“About the age of fourteen, I was almost every night unhappy in my sleep from frightful dreams. Sometimes hanging over a frightful precipice and just ready to drop down; sometimes pursued for my life and stopped by a wall or by a sudden loss of all strength; sometimes ready to be devoured by a wild beast. How long I was plagued by such dreams I do not now recollect. I believe it was for a year or two at least; and I think they had quite left me before I was fifteen. In those days I was much given to what Mr. Addison in one of his Spectators calls castle-building, and, in my evening solitary walk, which was generally all the exercise I took, my thoughts would hurry me into some active scene, where I generally acquitted myself much to my own satisfaction, and in these scenes of imagination I performed many a gallant exploit. At the same time, in my dreams, I found myself the most arrant coward that ever was. Not only my courage, but my strength failed me in every danger, and I often rose from my bed in the morning in such a panic that it took some time to get the better of it. I wished very much to get free of these uneasy dreams, which not only made me unhappy in sleep, but often left a disagreeable impression in my mind for some part of the following day. I thought it was worth trying whether it was possible to recollect that it was all a dream, and that I was in no real danger. I often went to sleep with my mind as strongly impressed as I could with this thought that I never in my lifetime was in any real danger, and that every fright I had was a dream. After many fruitless endeavors to recollect this when the danger appeared, I effected it at last, and have often, when I was sliding over a precipice into the abyss, recollected that it was all a dream, and boldly jumped down. The effect of this commonly was, that I immediately awoke. But I awoke calm and intrepid, which I thought a great acquisition. After this my dreams were never very uneasy, and, in a short time, I dreamed not at all.” Beattie[47] states that he once dreamed that he was walking on the parapet of a high bridge. How he came there he did not know, but recollecting that he was not given to such pranks, he began to think it might all be a dream, and, finding his situation unpleasant, and being desirous to get out of it, threw himself headlong from the height, in the belief that the shock of the fall would restore his senses. The event turned out as he anticipated. Aristotle also asserts that when dreaming of danger, he used to recollect that he was dreaming, and that he ought not to be frightened. A still more remarkable narration is that of Gassendi,[48] which he thus relates as occurring to himself: