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that an aged female relative had been murdered by a black servant, and this dream was repeated so often that she repaired to the old lady's house and set a gentleman to watch in the night. About three o'clock in the morning the black servant was discovered going to his mistress's room, as he said, with coals to mend the fire-a sufficiently absurd excuse at such an hour and in the middle of summer. The truth was apparent when a strong knife was found buried beneath the coals. The coincidences of dreams are very remarkable. For two persons to dream the same thing, at the same time, in different places and under different circumstances, exceeds the power of chance, boundless as that pretends to be. A Mr. Joseph Taylor relates that a boy residing at a school a hundred miles from home dreamed that he went to his father's house, found all closed for the night but the back door, went into his mother's room, and found her awake. "I come to bid you good-by," he said; "I am going on a long journey." She answered with great trembling, "O dear son, thou art dead!" And he awoke. Soon after he received a letter from his father making anxious inquiries after his health, in consequence of a frightful dream which his mother had on the same night, and which was exactly identical with his, even to the very words of the conversation. Fortunately no sad results followed, though it may have proved a warning to the boy in some inscrutable manner unknown to his friends. The case of the gentleman from Cornwall who dreamed eight days before the event that he saw Mr. Perceval murdered in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, and distinctly recognized from prints, after the murder, both the assassin and his victim, whom he had never seen previously, seems capable only of a supernatural explanation, especially when it is remembered that the gentleman was with difficulty dissuaded by his friends from going to London to warn Mr. Perceval (known to him in his dream as the Chancellor of the Exchequer). He urged that it had occurred three times in the same night, but, his friends thinking it a fool's errand, he allowed the matter to drop till the news of the murder rudely resuscitated it. A lady of our acquaintance, about to change her habitation, saw in sleep an exact picture of her future home, and from her dream alone could recognize the rooms and passages. We tried to account for this to her by saying that the dream really influenced her conduct, and that when she met with a house answering to her dream, she was naturally predisposed to take it. A gentleman from Yorkshire formed one of a party for visiting the Exhibition of 1862. A few days before leaving for London, he had a most vivid dream of the Tower, the armory, and more especially the room in

which the regalia and crown jewels are kept. He heard the old woman who showed the room address the audience, and treasured up carefully her very peculiarities of voice, dress, manner, and features, and created considerable amusement among his friends by mimicking the phantom show-woman when he awoke. He went to London at the proper time, and of course visited the Tower, where he was astounded and somewhat sobered by the phantom's counterpart, which was identical in every respect. Several years ago the newspapers were filled with details of a horrible murder, of which the facts, related from memory, seem to be these: Mrs. Martin, the wife of a farmer, was in terrible distress of mind because her daughter Maria was missing. It was feared she had been murdered by her sweetheart in a fit of jealousy, and hidden somewhere. For a long time no trace of the body could be found. At length the mother had a dream, in which it was revealed to her that the corpse of her child was buried under the barn-floor. This proved to be the case, the body was recovered, and the murderer detected. The mother of a medical student dreamed that her son had got into some serious trouble in London, and could not rest till she left her home in the Midland counties and sought him out. To her sorrow, the dream was painfully verified, and the consequences might have been serious if she had not arrived in time. A barrister of great penetration relates the story of a lady who dreamed that a railway guard was killed in a collision. She described the man and the circumstances so faithfully that there was no difficulty in identifying the guard (who was actually killed the same night in a lamentable accident) as the man she saw in her dream. The lady rarely left home, and the guard was quite unknown to her. Archdeacon Squire, in a paper read before the Royal Society in 1748, tells the story of a certain Henry Axford, of Devizes, who caught a violent cold when he was twenty-eight years of age, which rendered him speechless, and he remained dumb for four years. In July, 1741, in his sleep he dreamed that "he had fallen into a furnace of boiling wort, which put him into so great an agony of fright that he actually did call out aloud, and recovered the use of his tongue from that moment as effectually as ever." Horace Bushnell, D. D., in his "Nature and the Supernatural," recounts a case which he thinks can not be explained by natural causes. Sitting by the fire one stormy November night, in an hotel parlor in the Napa Valley of California, there entered a venerable-looking person named Captain Yount, who had come to California as a trapper more than forty years before. There he lived, had acquired a large estate, and was highly respected. The Captain said that, "six or seven

