It is not very long ago that I was discussing subjects of this kind with our acute friend S—— V——. I send you a letter received from him, written, I presume, more for you than myself; for I told him I was on the point of answering yours, which he read. His attempt to account for any of his stories by common coincidences, is rather indicative of his naturally inquisitive mind than of his real belief; and I suspect he has been led into that train of argument by his hostility to mesmerism, which he pronounces to be a cheat from beginning to end; and he cannot but see that, granting mesmerism, the step in belief beyond is easy. He would, therefore,
have no such stepping stone; and lest confidence in dreams, omens, &c., should make mesmerism more credible, he has been a little disposed to trim his own opinions on the subject. You will judge for yourself—here is his letter:—
"My dear ————,——You desire me to give you a written account of the dreams which I related to you when we lately met, and amused ourselves with speculations on these mysterious phenomena.
"Dream I.—Mrs X——, when a child, was attached to Captain T——, R.N. She had been brought up from infancy by her uncle and aunt, with whom she resided, and with whom Captain T—— had long been on terms of the most intimate friendship and regard. At the time to which I now refer, Captain T—— commanded a frigate in the West Indies, where he had been stationed for some months; letters had been occasionally received from him; his health had not suffered from the climate, nor had any of his friends in England the least reason to apprehend that a man of his age, good constitution, and temperate habits, by whom also the service in which he was engaged had been eagerly desired, would be likely to suffer from the diseases of these latitudes. One morning Mrs X——, (then Miss X——,) appeared at the breakfast table with an expression of grief on her countenance, that at once induced her uncle and aunt to ask the cause. She said, that she had dreamed that Captain T—— had died of fever in the West Indies, and that the intelligence had been sent in a large letter to her uncle. The young lady's uncle and aunt both represented to her the weakness of yielding to the impression of a dream, and she appeared to acquiesce in the good sense of their remonstrances—when, shortly after, the servant brought in the letter-case from the Post-office, and when her uncle had unlocked it, and was taking out the letters, (there were several,) Miss X—— instantly exclaimed, pointing to one of them—'That's the letter! I saw it in my dream!' It was the letter—a large letter, of an official size, addressed to her uncle, and conveying precisely the event which Miss X—— had announced.
"Dream II.—General D——, R.M., was one morning conversing with me on the subject of dreams, and gave me the following relation:—'I had the command of the marines on board a frigate, and in company with another frigate, (giving names and date,) was proceeding to America, when, on joining the breakfast table, I told my brother officers that I had had a very vivid and singular dream. That I had dreamed that the day was calm, as it now was, and bright, but with some haziness in the distance; and that whilst we were at breakfast, as we now are, the master-at-arms came in and announced two sail in the distance. I thought we all immediately ran on deck—saw the two ships—made them out to be French frigates, and immediately gave chase to them. The wind being light, it was long before we could approach the enemy near enough to engage them; and when, in the evening, a distant fire was commenced, a shot from the frigate which we attacked, carried away our foretopmast, and, consequently, we were unable to continue the chase. Our companion, also, had kept up a distant fire with the other French frigate, but in consequence of our damage, shortened sail to keep company with us during the night. On the following morning the French frigates had made their escape—no person had been killed or wounded on board our own ship; but in the morning we were hailed by our companion, and told that she had lost two men. Shortly after, whilst my brother officers were making comments on my dream—and before the breakfast table was cleared, the master-at-arms made his appearance, announcing, to the great surprise of all present, two sail in the distance; (and General D—— assured me that on reaching the deck they appeared to him precisely the same in place and distance as in his dream)—'the chase—the distant action—the loss of the topmast—the escape of the enemy during the night—and the announcement from the companion frigate that she had lost two men—all took place precisely as represented in my dream.' The General had but just concluded his narration, when a coincidence took place, little less extraordinary than
that of the dream and its attendant circumstances.—The door opened, and a gentleman rushed into the room with all that eagerness which characterizes the unexpected meeting of warm friends after a long absence—and immediately after the first cordial greetings, General D—— said—'My dear F——, it is most singular, that although we have not met during the last fifteen years, and I had not the most distant expectation of seeing or hearing from you, yet you were in my thoughts not five minutes ago—I was relating to my friend my extraordinary dream when on board the ——; you were present, and cannot have forgotten it.' Major F—— replied, that he remembered it most accurately, and, at his friend's request, related it to me, in every particular correspondent with the General's account.
