ev.The answer is easy. Because particles of exact similarity are deposited as others are removed. The parts thus regenerated, of whateverstructurethey may be, still being identical and unchanged in function.

If the dreambean inspiration, Astrophel, it is like “a spirit of the past,” and does not “speak like sybils of the future.”

But ere I offer some analogies ofwakingmemory, in illustration of the causes of the dream, I must again fatigue you by a glance at the physiology of memory; the origin or mode of impression of a sense, and the mode of recurrence of such impression,i.e.theexcitement of the dream.

Aristotle has asserted that senses cannot receive material objects, but only theirspecies, or ειδωλον; and Mr. Locke entertained the same idea. For this effect, however, matter must havetouched a sense, and its impression, as Baron Haller thought, must have been mechanical. For instance, the rays emanating from a body, and impinging on the retina, or an undulation of sound on the labyrinth of the ear,stamp an image on the brain, by which, (in accordance with a prior observation on illusion,) some minute change is inevitably effected; some minutecerebral atomsare displaced.

If you propose to me that curious physiological question,—in what consists the function of a nerve—in oscillation, or in undulation of a fluid, in electricity, or in magnetism? or how the nerve carries this impression to the brain? or if you desire me to meet the subtle objection, which Dr. Reid advanced against the opinion of Aristotle and of the more modern psychologists,—I might weary you with conjectures like those of Newton and Hartley, that some ethereal fluid was, by the impulse of peculiar stimulus to its nerve, the cause of the senses; or that the mental phenomena are an imparting, or influence of the immaterial soul by corporeal vibration; or that dreams are “motions of fibres:” and at length, with humility confess this to be a mystery we cannot yet fathom. And this I do the more willingly, as it may prove my devotion to theproper limits of our study; moreover, the question itself is not essential to my argument.

Yet it is certain that external impressions of every object or subject, reach the brain through the medium of a nerve; and when thesame fibrilsof those nerves, orthat spotof brain on which the original image rested, areagainirritated by their proper stimulus, or by the same or a similar body,an association is produced, and memory is the result.

For the insurance of this sense of touch, and feeling, and perception, it is essential that the impression at the end of a nerve shall be perfectly transmitted along its course to the brain, so that the brain shall beconscious, or sensible of this impression. For if a nerve be cut asunder, or a ligature be placed on any portion of it between the skin and the brain,the sensation instantly ceases. It is not essential, however, that the contact should take place at the moment of the perception; and the explanation of this involves one of the most curious phenomena of the body’s feeling; and, indeed, the metaphysical mystery of the nature of memory, which is too abstruse a point to be touched by us here. After amputation, the patient may still complain of pain, and heat, and cold,in the dissevered limb; he experiences the memory of a sensation; he feels, as it were, the ghost of his arm or leg. On the night succeeding the operation, the groaning patient has often cried out to me, with pain in the toe or finger of that limb; and when he is moved or shifts his position, he will attempt to hold his leg, or will beg his nurse to take care that she does not touch or run against it. Nay, I have frequently, on asking a patient how he felt, even after the lapse of many months from the operation, been answered, that he was well, but had not lost the pain in his leg; or that his leg or his arm were lying by his side, when perhaps the limb was undergoing the process of maceration in the dissecting-room, or the bones were bleached and dangling in the museum.

The pain, or common feeling of the limb, has stamped an image oreidōlonon the brain, which is not easily effaced; there remains aninternal sensibilityon this point of memory. If the subject be subsequently presented to the mind by a touch at the end of the stump, or even by a thought, the idea of the limb that had lain dormant, will be re-excited by that wondrous sympathy of brain and nerve, and the result will be a consciousness of having once possessed, or of having experienced a pain in this leg.

And, on this principle of the force of memory, we may explain many of our excited feelings: those which remain after we have been wafted in a boat, or rolled along in a carriage, or whirled aloft in a swing; the nervous impression in the brain is re-excited ere it was exhausted.

Now, an image may be stamped on the brain,in a tumult, without our cognizance or perception, and then revived in slumber;—we wake in wonder at having seen what we never saw or thought of before. Such is the dream of Lovel, in the “Antiquary;” and such therationaleof that tale of mystery, respecting the £6. in the Glasgow bank, which a dream seems certainly to have developed.

