From one of the most ancient Arabic manuscripts on the subject, we learn that if you see an angel, it is a good sign; but if you dream that you converse with one, it forebodes evil--to dream you bathe in a clear fountain denotes joy--but if it be muddy, an enemy will bring against you some false accusation. To dream of carrying any weight upon the back denotes servitude, if you are rich--honor if you are poor. There is not an object in nature--not an event that can occur in life--that our modern fortune-tellers have not converted, when seen in a dream, into some sign ominous of good or of evil; and many even well-educated persons are in the habit of fostering their credulity by attaching an undue importance to their dreams. It is a curious circumstance, however, which militates against this mystic art, that the same sign in different countries carries with it a very contrary signification. The peasant girl in England thinks, if she dream of a rose, that it is a sure sign of happiness; but the _paysanne_ in Normandy believes that it portends vexation and disappointment. The Englishman conceives that to dream of an oak-tree is a sign of prosperity; but in Switzerland, the same vision is thought to be a forewarning of some dreadful calamity. The domestic superstitions which are connected with dreams, are sometimes favored by, and perhaps dependent upon a certain morbid condition or irritability of the nervous system, which suggests the dread of some impending calamity, a painful and indefinite sense of apprehension for which no ostensible reason can be assigned. Strange as it might appear, the influence of our dreams upon our waking state is very remarkable; we may awaken refreshed from a dream which has made us, in our sleep, superlatively happy; or we may rise with melancholic feelings after suffering intense affliction in some dream, and the details of both dreams may alike be forgotten. We can not, after being so much disturbed, at once regain our composure; the billows continue heaving after the tempest has subsided; the troubled nerves continue to vibrate after the causes that disturbed them have ceased to act; the impression still remains, and checkers the happiness of the future day. Even men of strong mind, who do not believe in the interpretation of dreams, may be so affected. When Henry the Fourth of France was once told by an astrologer that he would be assassinated, he smiled at the prediction, and did not believe it; but he confessed that it often haunted him afterward, and although he placed no faith in it, still it sometimes depressed his spirits, and he often expressed a wish that he had never heard it. In like manner, dreams, which persons do not believe in, will unconsciously affect the tenor of their thoughts and feelings.