It is not difficult to account for such dreams. Intense application to any theme is certain to produce them. Fancy highly excited, or Reason deeply absorbed in its labours, will not always sink to repose with the body of its owner. Rousing up again in dreams, it will continue the lines of thought which it had been pursuing during the day, but always with more or less of the playful waywardness which an Ariel might be supposed to exhibit when released from the control of a Prospero.

Perhaps the most curious specimen of this class of dreams that ever came under our notice was this one. The subject was a boy of thirteen, busily employed during the day and devoting his evenings to the classroom. To allow time for study he rose early and retired late, never wasted a moment, denied himself everything in the shape of recreation, and with the exception of his walks between the school-room and his place of business, took no exercise. The classes he attended were formed in great part of adults, all of whom had much more leisure than himself, and most of whom were merely renewing their acquaintance with former reading; yet the boy managed to keep abreast of the very best of his class-mates. Of course such exertions could not be made by a mere child with impunity. After six or seven months of them, he became subject to a singular malady. He never left his books so long as his eyes would keep open. When they refused to labour longer he retired-to fall at once into a heavy sleep. From this, however, he was sure to start, in half-an-hour or thereabouts, under the influence of night-mare, which compelled him to recite aloud every word of the lessons of the day. The thing was most painful, but there was no escape from it. Once in the grip of the tormenting fiend, he was constrained to go on repeating declensions, conjugations, trigonometric formulæ, and so on, to the very last syllable. Then the fit left him to a disturbed and unrefreshing slumber. There was no remedy for the disease save discontinuance of study, and to this the boy would not consent even though this most repulsive night-mare was, visibly and rapidly, sapping his constitution. At length he was favoured with a strange dream. A face seemed to bend over him-one that he had never seen before, but whose features remained ever afterward fixed in his memory. In the decline of life, he used to tell a most interesting story of his meeting with that face, twenty-four years later, and of the decisive influence which its owner exercised over his destiny. This face, which he described as beautiful, spoke in tones delightfully sweet, to this effect-"If somebody will watch by your bed and when the night-mare seizes you, recite a certain passage" (which we shall specify presently) "you will be set free to sleep in peace." It was not until the dream recurred more than once that the dreamer ventured to mention it. It was laughed at by all, save an elder sister, who made up her mind to give a fair trial to the remedy so curiously suggested. She did so when her brother was next undergoing his torture. Hardly had she begun to speak than he ceased to go over his lessons, and taking up the passage after her, he went through it to the end-quite involuntarily as before, but very differently, with an ease and

comfort perfectly indescribable. When the recitation was over he sunk into a calm and refreshing sleep. The experiment was repeated night after night, and always with still more satisfactory results than before. By degrees the pest relaxed its grasp, and in nine or ten days vanished for ever. The passage employed was "the Lord's Prayer."

The dreamer used to explain the matter thus:-Once when thinking of his strange affliction, as he often did, and casting about for an antidote, there occurred to his memory a piece of old reading, in which it was stated that the wounds made one day by the application of heated irons, might be cured on the next by a similar application. While turning the story over in his mind, a conception of the remedy which, in the end, proved beneficial, glanced before him, but so vaguely and for so short a period that he could not grasp it. To this passing idea, and to his efforts to arrest it, he attributed-rightly as we think-the material portion of the vision. The passage recommended for recitation he accounted for by the fact that he had been piously trained. But his later opinion was that a paragraph from a profane author would have served just as well. As to the reappearance of the dream-face in real life-a notion in which he was obstinate to an extent inconceivable in a mind so logical-we may remark that strong imaginings and intense affections play strange tricks with our impressions.

More curious than even intellectual dreams are those which are retrospective and premonitory. That there are such things candid people will admit. That there may be such things reasonable people will hardly deny. It is but natural that an event which has made a deep impression upon a vivid brain, should be recalled in sleep. It is just as natural that an event which is anticipated with earnest hope or apprehension, should be prefigured in a dream by the same brain. In the former case, the dream will be the shadow of a real occurrence, and correct in proportion to the depth of the impression left by that occurrence. In the latter case, the shadow will be truthful in proportion to the accuracy with which we measure the circumstances which are moulding the event so anxiously expected.

