o be the greatest man in England, has often been referred to as an
example of special revelation; but surely there can be nothing very
wonderful in the occurrence--for, after all, if we could only penetrate
into the thoughts, hopes, and designs which inflamed the ambition of
such men as Ireton, Lambert, and the like, we should find both their
waking and sleeping visions equally suggestive of self-aggrandizement.
The Protector himself was not the only usurper, in those troubled times,
who dreamed of being "every inch a king;" but we want the data to
compute the probabilities which the laws of chance would give in favor
of such a prophecy or dream being fulfilled. The prophetic dream refers
generally to some event which, in the course of nature, is likely to
happen: is it, then, wonderful that it should occur? It would be curious
to know how often Napoleon dreamed that he was the Emperor of the
civilized world, or confined as a prisoner of war; how many thrones he
imagined himself to have ascended or abdicated; how often he
accomplished the rebuilding of Jerusalem. A few years ago, some very
cruel murders were perpetrated in Edinburgh, by men named Burke and
Hare, who sold the bodies of their victims to the Anatomical Schools. We
had ourselves an interview with Burke, after his condemnation, when he
told us that many months before he was apprehended and convicted, he
used to dream that the murders he committed had been discovered; then he
imagined himself going to be executed, and his chief anxiety was, how he
should comport himself on the scaffold before the assembled multitude,
whose faces he beheld gazing up and fixed upon him. His dream was, in
every respect, verified; but who, for an instant, would suppose there
could have been any thing preternatural, or prophetic, in such a vision?
For the most part, dreams of this description are supposed to portend
the illness, or the time of the death, of particular individuals; and
these, too, upon the simple doctrine of chance, turn out, perhaps, to be
as often wrong as right. It may be true, that Lord Lyttleton died at the
exact hour which he said had been predicted to him in a dream; but
Voltaire outlived a similar prophecy for many years. It must, however,
be conceded, that persons in ill-health may have their death expedited
by believing in such fatal predictions. Tell a timorous man that he will
die; and the sentence, if pronounced with sufficient solemnity, and the
semblan