or fancy. But this is not common, except in bad health. It holds true in general, that dreams are an imitation, though often a very extravagant one, of reality.

• There are people who observe, that one particular dream frequently returns upon them. Socrates, in the Phædo of Plato, tells his friend, that he had all his life been haunted with a vision of this kind, in which one seemed to say to him, that he ought to study music. If this repetition of dreams be the effect of habit, which is not unlikely, we may from it learn the expediency of concealing such as are disagreeable, and banishing them from our thoughts as soon as we can. Indeed, it is a vulgar observation, that they who never speak of dreams are not often troubled with them.

Intemperance of every kind, in eating or drinking, in sleep or watching, in rest or exercise, tends to make dreams disagreeable; and therefore, one end of dreaming may be, to recommend sobriety and moderation. For the time we may employ in sleep bears a great proportion to the whole of human life; and, if there be any expedient for rendering that portion of our time agreeable, it is surely worth while to put it in practice. Habits of virtue and soberness, the repression of turbulent desires, and the indulgence of pious, social, and cheerful dispositions, are, for the most part, effectual in giving that lightness to the animal spirits, and that calm temperature to the blood, which promote thoughts pleasurable through the day, and sweet slumber and

easy dreams by night.

• The ancients thought, that morning dreams come nearest the truth. In the morning, no doubt, the perspiration and digestion continued through the night will make the stomach and the whole frame of the body, more composed and cool than when we go to sleep; and hence, perhaps, it is not absurd to say, that dreams may be more regular then, and more like real life. But if we have passed the earlier hours of the morning without sleep, and fall a dozing about the time we usually rise, our dreams are seldom agreeable, and our slumber is rather stupifying than salutary; whence we may perhaps infer, that it is the intention of nature that we should rise early, and at a stated hour.

* As agreeable thoughts accompany good health; as violent passions, and even frenzy, are the attendants of certain diseases; as dulness and confusion of thought may be occasioned by a loaded stomach; and as the swallowing of much strong liquor produces a temporary madness ;—as our thoughts, I say, when we are awake, are so much determined by our bodily habit, it is no wonder that they should be still more liable to such influence when we are asleep. Accordingly certain dreams do, for the most part, accompany certain positions and states of the body. When our breathing is in any degree interrupted, by our head falling awry, by the bed-clothes pressing on our mouth or nostrils, or by any internal disorder, we are apt to dream of going, with great uneasiness, through narrow passages, where we are in danger of suffocation. When the state of the stomach and bowels occasions any convulsive motion in the jaws, a thing not uncommon in sleep, and which frequently produces a strong compression and grinding of the teeth, we are apt to dream that the teeth are loose, or falling out, or that our mouth is full of pins, or of something very disagreeable. In cold weather too, when by any accident we throw aside the bed-clothes, we sometimes dream of going naked. Of all these facts I have often had experience; and, if the thing could be accurately attended to, I make no doubt but many of our dreams might be accounted for in the same manner; and therefore, when we have an uncommon dream, we ought not to look forward with apprehension, as if it were to be the forerunner of calamity; but rather backward, to see whether we can discover its cause, and whether, from such a discovery, we may not learn something that may be profitable to our health.

• In some constitutions, certain dreams do generally go before, or accompany the beginnings of certain diseases. When, for example, there is any tendency to fever, we are apt to dream of performing, with great labour, some work, we know not precisely what, in which we never make any progress. This imagination will occur in sleep, even while one has no means of observing, when awake, any symptom that could lead one to suspect one's health to be in danger; and, when it does occur, may it not give warning to make some change in the ordinary regimen, to eat or drink less than usual, or have recourse to some of those other methods whereby acute distempers are prevented ? In general, when one is haunted more than usual, with disagreeable dreams, it may, I think, be taken as a sign that something is wrong in the constitution; and therefore that temperance, fasting, or exercise, may be requisite to avert the impending evil. And these are remedies which one may have recourse to; and in regard to which one may venture to make a few experiments, in almost any circumstances. Agreeable dreams I would take for the signs of health, and accordingly consider them as good, and not evil.

If

you approve of these remarks, you shall have more on the same subject, in a few days, from

Yours, &c.

INSOMNIOsus.'

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N° 74. SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 1780.

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"To THE AUTHOR OF TĦE MIRROR.

SIR, . In my last I hinted that dreams may be useful as physical admonitions. What if I should go a step farther, and say that they may be serviceable as means of our moral improvement? I will not affirm, however, as some have done, that by them we may make a more accurate discovery of our temper and ruling passions, than by observing what passes in our minds when awake: for, in sleep, we are very incompetent judges of ourselves, and of every thing else ; and one will dream of committing crimes with little remorse, which, if awake, one could not think of without horror. But as many of our passions are inflamed or allayed by the temperature of the body, this, I think, may be said with truth, that, by attending to what passes in sleep, we may sometimes discern what passions are predominant, and, consequently, receive some useful cautions for the regulation of them. A man dreams, for example, that he is in a violent anger, and that he strikes a blow which knocks a person down, and kills him. He awakes in horror at the thought of what he has done, and of the punishment he thinks he has reason to apprehend; and while, after a moment's recollection, he rejoices to find that it is but a dream, he will also be inclinable to form resolutions against violent an. ger, lest it should, one time or other, hurry him on to a real perpetration of a like nature. If we ever derive this advantage from a dream, we cannot pronounce it useless. And, this, or a similar advantage,

a

may sometimes be derived from dreaming. For why may we not, in this way, reap improvement from a fiction of our own fancy, as well as from a novel, or a fable of Æsop?

• One of the finest moral tales I ever read, is an account of a dream in the Tatler, which, though it has every appearance of a real dream, comprehends a moral so sublime and so interesting, that I question whether any man who attends to it can ever forget it; and if he remembers, whether he can ever cease to be the better for it. Addison is the author of the paper; and I shall give the story in his own elegant words.

1“ I was once,” says the Tatler, “in agonies of grief that are unutterable, and in so great a distraction of mind, that I thought myself even out of the possibility of receiving comfort. The occasion was

. as follows: when I was a youth, in a part of the army which was then quartered at Dover, I fell in love with an agreeable young woman of a good family in those parts, and had the satisfaction of seeing my addresses kindly received, which occasioned the perplexity I am going to relate. We were, in a

I calm evening, diverting ourselves, on the top of a cliff, with the prospect of the sea; and trifling away the time in such little fondnesses as are most ridiculous to people in business, and most agreeable to those in love. In the midst of these our innocent endearments, she snatched a paper of verses out of my hand, and ran away with them. I was following her; when on a sudden the ground, though at a considerable distance from the verge of the precipice, sunk under her, and threw her down from so prodigious a height, upon such a range of rocks, as would have dashed her into ten thousand pieces, had her body been made of adamant. It is much easier for my reader to imagine my state of mind upon such