But occasionally, premonitory and retrospective dreams present faithful pictures of events, with which we could have had no previous acquaintance, and concerning which we could have formed no anticipation. Twenty years ago there dwelt in a large seaport a family, the head of which was a widow, in feeble health. One of her sons, a youth of eighteen, was employed on a vessel trading to South America. News had reached home of his recovery from yellow fever, a thing that is thought to secure immunity from the disease for the future. His relatives, therefore, felt no apprehension concerning him; nevertheless they awaited the arrival of the ship with some anxiety. While they were waiting thus, a friend who took deep interest in the youth dreamt to this purpose:

He seemed to be seated in a reception-room on the ground-floor, opposite a window looking into the street. In one corner, by the window,

sat the widow; and in another corner, on the same side of the room, sat one of her daughters. While the three sat thus, looking at one another in silence in the dream be it remembered a tall, sailor-like man, of the best class, roughly dressed as if he had but just stepped ashore, passed the window and knocked. Being admitted, he walked straight across the room to the chair which had just been vacated by the daughter, and spoke as follows: "Mrs. I am Captain —, of the ship — and I deeply regret that I have to inform you of the death of your son." Such a dream he who dreamt naturally thought far too unpleasant to communicate to the parties chiefly concerned. Still, finding himself seated the following evening precisely as in the dream, he felt compelled, in spite of his unwillingness, to relate it. Hardly had he concluded when the figure, as he had seen it, passed the window, knocked, and was ushered into the apartment, where he acted and spoke in every particular as foreshadowed. It may be added that neither the family nor their friend had the slightest knowledge of the arrival of the vessel, and that nobody could have anticipated the captain in bearing the fatal news. The dreamer could not help remarking that his relation of his dream prepared the mother for the announcement, which, abrupt as it was, might otherwise have given her a dangerous shock.

Are such visions to be accounted for on reasonable grounds? We think so. In conjunction with what are called "forebodings," they teach ourselves to believe that intense love, or hate as intense, maintains a connection between those under its influence, no matter how widely they may be sundered.

Organised bodies--perhaps we might say all bodies-are for ever giving off particles-those at rest, in every direction; those in motion behind them, in one long stream. These particles carry with them the characteristics of the body from whence they part. We know it to be so in the case of flowers, otherwise there would be no such thing as scent, and assuredly no such thing as distinction of scent. And we may presume that it is so in other instances. Nor is it presumption only. That there must be something of the sort is evident from the success with which the dog traces his master through a crowd, or along a well-frequented thoroughfare.

It requires but a small stretch of imagination to conceive that the particles thrown off by human beings bear the impress of their thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, and expectations-as they exist at the moment of separation. We may conceive, too, that there exist in us senses acute enough to distinguish, under favourable circumstances, all the peculiarities of these particles when they are brought in contact with us. As to that contact, it is not so very unreasonable to suppose, in these days of electric wonders, that the fixed affection of persons may give a fixed direction to such emanations, and thus originate and maintain, through all chances and changes, those delicate chains of intercommunication between friends and foes, to which, rather than to supernatural agency, we prefer to ascribe our startling, truthful dreams and premonitions.

Sentimental Grievances.

WHEN certain things are called, by a certain school of thinkers, sentimental grievances-with a shrug-the question of their being grievances at all is considered settled in the negative. According to them no merely emotional annoyance has a voice in the category of crying evils; and if a man cannot show bodily bruises or physical damage as the groundwork of his complaints, he has no case to go on. And yet, seeing that humanity is a composite kind of thing, and that, as more goes to the making of happiness than beef and beer so more goes to the making of misery than cold and hunger, the feelings are really as important factors in the great sum of life as are the sensations, and influence the product quite as much. When we judge of man as a whole, we must take into account his mental as well as his physical condition, and give due weight to sentimental grievances as well as to personal malaise, to emotional pleasures as well as to bodily well-being. And after all, if we define what are sentimental grievances as opposed to physical sufferings, we shall have to make a tolerably wide circuit, and include things on which there cannot be two opinions that the chief part of human happiness depends.