years previous, he had a dream in which he saw what appeared to him to be a company of immigrants arrested by the snows of the mountains, and perishing rapidly of cold and hunger. The whole scene appeared vividly before him; he noted a huge cliff and the very features of the persons, and their looks of agonizing despair. He awoke, but shortly after fell asleep again, and dreamed precisely the same thing. Being now impressed with the truth of the story, he told it to an old hunter shortly afterward, who declared that he knew a spot which exactly answered to his description. This decided him, and taking a company of men, with mules, blankets, etc., they hurried to the Carson Valley Pass, one hundred and fifty miles distant, where they found the immigrants in exactly the condition of the dream, and brought in the remnant alive."

The phenomena of somnambulism are so common and so well known that a few remarkable cases will suffice. It sometimes happens that nearly all the senses and the muscular feelings are in activity, while the mind is fixed as in dreaming; and then the dreamer becomes a somnambulist, or sleep-walker. The patient has some control over the bodily organs, and is susceptible to some outward impressions. Mr. Macnish offers a very rational explanation of the usual circumstances. "If we dream," he says, "that we are walking, and the vision possesses such a degree of vividness and exciting energy as to rouse the muscles of locomotion, we naturally get up and walk." So with hearing and seeing. "And thus, under a conjunction of impulses, the dreamer may talk, walk, see, and hear."

A somnambulist is peculiarly susceptible of impressions on his muscular sense; and, if the face, body, or limbs be brought into an attitude suggestive of any particular emotion, a corresponding mental state is immediately called up; thus if the angles of the mouth be gently separated from one another, as in laughter, a disposition to laugh is at once produced; and this expression may be turned into moroseness by drawing the eyebrows toward each other, and downward upon the nose, as in frowning. The movements of the somnambulist seem almost guided by a supernatural hand, for he will walk on parapets, roofs of houses, and precipices without the least accident. A story is told of a boy who climbed a precipice and took away an eagle's nest during his sleep, a feat he would never have attempted in his waking hours, as is proved by the fact that he disbelieved the story till he found the nest under his bed. Dr. Abercrombie relates instances of a young botanist out on a scientific expedition; of a servant-girl, rather dull than otherwise, discoursing on astronomy, which she apparently knew nothing of in her waking mo

ments; of an orphan girl electrifying a whole household with the angelic strains of a violin, and of her conjugating a Latin verb, speaking French, etc., all of which were most unlikely accomplishments to her during the day. Mr. Macnish tells us of a somnambulist who walked two miles along a dangerous road to the quay of an Irish seaport, jumped into the water, and swam about for an hour and a half before being rescued. Sir Walter Scott relates that one of the crew of a vessel lying in the Tagus had been murdered by a Portuguese, and it was said that the unfortunate man's specter haunted the ship. One of the mates, an honest, sensible Irishman, said the ghost took him from his bed every night, led him about the ship, and in fact “worried his life out." The captain watched; and at midnight the mate got up with ghastly looks, lighted a candle, and went to the galley, stared wildly about, and then sprinkled some water out of a can, after which he seemed relieved, and returned quietly to his bed. The captain asked him next morning whether he had been disturbed, and he replied in the affirmative, and said that after sprinkling some holy water the spirit left him. To be told that it was water out of a common can had the effect of banishing the specter altogether from the sleeper's mind. If by some chance he had burned his finger with the candle, he would have carried home to Ireland an incontestable proof that the spirit had left an indelible mark upon him.

Nightmare is generally caused by indigestion, but the persistent cases usually arise from cerebral disorder. Thus a man in Edinburgh, who was chased every night by an infuriated bull, and gored with its horns, was found on his death to have been suffering from an ulcer formed at the base of his brain. Locke mentions the case of a lady who drank a large dose of dilute tea, and was troubled at night by a succession of faces which she had never seen before; some of them she tried to detain, but could not. Hervey, in his "Meditations," relates a case of the power of mind over bodily action which might have produced very disastrous results if one of the sleepers had not been aroused. "Two men had been hunting during the day, and they slept together at night. One of them was renewing the pursuit in his dream; and, having run the whole circle of the chase, came at last to the fall of the stag. Upon this he cried out with determined ardor, I'll kill him, I'll kill him!' and immediately felt for the knife which he carried in his pocket. His companion happening to awake, and observing what passed, leaped from the bed. Being secure from danger, and the moon shining into the room, he stood to view the event; when to his inexpressible surprise the infatuated sportsman gave several deadly

