At last Morpheus reminded me of Dr. Torpedo's divinity lectures, where the voice, the manner, the matter, even the very atmosphere, and the streamy candle-light were all alike somnific;—where he who by strong effort lifted up his head, and forced open the reluctant eyes, never failed to see all around him fast asleep. Lettuces, cowslip-wine, poppy-syrup, mandragora, hop-pillows, spiders'-web pills, and the whole tribe of narcotics, up to bang and the black drop, would have failed: but this was irresistible; and thus twenty years after date I found benefit from having attended the course. CHAPTER V. A. I. SOMETHING CONCERNING THE PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS, AND THE AUTHOR'S EXPERIENCE IN AERIAL HORSEMANSHIP. If a dream should come in now to make you afear'd, With a windmill on his head and bells at his beard, Would you straight wear your spectacles here at your toes, And your boots on your brows and your spurs on your nose? BEN JONSON. The wise ancients held that dreams are from Jove. Virgil hath told us from what gate of the infernal regions they go out, but at which of the five entrances of the town of Mansoul they get in John Bunyan hath not explained. Some have conceited that unembodied spirits have access to us during sleep, and impress upon the passive faculty, by divine permission, presentiments of those things whereof it is fitting that we should be thus dimly forewarned. This opinion is held by Baxter, and to this also doth Bishop Newton incline. The old atomists supposed that the likenesses or spectres of corporeal things, (_exuviæ scilicet rerum, vel effluvia_, as they are called by Vaninus, when he takes advantage of them to explain the _Fata Morgana_) the atomists I say, supposed that these spectral forms which are constantly emitted from all bodies, _Omne genus quoniam passim simulacra feruntur_[1] assail the soul when she ought to be at rest; according to which theory all the lathered faces that are created every morning in the looking-glass, and all the smiling ones that my Lord Simper and Mr. Smallwit contemplate there with so much satisfaction during the day, must at this moment be floating up and down the world. Others again opine, as if in contradiction to those who pretend life to be a dream, that dreams are realities, and that sleep sets the soul free like a bird from a cage. John Henderson saw the spirit of a slumbering cat pass from her in pursuit of a visionary mouse;—(I know not whether he would have admitted the fact as an argument for materialism); and the soul of Hans Engelbrecht not only went to hell, but brought back from it a stench which proved to all the bystanders that it had been there.—Faugh! [Footnote 1: Lucretius.]