A sufficiency of food, warmth, shelter, clothing, and the negative good of freedom from pain, form the group of primary conditions on which our physical well-being rests. Who will dare to say that these are

enough for the whole life of a man? Add the mate and they are the four corners of Paradise for beasts; but men are not beasts; and if all have not souls above buttons, so small a proportion house theirs in the pig-trough, we need not trouble ourselves about them. But even these material condi tions taper off into the finer substance of sentimental grievances; and the pretty young woman in a shabby gown of last year's cut, set among fine ladies dressed in the height of the fashion, can enlighten you as to the extent of one of them at least. Her status is such that dress can neither make nor mar it, and her gown answers all the essential purposes for which that garment was designed. It is a decent covering for her body, and keeps out cold and heat as effectually as the most gorgeous of those which have just come from Worth's; perhaps better. But as it has not that shadowy quality called chic, and as the gloss has gone from the silk and the lustre from the satin, it is a grievance by which she is made unhappy.

This is a fact so well understood that men go through the Bankruptcy Court in order that the women belonging to them may escape the sentimental grievance of being clothed in materials that cost less money than,

and in garments of a cut anterior to, those affected by their friends. Understand, the social condition, the personal character, the prospects, the health of the woman are not affected by the unfashionableness of her gown. It is only the sentimental grievance of being less magnificently dressed than are her friends which affects her; but it is a grievance that makes her suffer painfully, and that destroys both her pleasure and her self-respect for the time being.

Those sumptuary laws of bygone days which granted to men and women of a certain rank only, the privilege of wearing such and such materials, while knaves and burghers were kept rigidly to their own fashions and their distinctive colours-these were only sentimental grievances to the knaves and burghers set below the millinery salt, and in no wise touched the main conditions of life. Nevertheless they were held as grievances of so onerous a character by the denied, that the privileged were obliged to enlarge their borders, yielding bit by bit and inch by inch till finally the last stronghold of all, the sacred ermine, had to go with the rest; and now tinkler Maggie may, if she pleases, cover her brawny shoulders in a mangy cape which once made part of a coronation robe, but which, going through the various stages of popular descent, emblematic of more than itself, from royalty has come down to gipsydom. This question of dress indeed is one of the most purely sentimental of all; but at the same time one of the most powerful forces of social action. With savages it is food, with the civilised world clothing; and among the civilised it is chiefly women who are affected by it, though they in their turn move the men by their lever. Every woman wants to look as well as her betters. It is part of the indestructible feminine instinct by which the sex is what it is; and every woman does her best to accomplish her desire. Joan stands an inch taller in her own esteem when she has taken pattern by my Lady Jane, and reproduced in flaring calico a hideous exaggeration of some wonderful confection in faultless velvet. She makes herself a fright; but that does not signify; she thinks she is superb; and the mind sees fashions as well as other things through coloured glasses which make what they show. Deny her the power of travesty; command that she shall be dressed otherwise than as her own bad taste elects, and put on her the prettiest, most becoming costume to be devised by the most highly cultivated art-but a costume that tickets her and you give her a sentimental grievance that will poison her whole existence. She feels herself tyrannized over in her individuality; classed within positively defined borders, hence unable to be mistaken for my Lady Jane's younger sister, as she fondly hopes she may be mistaken now; and she is miserable in consequence. Substantially she is benefited. She is kept from making a fool of herself; personally well adorned; and secured from various not imaginary temptations by being thus proclaimed what she is: but for all that, the sentimental grievance is the strongest; and she gives up her place and its pleasant perquisites rather than submit to restrictions which save her pocket,