"What I now relate to you cannot be called a dream, but it bears a close affinity to 'those shadowy tribes of mind' which constitute our sleeping phantasmagoria. Calling one morning on my friend, Mrs D——m, who had for some time resided in my neighbourhood, I found her greatly distressed at the contents of a letter which she had just received. The letter was from her sister, Mrs B——, who was on her return to England, on board the ——, East Indiaman, accompanied by her two youngest children, and their nurse; Mr B——, her husband, remaining in India. One morning, shortly after breakfast, Mrs B—— was sitting in the cabin, with many other passengers present, but not herself at that moment engaged in conversation with them; when she suddenly turned her head, and exclaimed aloud, and with extreme surprise, 'Good God! B——, is that you?' At the same moment the children, who were with their nurse at a distant part of the ship, too far off, it is stated, to have heard their mother's exclamation, both cried out, 'Papa! papa!' Mrs B—— declared, that the moment she spoke, she saw her husband most distinctly, but the vision instantly vanished. All the persons present noted the precise time of this singular occurrence, lat. and long., &c., and Mrs B——'s letter to her sister was written immediately after it; it was forwarded to England by a vessel that was expected to reach home before the East Indiaman, and which did precede her by some weeks. No reasonings that I could offer were sufficient to relieve my friend's mind from the conviction that her sister had lost her husband, and that his decease had been thus mysteriously announced to her, until letters arrived from Mr B——, attesting his perfect health, which he enjoyed for some years after—and I believe he is still living.
"To arrive at any reasonable conclusion respecting the phenomena of dreams, we require data most difficult to be obtained; we should compare authentic dreams, faithfully related, with their equally well-attested attendant and precedent circumstances. But who can feel certain that he correctly relates even his own dream? I have many times made the attempt, but cannot be perfectly sure that in the act of recording a dream, I have not given more of order to the succession of the events than the dream itself presented. In the case of the first dream, the mere delivery of a letter, there is no succession of events, and therefore no ground to suppose that any invention could have been added to give it form and consistency. The young lady knew that her friend was in the West Indies; she knew, too, the danger of that climate, and had often seen the Admiral, her uncle, receive official letters. Some transient thoughts on these subjects, although too transient to be remembered, unquestionably formed her dream. That the letter really arrived and confirmed the event predicted, can only be referable to those coincidences which are not of very uncommon occurrence in daily life. To similar causes I attribute the second dream; and even its external fulfilment in so many particulars can hardly be deemed more extraordinary than the coincidence of the sudden and wholly unexpected arrival of Major F——, just at the very moment after General D—— had related to me his dream. The third narrative admits of an easy solution. Mrs B—— was not in good health. Thinking of her husband, in a state of reverie, a morbid spectrum might be the result—distinct enough
to cause her sudden alarm and exclamation which, if the children heard, (and children distinguish their mother's voice at a considerable distance—the cabin door, too, might have been open, and the children much nearer than they were supposed to have been,) would account at once for their calling out 'Papa! papa!' During our waking hours, we are never conscious of any complete suspension of thought, even for a moment; if fatigued by any long and laborious mental exertion, such as the solution of a complicated mathematical problem, how is the weariness relieved? Not by listless rest like the tired body, but by a change of subject—a change of action—a new train of thoughts and expressions. Are we, then, always dreaming when asleep? We certainly are not conscious that we are; but it may be that in our sleep we do not remember our dreams, and that it is only in imperfect sleep, or in the act of waking, that the memory records them. That dreams occupy an exceedingly short period of time, I know from my own experience; for I once had, when a boy, a very long dream about a bird, which was placed in an insecure place in my bedroom, being attacked by a cat. The fall of the cage on the floor awoke me, and I sprang out of bed in time to save the bird. The dream must, I think, have been suggested by the fall of the cage; and, if so, my seemingly long dream could only have occupied a mere point of time. I have also experienced other instances nearly similar. It seems reasonable, too, to suppose that this is generally the case; for our dreams present themselves to us as pictures, with the subjects of which we are intimately acquainted. I now glance my eye at the fine landscape hanging in my room. You may say of it, as Falstaff said of Prince Henry, 'By the Lord, I know you as well as he that made you.' Well, it is full of subject, full of varied beauty and grand conception—a 'paulo majora' eclogue. When I first saw it, I could barely read it through in an hour. For pictures that are what pictures ought to be, Poems to the eye, demand and repay this investigating attention—those that do not demand and suggest thoughts are not worth a thought; but this picture, now its every part, tint, and sentiment, have long been intimately known to me. I see, at a glance, its entire subject—ay, at a glance, too, see the effect which a casual gleam of light has just thrown over it. Is it not probable, then, that our dreams may be equally suggestive, in as short a space of time? Dreams that