A great poetical contemporary of our own country does not think that even Dreams should pass away unnoticed; and he calls this register his _Nocturnals_. His dreams are assuredly poetical; as Laud's, who journalised his, seem to have been made up of the affairs of state and religion;--the personages are his patrons, his enemies, and others; his dreams are scenical and dramatic. Works of this nature are not designed for the public eye; they are domestic annals, to be guarded in the little archives of a family; they are offerings cast before our Lares. Pleasing, when youth is long expired, to trace The forms our pencil or our pen design'd; Such was our youthful air, and shape, and face, Such the soft image of our youthful mind. SHENSTONE. LICENSERS OF THE PRESS. In the history of literature, and perhaps in that of the human mind, the institution of the LICENSERS OF THE PRESS, and CENSORS OF BOOKS, was a bold invention, designed to counteract that of the Press itself; and even to convert this newly-discovered instrument of human freedom into one which might serve to perpetuate that system of passive obedience which had so long enabled modern Rome to dictate her laws to the universe. It was thought possible in the subtlety of Italian _astuzia_ and Spanish monachism, to place a sentinel on the very thoughts as well as on the persons of authors; and in extreme cases, that books might be condemned to the flames as well as heretics.