The Morning herald., 1878-07-08
DREAMS.

his published letters, Charles DICKENS
,ates dream he had had, with a serious
ss and circu,nstantiality which reveal
Riuly enough that, to him. it was no
pdow of empty air. We read in Fredrika
|emer's life that she fully believed she
build die at q certain age, because she had
ce dreamt that departed friend
\, come to her and told her that in such
hear she would be with him. She, how
kr, outlived the appointed date, and
kreby perhaps was cured Of her belief
dreams. One Of the strangest effects of
BANS is, when, as we say or do some
|ng, we suddenly have a feeling that7we
Ee said or done it before. If we follow
ek carefully the train Of ideas thus
lied up, we shall find that it originated
|some dream we had forgotten, till our
esent action or thought all at once called
bp; but in our first bewilderment the
/ bsation is, for the moment, singular and
|canny enough. We think that from
|s sort of feeling might first have arisen
] creed of the transmigration Of SOULS
|althy dreams are usually to be explained
looking back to the past. Dreams are
ty often an odd ju1nble of things we
h, or did, or thought yesterday, and
|ngs we said, or did, or thought long
b. In this confusion which makes them
|netimes, at first, seem so incomprehen-
be; but if we patiently trace out every
ture in one vivid dream, we find almost
b certainty that it arises from events
ich have happened in our lives perhaps
different periods. The mind, in sleep,
es all sense of time, and embraces
4 ole existence at a glance. In their
Jams the most commonplace men and
men are poets. The cook dreams that
is a lovely flower garden; the city
Fix that he is a knight at tournament,
! village schoolmaster that he is William
! Conqueror. This power of dreams is
bweet and blessed one, for often it is the
" ideal gleam which falls upon some
Ia, gray path of life. Old people often
us that their dreams generally carry
m back to the days of their youth. The
man sees again in his dreams the smile
his mother in her early womanhood,
j hears again the brother, from whom
has been long estranged, prattling as a
" at Lis side, and gallops his pony
! PISS country in all the wild joy of first
hunt, and steals shy kiss from his
q love. Thus do dreams come as kind
y sprites to the grandfather, doing in his
\ chair by the fire, when the young ones
IL and firt and make sweet hay while
i sun shines. Some people are always
4 big over and over again in their dreams
"a 6rtain house, or a certain estate, or a
4 ain landscape. They know every
On in the house, even to the pictures on
|1 wall; they could almost draw map of
d estate; the tress in the landscape are
amiliar to them as the bushes in their
Den, and yet they declare that they
beheld either house, or estate, or
Escape, with their waking eyes. This
6apomenon seems eltainly difficult to
lain. We suspect, however, that it
oRlly arises from mass of indistinct,
fused mem cries of scenes and places
dreamer has once beheld, perhaps in
n childhood, but which in his waking
|1l hents he has entirely forgotten. We
~, too, meet in our dreams people
I'm we cannot ever remember to have
4 when awake. We believe that these
4 FERROUS dream acquaintance are, like
i pes and the landscapes, made up of
A remembrances of the faces and figures
n ersons casually seen somewhere by the
<5 mer when awake. If our theory about
18 phenomenon in dreams is true, sleep
4ost have the same power of bringing
~ lost colors to memory, that certain
1tIhicals have of bringing back the colors
the Pompeian frescoes. When the
11Ia is in morbid state from disease of
x< work, a dream will sometimes pro-
"a a most unpleasant feeling of vague
>pmfort, by first startling us from sleep,
Az ing itself distinctly remembered; and
~ as soon as slumber falls again upon
h8weary senses, fitting away, SO that in
n morning no trace of it can be recalled.
w Hay the dream hovers about the sickly
5rEg, never far off, and never near enough
Y >ke hold of. 1t was surely some such
pg as this which exaggerated by divine
p of old, tormented the Babyloniar