And it is evident that these impressions may recur the easier in slumber, because there is nofreshimpression on the senses to produce confusion. But then all these images may be presented atonetime; so that we may have either a chaos, or a correct concatenation,—an incident, which Hobbes and other early metaphysicians confess to be inexplicable tothem.

In the words of Spurzheim, “Memory is the reproduction of a perception;” and Gall believed that “Remembrance is the faculty of recollectingthat we have perceivedimpressions; and memory, the recollection of theimpressions themselves.”

I read, that Esquirol has drawn a distinction between hallucination and illusion,—the first is from within, the second from without. The argument I have adduced of memory and impression,—the one at the beginning, the other at the end, of nerves,—will, I think, illustrate this perfectly. Hallucination, beinginternal, is of thepast; illusion,external,—of thepresent.

Another metaphysician, Bayle, it is clear, was not ignorant of the basis of phrenology, or of this difference, when he alludes to “certain places on the brain, on which the image of an object, which has no real existenceout ofourselves, might be excited.”

INTENSE IMPRESSION.—MEMORY.

“The dream’s here still: even when I wake, it isWithout me as within me; not imagined, felt.”Cymbeline.

“The dream’s here still: even when I wake, it is

Without me as within me; not imagined, felt.”

Cymbeline.

Ev.I believe, then, that waking and slumbering association ismemory; and I have interposed the glimpse of metaphysics to break the monotony of my illustrations, for they are not yet exhausted.

A gentleman, as we read in Dr. Pritchard’s work, was confined, after a severe accident, for several weeks, and the accident was not once during this period remembered by him; but, on his convalescence, he rode again over the same ground, and all the circumstances instantly flashed across his mind.

In their youth, Dr. Rush escorted a lady, on a holiday, to see an eagle’s nest.Many yearsafterwards, he was called to attend her in the acute stage of typhus; and, on his entrance into her chamber, she instantly screamed out, “Eagle’s nest!” and it is said, from this moment, the fever began to decline.

We ourselves have witnessed these flashes of memory more than once, during the acuteness of brain fever, where journeys, and stories, and studies, have been renewed after they had been long forgotten.

There are many romantic incidents in illustration which have been beautifully wrought into a poem, or drama, as that play of Kotzebue, written to illustrate the happy success of the Abbé de l’Epée in France, in imparting knowledge and receiving sentiments from the deaf and dumb. In this, the young Count Solar, by gestures, unfolds, step by step, his birth-place, and at length screams with joy, as he stands before the palace of his ancestors.

Then there is the story of little Montague, who was decoyed by the chimney sweep. Some time after this, the child was engaged to clean the chimney of a mansion, and, descending into a chamber, which had been indeed his own nursery, lay down, in his sooty clothes, on the quilt, and, by this happy memory, discovered his aristocratic birth. This is the incident which still enlivens the pageantry of May-day.

These reminiscences will occur sometimes in the most sudden and unexpected manner. In one of the American journals, we are told of a clergyman, who, at the termination of some depressing malady, had completely lost his memory. His mind was a blank, and he had, in fact, to begin the world of literature again. Among other of his studies was the Latin language. During his classical readings with his brother, he one day suddenly struck his head with his hand, and stated that he had a mostpeculiar feeling, and was convinced that he hadlearned all this before.

Boërhave, in his “Prelectiones Academic. Institut. Med.,” relates the case of a Spanish tragic writer, whose memory, subsequently to an acute febrile disease, was so completely impaired, that not only the literature of various languages he had studied was lost to him, but also their elements, the alphabets. When even his own poetic compositions were read to him, he denied himself to be the author. But the most interesting feature of the case is this: that, on becomingagaina votary of the Muse, his recent compositions so intimately resembled his original productions in style and sentiment, that he no longer doubted that both were the offspring of his own imagination.

Even Priestley’s master-mind was sometimes sleeping thus, being subject (to quote his own words) “to humblingfailures of recollection;” so that he lost all ideas of things and persons, and had so forgotten his own writings, that, on the perusal of a work, he sat himself to make experiments on points whichhe had already illustrated, but on which his mind was then a “tabula rasa.”

