problems which puzzled the waking sense, opens up a curious
subject of investigation. Cases of the kind have been recorded upon
undoubted authority. Hence some philosophers, like Sir Thomas Browne and
Addison, have been induced to suppose that the soul in this state is
partially disengaged from the encumbrance of the body, and therefore
more intelligent, which is a mere fancy--a poetical fiction. Surely it
is absurd to suppose that the soul, which we invest with such high and
perfect attributes, should commit such frivolous and irrational acts as
these which take place so constantly in our dreams. "Methinks," observed
Locke, "every drowsy nod shakes this doctrine." All we remark, is, that
some of the ordinary mental faculties act in such cases with increased
energy. But beyond this we can not go. We are informed by Cabains, that
Franklin on several occasions mentioned to him, that he had been
assisted in his dreams on the issue of many affairs in which he was
engaged. So, also, Condillac, while writing his "Cours d'Etudes," states
that he was frequently obliged to leave a chapter incomplete, and retire
to bed: and that on waking, he found it, on more than one occasion,
finished in his head. Condorcet, upon leaving his deep and complicated
calculations unfinished, after having retired to rest, often found their
results unfolded to him in his dreams. Voltaire assures us that he, like
La Fontaine, composed verses frequently in his sleep, which he
remembered on awaking. Doctor Johnson states that he once in a dream had
a contest of wit with some other person, and that he was very much
mortified by imagining that his opponent had the better of him.
Coleridge, in a dream, composed the wild and beautiful poem of "Kubla
Khan," which was suggested to him by a passage he was reading in
"Purchas's Pilgrimage" when he fell asleep. On awaking he had a distinct
recollection of the whole, and, taking his pen, ink, and paper,
instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines which have been so much
admired.

One of the most striking circumstances connected with the human mind is
the extreme lightning-like rapidity of its thoughts, even in our waking
hours; but the transactions which appear to take place in our dreams are
accomplished with still more incalculable rapidity; the relations of
space, the duration of time, appear to be alike annihilated; we are
transported in an instant to the most distant regions of the earth, and
the events of a