Merc. And so did I.
Rom. Well, what was yours?
Merc. That dreamers often lie.”
Romeo and Juliet.
Astr. Then we are to learn that the mind is ever imperfect in a dream. But, Evelyn, is not that rather perfection, which magnifies space and time a million-fold, completing the labours of years in a second? The time occupied with the dream must be limited, often far short of the seeming duration of a scene. Like the wonderful velocity of atoms of light, the crude and heterogeneous ideas succeed each other with incalculable rapidity. We appear to have travelled over a series of miles, or to have existed for a series of years, during a very minute portion of the night,—how minute it is perhaps impossible to determine. I believe it is the Opium-Eater, still, who thus confesses:—“I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or a hundred years, in one night; nay, sometimes, had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or however of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience.”
This may be, as your smile implies, the dream of opium madness; but let this dream of Lavalette, also, prove some truth in my illustration.
The count, during his confinement, had a frightful dream, which he thus relates: “One night, while I was asleep, the clock of the Palais de Justice struck twelve, and awoke me. I heard the gate open to relieve the sentry, but I fell asleep again immediately. In this sleep I dreamed that I was standing in the Rue St. Honoré, at the corner of the Rue de l’Echelle. A melancholy darkness spread around me; all was still. Nevertheless a low and uncertain sound soon arose. All of a sudden I perceived, at the bottom of the street, and advancing towards me, a troop of cavalry; the men and horses, however, all flayed. The men held torches in their hands, the flames of which illumined faces without skin, and with bloody muscles. Their hollow eyes rolled fearfully in their large sockets; their mouths opened from ear to ear, and helmets of hanging flesh covered their hideous heads. The horses dragged along their own skins in the kennels, which overflowed with blood on both sides. Pale and dishevelled women appeared and disappeared alternately at the windows in dismal silence; low inarticulate groans filled the air, and I remained in the street alone, petrified with horror and deprived of strength sufficient to seek my safety by flight. This horrible troop continued passing in rapid gallop, and casting frightful looks on me. Their march, I thought, continued for five hours, and they were followed by an immense number of artillery waggons, full of bleeding corpses, whose limbs still quivered. A disgusting smell of blood and bitumen almost choked me. At length the iron gate of the prison, shutting with great force, awoke me again. I made my repeater strike,—it was no more than midnight, so that the horrible phantasmagoria had lasted no more than ten minutes; that is to say, the time necessary for relieving the sentry and shutting the gate. The cold was severe and the watchword short. The next day the turnkey confirmed my calculations. I nevertheless do not remember one single event in my life, the duration of which I have been able more exactly to calculate.”
Cast. You are modest, Astrophel. Think of the wonders of fairyland. Our dainty Ariel will “place a girdle round the world in forty minutes.” And, even more wonderful still, I have read, in the “Arabian Tales,” of a monarch who immersed his head in a water bucket, and imagined he had in one minute traversed a space of infinite extent; and (though perchance I should crave pardon for any thing Evelyn may term an imputed miracle, or imposture, yet) for a moment listen to that exquisite passage in the “Spectator,” which Addison pretends to have gathered from the Koran, although I believe there is in that book no such story. “The angel Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one morning to give him a sight of all things in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell, which the prophet took a distinct view of, and after having held ninety thousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed. All this was transacted in so small a space of time that Mahomet, at his return, found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen pitcher, which was thrown down at the very instant that the angel Gabriel carried him away, before the water was all spilt.”
Ev. If all the circumstances of these dreams were rational, I might agree with you, Astrophel; but the ideas are irrational which so far outstrip the facts of our experience; except in their estimation who, like the Hibernian, would value their watch because it went faster than the sun. Now the extent of velocity in the ideas of insane minds is equally extreme; and, when these anachronisms occur in dreams, the ideas are, I believe, ever false. Deeply interesting, however, are tales of such curiosities of dreaming, as those which the two Scottish physicians, Abercrombie and Gregory, have recorded.
“A gentleman dreamed that he had enlisted as a soldier; that he had joined his regiment; that he had deserted; was apprehended and carried back to his regiment: that he was tried by the court-martial, condemned to be shot, and was led out for execution. At the moment of the completion of these ceremonies, the guns of the platoon were fired, and at the report he awoke. It was clear that a loud noise, in the adjoining room, had both produced the dream and, almost at the moment, awoke the dreamer.”