I shall return to these mysterious influences by-and-by; but to revert, in the meanwhile, to the subject of double dreams, I will relate one that occurred to two ladies, a mother and daughter, the latter of whom related it to me. They were sleeping in the same bed at Cheltenham, when the mother, Mrs. C——, dreamed that her brother-in-law, then in Ireland, had sent for her; that she entered his room, and saw him in bed, apparently dying. He requested her to kiss him, but, owing to his livid appearance, she shrank from doing so, and awoke with the horror of the scene upon her. The daughter awoke at the same moment, saying, “Oh, I have had such a frightful dream!” “Oh, so have I!” returned the mother; “I have been dreaming of my brother-in-law!”—“My dream was about him, too,” added Miss C——. “I thought I was sitting in the drawing-room, and that he came in wearing a shroud, trimmed with black ribands, and, approaching me, he said: ‘My dear niece, your mother has refused to kiss me, but I am sure you will not be so unkind!’” As these ladies were not in habits of regular correspondence with their relative, they knew that the earliest intelligence likely to reach them, if he were actually dead, would be by means of the Irish papers; and they waited anxiously for the following Wednesday, which was the day these journals were received in Cheltenham. When that morning arrived, Miss C—— hastened at an early hour to the reading-room, and there she learned what the dreams had led them to expect: their friend was dead; and they afterward ascertained that his decease had taken place on that night. They moreover observed, that neither one nor the other of them had been speaking or thinking of this gentleman for some time previous to the occurrence of the dreams; nor had they any reason whatever for uneasiness with regard to him. It is a remarkable peculiarity in this case, that the dream of the daughter appears to be a continuation of that of the mother. In the one, he is seen alive; in the other, the shroud and black ribands seem to indicate that he is dead, and he complains of the refusal to give him a farewell kiss. One is almost inevitably led here to the conclusion that the thoughts and wishes of the dying man were influencing the sleepers, or that the released spirit was hovering near them. Pomponius Mela relates, that a certain people in the interior of Africa lay themselves down to sleep on the graves of their forefathers, and believe the dreams that ensue to be the unerring counsel of the dead.