In a composed state of the body there is certainly a more even tenor in our dreams, which resemble the calm reflections of our waking thoughts in tranquillity; the same scenes are renewed, and the same particulars recur. Unusual dreams argue often not only a disturbed state of mind, but a body gross and abounding with humour; and hence it is that physicians, as did particularly Hippocrates, with some degree of truth deduce conclusions concerning the temperament of our body from the nature and cast of our dreams. It is notorious that persons drunk, or in fevers, contemplate horrid spectres in their sleep; those who are oppressed with bilious melancholy behold triste and cadaverous figures; those whose constitution is choleric dream of fire and slaughter; those who are phlegmatic, of water, and those who are sanguine, of merriment. Levinus Lemnius was, however, perhaps, too fanciful when he affirmed, that to dream of wallowing in filth and mud argued fetid and putrid humours; but to dream of odoriferous and fragrant flowers

proved that pure and wholesome juices predominated *.

Such theories must not be too much depended upon, since it is certain that our imagination, even in its most sober and confined exertions, frames every variety of circumstance, and wanders through every change of scene.

“ Fantastic Morpheus !
Ten thousand mimic fancies fleet around him,
Subtle as air, and various in their natures ;
Each has ten thousand thousand different forms,
In wbich they dance confused before the sleeper,
While the vain god laughs to behold what pain
Imaginary evils give mankind 7."

We may believe the account of Apuleius, who tells us, that when he retired somewhat intoxicated, the night produced grievous and fierce images #; without, in general, considering

* De Occult. Nat. Mirac. L. ii. C. S.

+ Rowe's Ulysses.
· * Plut. Sympos. L. viii. Quest. 10.

the body as the principal agent in the production of dreams, as they certainly inay originate independent of its influence in the sole recollection and energies of the mind, which in its ordinary speculation revives the days of childhood, recalls the friends and events of distant periods by sudden and unexpected starts unconnected with present sensations, places them in circumstances in which we never have beheld them, and in which they never have existed, blends and diversifies particulars fantastically with novel combinations, and metamorphoses persons into a thousand forms, wbo with Protean versatility appear to practise the frauds of every shape.

ii Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes,
When monarch Reason sleeps then mimic wakes,
Compounds a medley of disjointed things,
A court of coblers, and a mob of kings.
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad,
Both are the reasonable soul run mad;
And many monstrous things in dreams we see
That never were, nor are, nor ere can be.
Sometimes we but rehearse a former play,
The night restores our actions done by day,
As hounds in sleep will open for their prey.

}

Sometimes forgotten things long cast behind
Kush forward to the brain and come to mind,
The nurses legends are for truths receiv'd,
And the man dreams but what the boy believed.
In short the farce of dreams is of a piece,
Chimeras all, and more absurd or less *.”

If Mr. Hobbes speak of dreams universally, the author does not agree with him, that dif. ferent dreams are to be attributed to different distempers, though he feel no inclination to refute the position, that lying cold may produce dreams of fear, as it would unquestionably produce the symptom of fear, shivering, and chattering teeth. We must allow for poetical representation when we read that

« All dreams
Are from repletion and complection bred
From rising fumes of undigested food,
And noxious humours that infest the blood.
When choler overflows, then dreams are bred
Of fames, and all the families of red;

• Dryden from Chaucer's Tale of the Cock and Fou.

Red dragons and red beasts in sleep we view,
For humours are distir.guished by their hue.
From hence we dream of war and warlike things,
And wasps and hornets with their double stings.
Choler adust congeals our blood with fear,
Then black bulls toss us, and black devils tear.
In sanguine airy dreams aloft we bound,
With rheums oppress'd we sink, in rivers drown'd;
The dominating humour makes the dream *."

The whole is, that our sleeping as our waking thoughts may be changed from their own course by attention excited by the sensation of the body, and those who would enjoy quiet and pleasing dreams, should attend to the preservation of the sobriety and temperance of the body. The ancients were very particular in their diet when they were desirous of obtaining such, and particularly regarded beans, and the head of a polypus, as calculated to produce perturbed slumbers; and upon the same consideration the crude and undigestible peacock mentioned by Juvenal as the cause of