presage the most probable events. Such a concatenation, therefore, must often take place when it is considered "of what stuff dreams are made," and how naturally they turn upon those who occupy our mind when awake. When a soldier is exposed to death in battle; when a sailor is incurring the dangers of the sea; when a beloved wife or relative is attacked by disease, how readily our sleeping imagination rushes to the very point of alarm which, when waking, it had shuddered to anticipate. Considering the many thousands of dreams which must, night after night, pass through the imagination of individuals, the number of coincidences between the vision and the event are fewer and less remarkable than a fair calculation of chance would warrant us to expect. In addition to these, we sometimes hear of dreams which appear to reveal the secrets of futurity; and which may be designated PROPHETIC Dreams--unvailing, as they are supposed to do, the destiny which awaits particular individuals. The prophetic dream of Cromwell, that he should live to 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