Above all, the superlative memory of Sir Walter lay in a deep sleep, after a severe indisposition. It is recorded by Ballantyne, that when “the Bride of Lammermoor, in its printed form, was submitted to his perusal, he did not recognize,as his own, one single incident, character, or conversation it contained; yet the original tradition was perfect in his mind. When Mrs. Arkwright, too, sung some versesof his, one evening, at Lord Francis Egerton’s, the same oblivion was o’er his mind, and he whispered to Lockhart, ‘Capital words;—whose are they? Byron’s, I suppose; butI don’t remember them.’ ”

My friend, Dr. Copland, informed me (in May, 1839) of a lady of fifteen, Miss D——, who, in consequence of extreme exhaustion from disorder, forgot all her accomplishments, and had to begin her education afresh.

The Countess of Laval had, in her childhood, been taught the Armorican of Lower Brittany (which is a dialect of the Welch), but had, as she believed, forgotten it. On attaining the adult period, this lady had an acute fever, and, during her delirium, she ceased to speak in her native language, and chattered fluently in the bastard Welch.

A foreign gentleman, as we were told by Mr. Abernethy, after an accident on the head, spoke French only, and quite forgot the English, which he had before this spoken very fluently.

A Welch patient, in St. Thomas’s Hospital, some years since, having received an injury, began to speak in Welch, and ever after continued to do so, although before his accident he constantly conversed in English.

On the contrary, we learn, from Dr. Pritchard, of a lady who, after a fit of apoplexy, forgot heroriginallanguage (the English), and spoke only in French, so that her nurses and servants conversed with her only by interpreters.

There may be apartialderangement of memory,one set of impressionsonly being erased.

A friend of Dr. Beattie, in consequence of a blow on the head, lost only his attainments inGreek; and Professor Scarpa (whosecorpus striatumwas disorganised) lost only the memory of proper names.

You may now comprehend how instantaneously material impressions derange and destroy memory, and its converse, the production of memorybymaterial impressions, will be far less mysterious to you.

But creatures to which the gift of intellect is not granted, in whichinnate ideascannot arise, still evince the faculty of memory. It is, therefore, possible that fish and insects,possessing memory, dream. Of course the doctrines of Pythagoras, and Simonides, and the story of the interpretation of the language of birds by the vizier of Sultan Mahmoud, are mere fables, and the cackling of the Roman geese wasaccidental; yet the bird does possess the memory of language, and the power of imparting ideas.

Nightingales’ notes (as Bechstein has beautifully recorded them) seem to me like the Mexican language, and to express variety of sentiments of adoration and love. The parrot, magpie, jackdaw, jay, starling, and bullfinch, are prattlers; and the exquisite little canary, the pupil of my friend, Mrs. H——, the pet, indeed, not only of its mistress, but of statesmen and learned physiologists, warbled its words in purest melody. From Sir William Temple we learn the faculty of the wonderful parrot of Prince Maurice, of Nassau, at the Hague, that responsed almostrationallyto promiscuous questions. Granting, then, this faculty of memory, it is clear the bird maydream, and I may add one other quotation from the “Domestic Habits of Birds,” in proof of this.

“We have, however, heard some of these night-songs which were manifestly uttered while the bird was asleep, in the same way as we sometimes talk during sleep—a circumstance remarked by Dryden, who says,

“ ‘The little birds in dreams their songs repeat.’

“We have even observed this in a wild bird. On the night of the 6th April, 1811, about ten o’clock, a dunncock (accentor modularis) was heard in a garden to go through its usual song more than a dozen times very faintly, but distinctly enough for the species to be recognised.” The night was cold and frosty, but might it not be that the little musician was dreaming of summer and sunshine? Aristotle, indeed, proposes the question whether animals hatched from eggs ever dream. Marcgrave, in reply, expressly says, that his “parrot, Laura, often rose in the night, and prattled while half asleep.”

Among quadrupeds, it is probable that those which, by their half-reasoning instinct, approach nearest to the power of comparison, and those which, in contrast to thecallous-hoofed, possess an acuteness of feeling, and therefore the nearest approximate intelligence, are the most prone to dream.

Although we know nothing of the dreams of that very learned dog, which Leibnitz assures us he saw, and which uttered anarticulatelanguage, and often enjoyed a chat with his master; yet, of theslumbering visionsof the canines I have many illustrations.Vic, a fat terrier, was a somniloquist. She would bark, andlaugh, and run round the room, oragainst tables; the surest proof of somnambulism. Indeed dogs are celebrated by many poets for their dreaming propensities. Ennius writes —

“Et canis in somnis leporis vestigia latrat.”

