In the “City of Dreams,” of Lucian, the blasphemer (whose beauties are stained by their impieties), these eternal gates are again alluded to. But the dreams in this city are all deceivers; for when a mortal enters the gates, a circle of domestic dreams in a moment unfold to him a budget of intelligence, which proves to be a tissue of lies. Tertullian, and many others, have argued the notion of a _special purpose_ of the Deity in _every dream_. And the “New Moral World” of the visionary Owen, asserts, that “one chief source of our knowledge is dreams and omens.” In the eras of inspiration, few will be sceptical enough to doubt the occurrence of divine mediations; or not to believe, with Socrates, and other sages, in the divine origin of dreams and omens. The evidence of Holy Scripture again proves the _occasion_, indeed the _necessity_, for such communication; but, in our own time, I deem it little less than profaneness, to imagine that the Deity should indicate the future occurrence of common-place and trivial incidents through the medium of an organ, confessedly in a state of _imperfection_, at the moment when the faculties of mind are returning from a state of temporary suspension,—a death-like sleep. Even John Wesley believed dreams to be “_doubtful_ and _disputable_;” and adds, with a half-profanation,—“they _might_ be from God, or might not.” The Emperor Constantine, you know, denounced death to all who dared to look seriously into the secrets of futurity. When we reflect that the proportion of events, seemingly the fulfilment of a dream, is to the myriads of forebodings which never come to pass (as the dreams recorded with some solemnity by Herodotus, of Alcibiades; of Crœsus, regarding his son Atys; of Astyages and the vine; of Cambyses, respecting Smerdis; and of Hamilcar, at the siege of Syracusa;) as a drop in the ocean, the fallacy of the doctrine must be evident. I marvel much that credulity, in this reflecting age, can gain a single proselyte. The magi of Persia and the soothsayers of Greece and Rome were _constantly in error_; and Artemidorus Miraldus, who in the reign of Antoninus wrote his voluminous book “Oneirocriticus,” has given us the most ridiculous interpretations. When the pagan priesthood of old lay down on the reeking skins of their victims to rouse the inspiration of their dreams, it was to cheat their proselytes. Such were the mummeries in the Temple of Æsculapius. The devotees were first purified by the “lustral water;” and then divine visions came over them, and priestesses in snowy robes, and a venerable priest in the habit of Æsculapius, paraded round the altar, and the charm was complete. You may learn from Martin something about the modern influence of such a charm.