“Mr. Alexander Cooper, present minister of North-uist, told me that one John Erach, in the Isle of Lewis, assured him that it was his fate to have been led by his curiosity to some who consulted this oracle, and that he was a night within the hide as above mentioned, during which time he felt and heard such terrible things that he could not express them; the impression it made on him was such as could never go off, and he said for a thousand worlds he would never again be concerned in the like performance, for this had disordered him to a high degree. He confessed it ingenuously and with an air of great remorse, and seemed to be very penitent under a just sense of so great a crime: he declared this about five years since, and is still living in the Lewis for any thing I know.” In imitation of this spell for the divine inspiration of a dream, the modern Franciscans, after the ceremony of mass, throw themselves on mats already consecrated by the slumber of some holy visionary, and with all this foolery, they vaunt the divine inspiration of _their_ dream. Cicero, and Theophrastus, and many other sages, were sceptical of these special visitations, and explained _rationally_ dreams and divinations, as Cicero his dream at Ætina, on his flight from Rome. Then there is this anathema of Ennius:— “Augurs, and soothsayers, astrologers, diviners, and interpreters of dreams I never consult, and despise their vain pretence to more than human skill.” And also this caution bequeathed to you by Epictetus: “Never tell thy dream; for though thou thyself mayest take a pleasure in telling thy dream, another will take no pleasure in hearing it.” ASTR. Epictetus was himself a dreamer in this; for the story of a dream is ever listened to with interest. And what would Epictetus think, were I to tell him that broad lands and mitres have been gained before now by the shrewd _putting of a dream_? EV. I confess, as in the illusion of phantoms, there are records of very strange coincidences in dreaming, which may be startling to many superficial minds. Pereskius, the friend of Gassiendi, after a severe fever, in 1609, was engaged in the study of ancient coins, weights, and measures. One night, he dreamed he met a goldsmith at Nismes, who offered him a coin of Julius Cæsar for four _cardecues_. The next day this incident was repeated to him _in reality_. But _he_ was a philosopher, and deemed it, as it was, but a rare coincidence.