And Lucretius has left us a very comprehensive poetical account of the dreams of brutes.

Even Chaucer refers to these dreams; and in the Hall of Branksome,

“The stag-hound, weary with the chace,Urged in dreams the forest race.”

“The stag-hound, weary with the chace,

Urged in dreams the forest race.”

It is probable that the dreams of brutes are veryshort.

From simple, unassociated memory, too, springs the dream of theinfant; pure and innocent as the thought of a cherub. For delight is the common feeling of a dreaming child; and when its lips are touched in sleep, the memory of its mother’s bosom will excite its lips and tongue to the congenial action of suction, though a fright of the previous day will change its slumbers into moments of terror, and it will murmur and cry in its dream.

I believe it is Sir H. Wotton who lays much stress on the adoption ofplans of educationfor a child, grounded on the discovery of its secret thoughts during its simple somniloquent dream.

Cast.It is wonderful how vividly are revived in our dream those scenes of our early life, which our waking efforts could not recollect.

This did not escape Chaucer, as I remember in Dryden’s version of a fable:

“Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind,Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind.The nurse’s legends are for truths receiv’d,And the man dreams but what the boy believ’d.Sometimes we but rehearse a former play,The night restores our actions done by day.”

“Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind,

Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind.

The nurse’s legends are for truths receiv’d,

And the man dreams but what the boy believ’d.

Sometimes we but rehearse a former play,

The night restores our actions done by day.”

Ev.Yet do not associate this brilliancy of infantine reminiscence withvigourof the thought. The brain in children is, as it were, like wax,easily impressible. And remember, theideasof children are more resembling theimperfectassociations of our dreams; the tutorage of our advancing mind fills it with more serious and rational images characterized by judgment.

The first impressions of childhood are bright as fancy; so that we think in waking more of things present. But, in dreams of things long agone there is, in fact, no complete oblivion, in a healthy mind, for any one of our infantile impressionsmaychance to be brought to us in our dream.

But if impression be intense, it may assimilate that of childhood, and become as permanent. My friend, Dr. Uwins, told me of a patient who, in a joke, once amused himself by throwing stones at the gibbeted pirates on the bank of the Thames. An epileptic tendency succeeded; and ever after this, his dreams were of gibbets and chains, and to that degree, that his judgment and philosophy were powerless in controlling his fears.

And in the book of the Prussian, Greding, we read of J. C. V., a youth, who, in his eighth year, had been attacked by a dog. His future, and, indeed, nightly dreams, were of this creature, and these so intense, as to reduce his health to a very low degree.

Now it is easy to believe the period of slumber so limited, that the subject of reflection shall not have disappeared, that the thought had scarcely time to cool:

“Lateat scintillula forsan.”

Thus Moses Mendelssohn had all the sounds, heard during the day, reverberating in his slumbering mind.

Or we may suppose, that the idea last imprinted on the mind, or by which it had been exclusively occupied, and the thoughts which are so much modified by our temperament, study, and contemplation, would be thefirst to influence as the mind awakened, ere the image of fresh objects had been again perceived.

Sir Walter, in his diary, thus writes: “When I had in former times to fill up a passage in a poem, it was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me. I am in the habit of relying upon it, and saying to myself when I am at a loss, ‘Never mind, we shall have it all at seven o’clock to-morrow morning.’ ”

Warton, the professor of poetry at Oxford, after partaking of a Sunday dinner with a friend, repaired to his service at his Church. On his way, he was powerfully saluted with a cry of “Live mackarel.” He slumbered in his pulpit during the singing of the psalm, and, on the organ ceasing, he arose, half awake, and instead of his solemn prayer, cried with a loud voice, “All alive, all alive oh!”

I remember the storytellers in the coffee-houses at Aleppo, as if aware of thislast impression, used to run out when they perceived they hadexcited a deep interest.

Ida.It is curious to hear, even by your own quotations, Evelyn, that poets have so revelled in the luxury of dreams, from Homer to Pope, chiefly employing them, however, as thematerielof their poesy. Have they condescended to glance at their causes?

Ev.Lucretius, Claudian, George Stepney, Dryden, and a few others.Aproposas to causes.

In the “Anatomy of Melancholy” we have the following quaint summary: “As Tully notes, for the most part our speeches in the daytime cause our phantasy to work upon the like in our sleep, so do men dream on such subjects they thought on last:

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