The "Essay on Dream" was written early in 1806 and printed in May, 1807. It was the last work of importance written by Paine. In the same pamphlet was included a part of his reply to the Bishop of Llandaff, which was written in France: "An Examination of the Passages in the New Testament, quoted from the Old, and called Prophecies of the Coming of Jesus Christ" The Examination is widely known and is among Paine's characteristic works,--a continuation of the "Age of Reason." The "Essay on Dream" is a fine specimen of the author's literary art. Dream is the imagination awake while the judgment is asleep. "Every person is mad once in twenty-four hours; for were he to act in the day as he dreams in the night, he would be confined for a lunatic." Nathaniel Hawthorne thought spiritualism "a sort of dreaming awake." Paine explained in the same way some of the stories on which popular religion is founded. The incarnation itself rests on what an angel told Joseph in a dream, and others are referred to. "This story of dreams has thrown Europe into a dream for more than a thousand years. All the efforts that nature, reason, and conscience have made to awaken man from it have been ascribed by priestcraft and superstition to the workings of the devil, and had it not been for the American revolution, which by establishing the universal right of conscience, first opened the way to free discussion, and for the French revolution which followed, this religion of dreams had continued to be preached, and that after it had ceased to be believed." But Paine was to be reminded that the revolution had not made conscience free enough in America to challenge waking dreams without penalties. The following account of his disfranchisement at New Rochelle, was written from Broome St., New York, May 4, 1807, to Vice-President Clinton. "Respected Friend,--Elisha Ward and three or four other Tories who lived within the british lines in the revolutionary war, got in to be inspectors of the election last year at New Rochelle. Ward was supervisor. These men refused my vote at the election, saying to me: 'You are not an American; our minister at Paris, Gouverneur Morris, would not reclaim you when you were emprisoned in the Luxembourg prison at Paris, and General Washington refused to do it.' Upon my telling him that the two cases he stated were falsehoods, and that if he did me injustice I would prosecute him, he got up, and calling for a constable, said to me, 'I will commit you to prison.' He chose, however, to sit down and go no farther with it.