stabs in the very place where, a moment before, the throat of his friend lay." Professor Fischer* describes a remarkable case observed by himself and others when a boy at school. A young man, apparently of a hale constitution, and far from exhibiting any symptoms of a nervous temperament, was habitually subject to somnambulism. His fits came on regularly about ten o'clock at night. The scene was a large apartment, containing sixty beds in four rows. He ran about violently, romped, wrestled, and boxed with his companions, who enjoyed the sport at his expense. "I think," says the Professor, "I can perfectly well remember that, while running, he always held his hand before him, with his fingers stretched out. He was remarkably agile, and would leap over the beds, and his companions could scarcely ever catch him. When he escaped through the door, he flew through a long gallery to his own apartment. There he rested, frequently taking up a book, and reading softly or with a loud voice, conducting-if my recollection serves me accurately-his outstretched fingers over the lines. His eyes were alternately open and closed; but even when open they were incapable of vision, being convulsively drawn upward, showing only the white. The general belief that somnambulists see by means of the points of their fingers, as well as the observation that while running our somnambulist always carried his hands and outstretched fingers before him, as if these were his organs of sight, as also his reading (as it appeared to us) by means of the points of his fingers, led us to the idea of tying gloves upon his hands and stockings upon his legs. Besides, we had been informed that during his nightly wanderings he had been known to play at skittles, a game he was very fond of when awake, and that he had always accurately counted the number of pins knocked down by stretching out his fingers in a direction toward them, so correctly, indeed, that it was impossible to deceive or impose upon him. In short, we seized the opportunity of his most profound sleep and insensibility to tie on the gloves and stockings. At the usual time he rose up and sprang out of bed; but, although we began to tease and provoke him, he did not move from the spot, but appeared puzzled and perplexed, and groped and tumbled about like a blind or drunken man. At length he perceived the cause of his distress, and tore off the gloves with great violence. Scarcely were his hands uncovered when he started up in a lively manner, and threw the gloves with ironical indignation upon the ground, making a ludicrous observation upon the means taken to blind him; and then he began to run through the apartment as formerly." This af

"Der Somnambulismus; von Professor Fischer." Basel, 1839.

fords a striking parallel to the phenomena described by the blind Dr. Blacklock * as his experience of distinguishing persons and objects in his dreams.

Some physiologists of course repudiate all supernatural agency in dreams, and Dr. Winslow dashes aside their romance in a few sentences. He says: "Soft dreams are a slight irritation of the brain, often in nervous fever announcing a favorable crisis. Frightful dreams are a sign of determination of blood to the head. Dreams of blood and red objects are signs of inflammatory conditions. Dreams about rain and water are often signs of diseased mucous membranes and dropsy. . . . Nightmare, with great sensitiveness, is a sign of determination of blood to the chest." And so on. But such causes are insufficient to account for coherent mental phenomena in dreams, the circumstances of which are marvelously verified by subsequent experience.

A dream of the day of judgment has converted many people, and changed the whole tenor of their lives. Some dreams, by their persistent character, have totally unhinged men's minds, and dreaming and somnambulism have lapsed into insanity; for the partition which separates them is often slight indeed. Physicians have frequently remarked the similarity between dreaming and insanity: “In insanity, the erroneous impressions, being permanent, affect the conduct; in dreaming, no influence on the conduct is produced because the vision is dissipated on awaking. Moreover, in dreams the bodily functions are generally shut up from outward impressions, whereas the maniac is often but too wide awake, and his actions become dangerous." When a dreamer imagines that "his body is stretched on a wisp of straw, and sheltered by the cobwebs of a barn, or else, when reclined on a couch of ivory, he sinks all helpless and distressed into a furious whirlpool," his nightly thoughts differ not much from the ravings of a lunatic, and, as he rises from his bed with the glorious sun streaming through his lattice, he needs to thank God that it was only a dream.

