very moment after General D---- had related to me his dream. The
third narrative admits of an easy solution. Mrs B---- was not in
good health. Thinking of her husband, in a state of reverie, a
morbid spectrum might be the result--distinct enough to cause her
sudden alarm and exclamation which, if the children heard, (and
children distinguish their mother's voice at a considerable
distance--the cabin door, too, might have been open, and the
children much nearer than they were supposed to have been,) would
account at once for their calling out 'Papa! papa!' During our
waking hours, we are never conscious of any complete suspension of
thought, even for a moment; if fatigued by any long and laborious
mental exertion, such as the solution of a complicated
mathematical problem, how is the weariness relieved? Not by
listless rest like the tired body, but by a change of subject--a
change of action--a new train of thoughts and expressions. Are we,
then, always dreaming when asleep? We certainly are not conscious
that we are; but it may be that in our sleep we do not remember
our dreams, and that it is only in imperfect sleep, or in the act
of waking, that the memory records them. That dreams occupy an
exceedingly short period of time, I know from my own experience;
for I once had, when a boy, a very long dream about a bird, which
was placed in an insecure place in my bedroom, being attacked by a
cat. The fall of the cage on the floor awoke me, and I sprang out
of bed in time to save the bird. The dream must, I think, have
been suggested by the fall of the cage; and, if so, my seemingly
long dream could only have occupied a mere point of time. I have
also experienced other instances nearly similar. It seems
reasonable, too, to suppose that this is generally the case; for
our dreams present themselves to us as pictures, with the subjects
of which we are intimately acquainted. I now glance my eye at the
fine landscape hanging in my room. You may say of it, as Falstaff
said of Prince Henry, 'By the Lord, I know you as well as he that
made you.' Well, it is full of subject, full of varied beauty and
grand conception--a 'paulo majora' eclogue. When I first saw it, I
could barely read it through in an hour. For pictures that are
what pictures ought to be, Poems to the eye, demand and repay this