EV. And you will define these shadowless ministers in the fashion of Master Richard Burthogge, Medicinæ Doctor, (in his book, printed by Raven, in the Poultry, in 1694.) I have a smack, you see, of medical bibliomania, Astrophel. Burthogge, although one of the most rational interpreters of dreams and spectres, thinks their internal causes _purely metaphysical_; and then refutes his own opinion point blank by this sophistry,—that “there are things _incorporated_, but _invisible_, which we call spirits;” as who should say, with Shakspere’s fairies, “We have the gift of fern seed; we are invisible.” No; we will account for the causes of dreams, Astrophel, without the ministry of spirits. Analyzing, then, the notions of all, it is clear that the essence of the dream is _recurrence of ideas_. In the words of Walpole,—“The memory retains the colouring of the day.” Now memory is the first faculty to fail in age, and you know old people seldom dream: the same objects are applied, but there is little or no association, for the brain is dull and feeble; imbecility, indeed, is _mad memory_. The two common periods associated with the dream, are the past and the future, involving memory and prognostication; the latter being but the _memory of an intention_,—an image excited in the mind by analogy. Even when _present_ sensations excite the dream, it is ever associated, as you remember, with something _before seen or felt_. The waking thought will thus again modify the dream; and Dr. Abercrombie has a curious illustration of this combining of two minds,—one waking subject, one dream, and one disturbing cause. The French invasion was the universal topic in Edinburgh; and the city was, indeed, one company of volunteers. It was decided that the tocsin of alarm on the approach of the enemy, was to be the firing of the castle guns, followed by a chain of signals. At two, an officer was awoke from a vivid dream of guns and signals, and reviews of troops, by his lady, who herself was affrighted by a similar dream, with a few associations of a _different_ nature. And whence all this alarm?—_the falling of a pair of tongs on the hearth_, the noise of which was quite sufficient for the production of their dreaming associations. ASTR. It would seem to me that Evelyn was too anxious to find employment for the brain, in thus imputing so much to _substantial_ causes.