have not some connexion, something of a continuity of events, however wild, are not retained by the memory. Most persons would find it much more difficult to learn to repeat the words in a dictionary, than a page of poetry of equal length; and many dreams are probably framed of very unconnected materials. In falling asleep, I have often been conscious of the dissevering of my thoughts—like a regiment dismissed from parade, they seemed to straggle away "in most admired disorder;" but these scattered bands muster together again in our sleep; and, as these have all been levied from the impressions, cogitations, hopes, fears, and affections, of our waking hours, however strangely they may re-combine, if they do combine with sufficient continuity to be remembered, the form presented, however wild, will always be found, on a fair analysis, to be characteristic of the dreamer. They are his own thoughts oddly joined, like freshwater Polyps, which may be divided, and then stuck again together, so as to form chains, or any other strange forms, across the globe of water in which they may be exhibited. In Devonshire, the peasantry have a good term to express that wandering of thought, and imperfect dreaming, which is common in some states of disease.—"Oh, sir, he has been lying pretty still; but he has been roading all night." By this, they mean, that the patient, in imperfect sleep, has been muttering half-connected sentences; and the word, roading, is taken from the mode in which they catch woodcocks. At the last gleam of evening, the woodcocks rise from their shelter in the woods, and wind their way to the open vistas, which lead to the adjacent meadows, where they go to feed during the night; and they return to their covert, through the same vistas, with the first beam
of morning. At the end of these vistas, which they call 'cock-roads,' the woodcock catchers suspend nets to intercept the birds in their evening and morning flights, and great numbers are taken in this manner; the time when they suspend the nets, is called roading-time; and thus, by applying the term, roading, to disturbed and muttered sleep, they compare the dim, loose thoughts of the half-dreaming patient, to the flight of the woodcocks, wheeling their way through the gloomy and darkling woods. It has been asserted that we never feel surprise in our dreams; and that we do not reason on the subjects which they present to us. This, from my own experience, I know to be a mistake. I once dreamed, whilst residing with a friend in London, that on entering his breakfast-room, the morning was uncommonly dark; but not very much more so than sometimes occurs in a November fog, when, as some one has said, the thick yellow air makes you think you are walking through pease-soup, and the sun, when seen at all, looks like the yolk of a poached egg floating on it. My friend was seated alone by the table, resting his head thoughtfully on his hand, when, looking towards me, with a very serious countenance, he said—'Can you account for this darkness? There is no eclipse stated in the almanack. Some change is taking place in our system. Go to N——, (a philosophical neighbour, who lived within three doors of our house,) and ask if he can explain it.' I certainly felt much surprised at my friend's observations. I went to N—— 's house—or, rather, I found myself in his room. He was walking up and down the room in evident perplexity; and, turning to me, said, 'This is very extraordinary! A change is taking place in our system!—look at the barometer.'—I looked at the barometer, which appeared to be hanging in its usual place in the room, and saw, with great surprise, that the tube was without quicksilver; it had fallen almost entirely down to the bulb. Certainly in this dream I felt great surprise, and that the faculty of reason was not suspended is apparent, nay, perhaps, it was quickened in this instance, for I doubt, if I had really seen the præternatural darkness, whether I should so readily have thought of consulting an almanack, or referring to a barometer; I should certainly have gone to my friend N——, for I was in the frequent habit of appealing to him on any subject of natural philosophy on which I might be desirous to be fully instructed. It is clear that the fabricator of the Ephesian Diana could not pay real adoration to his own work; and as we must be the artificers of our own dreams, and furnish all the materials, it seems difficult to discover by what process the mind can present subjects of surprise to itself; but surprise is that state of mind which occurs when an object or idea is presented to it, which our previous train of thought would not lead us to expect or account for. In dreams the catenation of our ideas is very imperfect and perplexed; and the mind, by forgetting its own faint and confused links of association, may generate subjects of surprise to itself. There are some dreams which we dream over again many times in our lives, but these dreams are generally mere scenes, with little or no action or dialogue. I formerly often dreamed that I was standing on a broad road by the side of a piece of water, (in which geese were swimming,) surrounding the base of a green hill, on the summit of which were the ruins of a castle: the sun shining brightly, and the blue sky throwing out the yellow stone-work of the ruin in strong relief. This dream always gave me an indefinite sense of pleasure. I fancied I had formed it from some picture that I might at some time have casually seen and forgotten; but a few years ago I visited the village in which I was born, and from which I had been removed when about three and a half years old. I found that I well remembered many things which might have engaged the attention of a child. The house in which my parents resided was little changed; and I remembered every room, and the pictures on the Dutch tiles surrounding the fireplace of that which had been