ir material instrument--have exhausted
their energy, we can easily conceive how the very opposite condition
will be produced. Hence the most unconnected and preposterous train of
imagery may arise from the very earnestness with which we desire a
contrary effect. We dream of events which do not concern us, instead of
those in which we are most deeply interested; we dream of persons to
whom we are indifferent, instead of those to whom we are attached. But,
in the midst of all this curious and perplexing contrariety, it is
remarkable--and may be esteemed a proof of the immateriality of the
mind--that we always preserve the consciousness of our own identity. No
man dreams that he is a woman, or any other person than himself; we have
heard of persons who have dreamed they were dead, and in a spiritual
state; but the spirit was still their own--they maintained their
identity. Sir Thomas Lawrence once made an interesting observation on
this subject to Mrs. Butler--then Miss Fanny Kemble: he pointed out, in
conversation, that he never heard of any lady who ever dreamed that she
was younger than she really was. We retain in our dreams even the
identity of our age. It has been said--we think by Sir Thomas
Browne--that some persons of virtuous and honorable principles will
commit, as they fancy, actions in their dreams which they would shudder
at in their waking moments; but we can not believe that the identity of
moral goodness can be so perverted in the dreaming state. We can,
however, readily conceive that, when the mind is oppressed, or disturbed
by the recollection of some event it dreads to dwell upon, it may be
disturbed by the most terrific and ghastly images. A guilty conscience,
too, will unquestionably produce restlessness, agitation, and
awe-inspiring dreams. Hence Manfred, in pacing restlessly his lonely
Gothic gallery at midnight, pictures to himself the terrors of sleep:

"The lamp must be replenished; even then
It will not burn so long as I must watch.
My slumbers, if I slumber, are not sleep,
_But a continuance of enduring thought,
Which then I can resist not. In my heart
There is a vigil; and these eyes
But close to look within._"

Contrition and remorse oppose his rest. If we remember right, it was
Bishop Newton who remarked, that the sleep of innocence differed
essentially from the sleep of guilt.

The assistance supposed to be sometimes furnished in sleep toward the
solution of