Yet you consider our visions as one tissue of morbid phenomena; although there are myriads even of profane visions and warning legends, which bear the certain impress of a prophecy. I never listen to those who laugh at our interpretations, without remembering that melancholy story of a youth of Brescia, by Boccaccio, where Andreana, I think, is relating to her betrothed Gabriello, an ominous dream of the stars, and of a shadowy demon, which had made her sad and spiritless, and for which she had exiled her lover for a whole night from her bosom. The youth smiled in scorn of such a presage; but, in relating a dream of his own to illustrate their fallacy, fell dead from her enfolding arms. For once I will grant you, merely for the sake of argument, that there may be exaggeration in many a legend. I will even yield to your immolation the host of specious dreams in “Wanley’s Wonders;” you may pass your anathema on the volumes of Glanville, and Moreton, and Aubrey, and Mather, and Berthogge, and Beaumont, as a tissue of imposture; call them, if you will— “A prophet’s or a poet’s dream, The priestcraft of a lying world.” _I_ will ensconce myself snugly behind the _classic_ shields, and ask you if the pages of Pliny, of Cicero, of Socrates, are mere legends of fiction or credulity; nay, if the books of mythology and oriental legends are not many of them founded on real events? It is clear that there was ever implicit and extensive faith in the East; the definition of ον ειρω, _I speak the truth_, implies faith in a dream. The office of the oneirocritic was a profession. Amphyction was the first (according to Pliny) of the profane expositors, Hieronymus the most profuse interpreter, and Lysimachus, the grandson of Aristides, expounded dreams, for money, at the corners of the streets of Athens. The doors of Junianus Majus, the tutor of Sanagorius, and Alexander ab Alexandro, were besieged with dreamers in quest of expositions. The Romans worshipped with divine honours Brizo, the goddess of dreams; and the Galeotæ, so named from Galei, a Hebrew word signifying to reveal, flourished in Sicily. So impressed were the Jews with the importance of the dream, that they convoked a tryad of friends, and went through certain ceremonies, (as writes Josephus in his twelfth book,) which they called the benefaction of a dream. The orientals, the Greeks, and the Romans, then, were all confident in the truth of these omens. When Nestor urges his army to battle because Agamemnon had dreamed of such a course, it is but a picture of the common mind of Greece. Indeed, on great emergencies, it was the custom to solicit the inspiration of the dream, by first performing religious rites, and then in the temple, (it may be of Esculapius or Serapis,) to lie down on the reeking skins of oxen or goats, sacrificed by the priests.