“Yet I know that you, Basil, could write one, and make it full and perfect.”

“I could make one full of words, if not of thought; but come, the night is passing, we shall scarce have an hour’s rest before sunrise.”

“Indeed, I think we are in a fair way to see its early brightness.”

To their dreams and life we will leave them awhile, knowing that to such hearts will ever come peace, whether sleeping or waking.

Past midnight, that silent hour when the earth is peopled with other forms.  It is the hour for the brain to receive the most subtle influences, whether sleeping or waking.

Some kinds of sleep bring us brighter states than day gives us.  They are awakenings, in which the understanding, instead of being dethroned, acquires a power and vivacity beyond what it possesses when the external form is awake and active.  The soul seems emancipated from earthly trammels.  The ruling thought of a man’s life is not unlikely to shape itself into dreams, the constant thought of the day may encroach on the quiet of the night.  Thus Columbus dreamed that a voice said unto him, “God will give thee the keys of the gates of the ocean.”  So any earnest longing, resting on our minds when we composed ourselves to sleep, may pass over into our sleeping consciousness, and be reproduced, perhaps in some happier mood.

Modern writers on the phenomena of sleep, usually concur in the assertion that man’s sleeping thoughts are meaningless, and that dreams are, therefore, untrustworthy.  Such was not the opinion of our ancestors.  They attached great importance to dreams and their interpretations.  They had resort to them for guidance in cases of difficulty, or great calamity.  We do not claim for all dreams, a divine or reliable character, but that some are to be trusted, every individual of any experience can testify.  Plato assumes that all dreams might be trusted, if men would only bring their bodies into such a state, before going to sleep, as to leave nothing that might occasion error or perturbation in their dreams.

A young lady, a native of Ross-shire, in Scotland, who was devotedly attached to an officer, with Sir John Moore in the Spanish war, became alarmed at the constant danger to which her lover was exposed, until she pined, and fell into ill health.  Finally, one night in a dream, she saw him pale, bloody, and wounded in the breast, enter her apartment.  He drew aside the curtains of the bed, and with a mild look, told her he had been slain in battle, bidding her, at the same time, to be comforted, and not take his death to heart.

The consequence of the dream was fatal to the poor girl, who died a few days afterward, desiring her parents to note down the date of her dream, which she was confident would be confirmed.  It was so.  The news shortly after reached England that the officer had fallen at the battle of Corunna, on the very day in the night of which his betrothed had beheld the vision.