Hence we conclude that some dreams originate from ourselves, from our bodily sensations and mental proclivities, and as such are often vain and idle like ourselves, while some are positively devilish, and solicit us to evil. Others have a warning effect, and may point us to brighter and better things; and, if we believe with our great dramatist, that sleep it is which

"knits up the raveled sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast"

* Abercrombie.

it would be well to think of our dreams as one before us thought of them: "I will not lightly pass over my very dreams; so neither night nor day shall be spent unprofitably; the night shall teach me what I am, the day what I should be; for Sleep is Death's younger brother, and so like him that I never dare trust him without my prayers." There is indeed a very serious thought connected with this subject of dreaming in sleep;

for we can not hide from ourselves the fact that there is a sleep of death, a sleep more irrevocable than the laws of the Medes and Persians, in which Memory may have to play its part.

'. . . . To die—to sleepTo sleep-perchance to dream ;—ay, there's the rub ; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil!"

Temple Bar.

IT

INFERNAL MACHINES.

T was not until more than two centuries after the famous 5th of November that the idea of employing a fulminating process against the chief of the state was adopted in France, where, twice within two months, an attempt was made to blow up Napoleon, at that time First Consul. It was, in each instance, on the occasion of his visiting the opera that Napoleon, according to the designs of his enemies, was to be blown to pieces. The Paris Opera-House has, in fact, been the chosen scene for carrying out a large number of murderous projects directed against the ruler of the country. In addition to the two attempts made upon the life of Napoleon I., it was in front of the opera that the Orsini shells were thrown which so nearly disposed of Napoleon III. in the year 1857. It was beneath the portico, too, of the old opera in the Rue Richelieu that the Duc de Berri was assassinated; but it would be too long a story to give even the briefest account of attacks made upon sovereigns by ordinary means.

It was intended to employ against Napoleon I. a destructive method of a mixed kind. Rockets and grenades were to be hurled from various parts of the theatre into his box. But, to insure his death, conspirators armed with daggers and pistols were stationed in the corridor into which the box opened, with orders to shoot and stab him if, escaping the missiles, he attempted to make his way to the outer doors. The conspiracy, according to Napoleon himself, who told the story at St. Helena, was revealed by a captain in the line. "What limit is there," said Napoleon, "to the combinations of folly and stupidity? This officer had a horror of me as consul, but adored me as general. He was anxious that I should be torn from my post, but he would have been very sorry that my life should be taken. I ought to be made prisoner, he said, in no way injured, and sent to the army to continue to defeat the enemies of France. The other conspirators laughed in his face, and, when he saw them distribute daggers and that they were going be

yond his intentions, he proceeded at once to denounce the whole affair." The informer having been brought before him, Napoleon at first suggested to the Prefect of Police that he should not be allowed to go to the opera that evening. It was decided, however, that his absence would awaken the suspicions of the other conspirators; and everything was allowed to go on as though the plot had not been discovered. The sentinels outside Napoleon's box were ordered to let no one approach who had not the password, issued immediately before the Consul's departure for the opera; for it was known that a certain number of conspirators had taken up their position in the corridor to extinguish the lights at the moment when the rockets were to be fired and the shells thrown. The opera of the evening was “Les Horaces," a work composed by Porta to a libretto founded on Corneille's tragedy; and the signal for action was to be the delivery of a passage in which the Horatii swear to conquer or die. Then all the lights were to be put out, and, apart from the shells intended specially for the Emperor, fireworks were to be cast indiscriminately about the theatre, while the general confusion was to be increased by cries of "Fire!" The leaders of the plot, like the claqueurs of the present day, had attended the rehearsal of the opera so as to note the cue given to them for their grand demonstration and attack. But, at the performance, the Prefecture of Police was also largely represented, and there were, altogether, upward of two hundred persons in the theatre who were paying no attention to the music except with a view to a particular quartet, in which the old Horatius opened the piece by calling upon his sons to swear "que le dernier de vous sera mort ou vainqueur." The instrumental introduction to the quartet was, however, the signal for action chosen by the police; and before the singing began the conspirators were all in custody in one of the vestibules of the theatre.

