during so many years I had imposed upon them. Capitals and small letters, pica and long-primer, brevier and bourgeois, english and nonpareil, minion and pearl, Romans and Italics, blackletter and red, past over my inward sight. The notes of admiration!!! stood straight up in view as I lay on the one side; and when I turned on the other to avoid them, the notes of interrogation cocked up their hump-backs??? Then came to recollection the various incidents

of the eventful tale. "Visions of glory spare my aching sight!" The various personages, like spectral faces in a fit of the vapours, stared at me through my eyelids. The Doctor oppressed me like an incubus; and for the Horse, -he became a perfect night-mare. "Leave me, leave me to repose!"

Twelve by the kitchen clock!—still restless! -One! O Doctor, for one of thy comfortable composing draughts!-Two! here's a case of insomnolence! I, who in summer close my lids as instinctively as the daisy when the sun goes down; and who in winter could hybernate as well as Bruin, were I but provided with as much

fat to support me during the season, and keep the wick of existence burning:-I, who, if my pedigree were properly made out, should be found to have descended from one of the Seven Sleepers, and from the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood!

I put my arms out of bed. I turned the pillow for the sake of applying a cold surface to my cheek. I stretched my feet into the cold corner. I listened to the river, and to the ticking of my watch. I thought of all sleepy sounds and all soporific things: the flow of water, the humming of bees, the motion of a boat, the waving of a field of corn, the nodding of a mandarine's head on the chimney-piece, a horse in a mill, the opera, Mr. Humdrum's conversation, Mr. Proser's poems, Mr. Laxative's speeches, Mr. Lengthy's sermons. I tried the device of my own childhood, and fancied that the bed revolved with me round and round. Still the Doctor visited me as perseveringly as if I had been his best patient; and, call up what thoughts I would to keep him off, the Horse charged through them all.

At last Morpheus reminded me of Dr. Torpedo's divinity lectures, where the voice, the manner, the matter, even the very atmosphere, and the streamy candle-light were all alike somnific;-where he who by strong effort lifted up his head, and forced open the reluctant eyes, never failed to see all around him fast asleep. Lettuces, cowslip-wine, poppy-syrup, mandragora, hop-pillows, spiders'-web pills, and the whole tribe of narcotics, up to bang and the black drop, would have failed: but this was irresistible; and thus twenty years after date I found benefit from having attended the course.

CHAPTER V. A. I.

SOMETHING CONCERNING THE PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS,

AND THE AUTHOR'S EXPERIENCE IN AERIAL HORSE

MANSHIP.

If a dream should come in now to make you afear'd,
With a windmill on his head and bells at his beard,
Would you straight wear your spectacles here at your toes,
And your boots on your brows and your spurs on your nose?
BEN JONSON.

THE wise ancients held that dreams are from Jove. Virgil hath told us from what gate of the infernal regions they go out, but at which of the five entrances of the town of Mansoul they get in John Bunyan hath not explained. Some have conceited that unembodied spirits have access to us during sleep, and impress upon the passive faculty, by divine permission, presentiments of those things whereof it is fitting that

we should be thus dimly forewarned. This opinion is held by Baxter, and to this also doth Bishop Newton incline. The old atomists supposed that the likenesses or spectres of corporeal things, (exuvia scilicet rerum, vel effluvia, as they are called by Vaninus, when he takes advantage of them to explain the Fata Morgana) the atomists I say, supposed that these spectral forms which are constantly emitted from all bodies,

Omne genus quoniam passim simulacra feruntur*

assail the soul when she ought to be at rest; according to which theory all the lathered faces. that are created every morning in the lookingglass, and all the smiling ones that my Lord Simper and Mr. Smallwit contemplate there with so much satisfaction during the day, must at this moment be floating up and down the world. Others again opine, as if in contradiction to those who pretend life to be a dream, that dreams are realities, and that sleep sets the soul free like a bird from a cage. John

* LUCRETIUS.