What in these and similar cases is accepted as divine inspiration, is in secular history generally looked upon as mysterious, magic revelation; but the phenomena remain the same in all instances, and those appearing in dreams are identical with the symptoms exhibited in revelations occurring during the day, when the favored recipient is wide awake. Clairvoyance by night differs in no way from clairvoyance during the day; a state of ecstasy, a trance, is necessary in either case. That prophetic dreams generally remain unknown--outside of Holy Writ--must be ascribed to the fact that they leave no recollection behind, unless they are continued into a state of half-sleep, from which a sudden awakening takes place; and soon then they are invariably clothed in some allegoric form, and become liable to be erroneously or, at least, imperfectly interpreted. Thus dreams, like trances, often prefigure death under the form of a journey, and represent the dying man as an uprooted tree, a withered flower, or a drowning swimmer. The early Christians, foreseeing martyrdom, very frequently received in dreams an intimation of their impending fate under such symbolic forms, and, what was quite peculiar to their visions was that they often extended to the pagan jailors and keepers, whose minds had been excited by witnessing the sufferings and the constancy of their victims, and who, in many cases, became, in consequence of these dreams, converts to the new faith. The facility, however, with which such symbols can be misunderstood, has been as fatal to dreams in the estimation of most men, as the inaccurate manner in which the real revelation is often presented to the still half-sleeping mind. Hence the popular belief that dreams "go by contraries," as vulgar slang expresses it. This faith is based upon the well-established fact that a genuine dream, in the act of impressing itself upon memory, often suffers not only mutilation but actual reversion. Thus Rogers saw, in a dream, Hikey, a small, weak man, murder a powerful giant, Caulfield--in the actual encounter, which he had really foreseen, the latter killed his puny antagonist. It is, therefore, as dangerous to "believe in dreams," as to deny their value altogether and to ascribe all realizations of dreams, with, Macnish, to mere accident. ("Sleep," p. 81.) Men of cool judgment and clear mind have at all times been found on the side of believers, and even our great Franklin, with his eminently practical mind and well-known aversion to every kind of superstition, firmly trusted in views which he believed to have come to him in dreams.