The second attempt, on a grand scale, against the life of Napoleon was executed two months later, on the 24th of December, when on his way to the opera he was made the mark of an "infernal machine." Haydn's "Creation was to be given, and the performance had already commenced, when, during the soft adagio of the introduction, the dull report of an explosion was heard. Immediately afterward Napoleon entered his box, attended by the principal members of his staff. Josephine's love of dress had saved him. As she was getting into the carriage she thought of making some change in her toilet, and, going back to her apartments for a few minutes, caused a delay but for which Bonaparte and herself would, following the other carriages, have passed before the infernal machine at the moment of its explosion.

To pass to Louis Philippe's reign, the most remarkable thing in connection with Fieschi's crime was the entire absence of political, or, indeed, any other apparent motive. Fieschi was neither a Republican nor a Legitimist; nor had he any personal grievance against the King, whose life he had resolved to take. Nothing but an insane love of notoriety seems to have impelled him toward the commission of the crime. A Genoese by birth, he had served in the French army under Napoleon, and had made the campaign of 1812 in Russia. He left the army in 1818 with the grade of sergeant. Afterward joining Murat's expedition, he went to Calabria, where he was taken prisoner, but, being regarded by the Neapolitan Government as a Frenchman, was allowed to go free. During a portion of the year 1816 Fieschi occupied himself with horse-stealing, forgery, and similar pursuits-a course of life which brought him, without much delay, to a penitentiary, where he was confined for ten years. On his liberation he was engaged as a workman at some factory near Paris; but, honest labor not being congenial to his disposition, he entered the police as a spy. With his functions as mouchard he combined other duties; and the opportunity being afforded him of misappropriating a large sum of money intended for the payment of workmen he gladly availed himself of it. In 1835, finding himself at liberty and without employment, he devoted himself to the construction of a so-called "infernal machine "-a sort of mitrailleuse, with no fewer than twenty-five barrels. Fieschi mounted this species of battery in the third floor of a house which overlooked that portion of the boulevards along which Louis Philippe was to pass after holding a review in commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the events which had placed him on the throne. What Fieschi proposed to gain by his project for destroying the King was never made known. The man was VOL. VIII.-36

morbidly vain, but it is difficult to believe that a mere passion for notoriety could alone have dictated such an act. The construction of the machine must have cost a considerable amount of money; and it appeared from the trial that he had been supplied with funds by several workmen, his accomplices. It was, however, found impossible to connect with the attempt any, even the remotest, political design. On June 28, 1836, as the King, or rather the King's staff, passed in front of the machine, it was exploded and with terrible results; for Mortier, chief of the staff, and several officers fell mortally wounded. The King, however, escaped with but slight injuries occasioned by the rearing and plunging of his horse. Fieschi immediately after the explosion took to flight, and, wounded as he was by the bursting of one of the barrels, escaped into an adjoining courtyard, where he was arrested and taken first to prison and afterward to a hospital. Cured of his wounds, he was brought to trial and sentenced to death; and his demeanor throughout the examination went far to show that the origin of his insane and infamous attempt was, indeed, nothing more than an absurd longing to become known to the world, in no matter what character. He assumed in court the attitudes and gestures of a stage-brigand, and made a point of kissing his hand from time to time, and as often as possible, to his mistress, who made signs to him in return.

Some twenty years later, in 1857, Paris was again the scene of an attempt to destroy the chief of the state by a means which deserved, quite as much as the machine invented by Fieschi, the epithet of "infernal." Felice Orsini made his attack upon Napoleon III. with hand-shells containing a new and terrible fulminating powder composed, if not invented, by himself. Orsini was a born conspirator. His father had conspired before him; and the young Orsini was enabled by his father to take part in various plots before he had attained the age of reason or even of manhood. The result of the paternal teaching was, that Felice found himself at twenty-four years of age sentenced to penal labor for life. Restored to liberty in 1846, he took part in various insurrections. When the revolutionary era of 1848 to 1849 had come to an end, Orsini visited England, where he made the acquaintance of Mazzini, who intrusted him with several secret missions. In 1854 he was arrested in Hermannstadt, the capital of Transylvania, and taken to the fortress of Mantua, whence, in 1856, he succeeded in making his escape. In 1857 he returned to England, and there published an account of his captivity, entitled 'The Austrian Dungeons in Italy." This same year he undertook the most formidable, and, for excellent rea

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