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Oн, Barbara dear, you'll come with me,
And Siss will go with Bly;
We're off to the blueberry frolic to-day,
With hay-cart, buggy, and fly.

In the North-Eastern States, and in New Bruns-
wick and Nova Scotia, there are extensive tracts, called
Barrens," over which fires have swept that have
burned up the very soil itself, and have left nothing be-
hind them but bare rocks, lofty rampikes (the blackened
At the end of
stems of pine-trees), and blueberries.
August all creation begins to think that blueberries taste
nice. The bears camp out on the barrens, and grow
fat and saucy. Clouds of wild pigeons cluster on the
old rampikes as thick as blackberries; and the boys and
girls hitch their horses into hay-waggons half filled with
hay, and off they go "a-berryin'," and pick barrels of
blueberries, which mother afterwards dries and pre-
serves for winter's use. It's great fun, I tell you. Boys,
girls, birds, and bears-all nature goes in for one big
"blueberry frolic;" and if they haven't a good time,
just want to know. - S.S., Jr.

Old Jake's to the fore, with his fiddle and bow,
And Jonathan brings his horn;

We'll end with a dance at the room in the mill,
Then home at the peep of dawn.
Then come, come, come!
Though Margery, Bess, and Sue,
Jenny, and Kate, will all be there,
They ain't a touch to you!

My sakes! you'd make an angel cuss,
You've got such a lot of airs;
Mebbe the Governor's good enough,
If we're such small affairs.

I'm blessed if I don't ask Bella to come,
She'd give her eyes to go;

Her eyes ain't bad-you know they ain't-
And her neck is like the snow.

Then come, come, come!
Though Margery, Bess, and Sue,
Jenny, and Kate, will all be there,
They ain't a touch to you!

Now don't you cry! I only joked :
I knew yer meant to go.

It's 'cause I love you, Barbara dear,
I sometimes hate you so.
Come, let's get spliced; its time, I guess:
Let's drop these pets for life.

I'd like some pets of a different sort,
With Barbara for my wife.

Then come, come, come!
Though Margery, Bess, and Sue,
Jenny, and Kate, will all be there,
They ain't a touch to you!

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From The Edinburgh Review. MAURY ON SLEEP AND DREAMS.*

the greatest marvel of our existence. This, indeed, is one of the numerous inWE place M. Maury's volume at the stances where we look heedlessly upon head of this article, as one of the most phenomena become habitual to us, but recent and remarkable on the phenomena which, seen as solitary or infrequent of Sleep and Dreams. He is among the events, are the subjects of admiration or few authors who have made them the terror. We gaze with careless eye on subject of experiment as well as of sim- the daily march of the Sun through the ple observation. But in reviewing his heavens, on the midnight magnificence of work we shall have occasion to refer to the starry sky. Our wonder and awe are several others, in which these phenomena reserved for the comet or the eclipse. are treated of, either especially or as a We witness the flowing and ebbing of the part of human physiology; many of them' ocean and river tides at their calculated works of much intrinsic value, though times, ignorant or indifferent to the fact not, as we think, wholly exhausting the that these changes express the action of subject. Attention has been somewhat the greatest law of the universe. Traveltoo exclusively given to the physical ling by railroad, we look with idle eyes causes and conditions of sleep, without on those thin wire lines, traversing the adequate notice of the wonderful charac-air beside us, which at the very moment ters which connect it with the other por- are carrying currents of electricity under tion of our existence; rendering it, human bidding- the instantaneous transthrough dreams, an interpreter of many mitters of human language and thought. of those complex relations of mind and We think and speak, we see and hear, body which have perplexed philosophy in breathe and walk, indifferent as to the every age of the world. Sleep and dreams nature of these marvellous functions, or may justly be deemed one of the great how their unceasing work is carried on. mysteries of our nature. Our knowledge And well it is for our happiness, and for of them is far from having reached the the integrity of the functions themselves, realities of a science. Many of the prob- that it should be so. The mere act of lems, physical and psychological, they in- mental attention to any one of them, is volve, are among the most profound in enough to alter or disturb its natural acmental philosophy, and meet us at the tion—a fact of supreme importance in very threshold of the inquiry. And if human physiology. some of these questions do admit of solution, others are so deeply hidden in the ultimate mystery of the mind itself, as to be wholly inscrutable by any means human reason can apply to them.

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All this is eminently true as regards the subject before us. An habitual indifference to the phenomena of sleep is found as much among men of general intelligence as in the mass of the unthinking It may seem strange to many of our world. Assembled in the morning round readers, that we should preface the sub- the breakfast-table, we laugh and jest ject of Sleep and Dreams by phrases thus over tales of the dreams of the night; not grave and forbidding in their tenor. Acts reflecting that these wild and entangled so familiar, and periodically habitual in vagaries - illusions as to persons, time, our lives, might be thought of easy inter-and place are part and parcel of that pretation. The sleep of the rocking- continuous personal identity, which at cradle, of the bed, of the arm-chair or car- other times manifests itself in acts of riage, witnessed in their ever-recurring reason, discourse, and deliberate funcroutine, would seem to tell all that can tions of the will. We are jesting here or need be known on these subjects. But upon things which have perplexed the it is this very familiarity which disguises philosophy of all ages. No less a probtheir nature, and begets indifference to lem than the intimate nature of the human soul is concerned in these phenomena. Where more than a fourth part of life, even in its adult and healthiest

Le Sommeil et les Rêves. Par L. F. ALFRED MAURY, Membre de l'Institut. Troisième Edition. Paris: 1865.

stages, is passed in sleeping and dream- | καταφρονῆσαι ῥάδιον, οὔτε τειθῆναι.) But with ing, these functions must be taken as an his wonted sagacity, he indicates the reaintegral and necessary part of our exist- sons which justify distrust as to a Divine ence not less natural than our waking interposition, thus partial and frivolous in acts, and associated with them by various its alleged ministrations to man. He sees intermediate phenomena, to which we clearly that the event is often the parent shall presently allude. These phenom- of the prophetic dream, and that in the ena, indeed, may be said really to main- endless and complex relations of human tain that unity of the thinking and con- life, it must needfully happen that coinciscious being which in other ways they dences often occur without any real relaseem so strangely to disturb. A line of tion of the events so associated. These rigid demarcation between the states of chapters of Aristotle well deserve perusal waking and sleeping might well appear to as evidences of the clear and acute inteldissever this unity. But no such line ligence of this great philosopher. We exists; and it may readily be shown, have acquired more knowledge of the under appeal to individual experience, physiology of sleep as a vital function, that these various states endlessly commingle and graduate into each other; thus affording mutual illustration, and, as we believe, a more intimate knowledge of the mysteries of the human mind than can be obtained from any other source.

but in its connection with dreams are little advanced beyond what he has told us.

Cicero, in his Second Book "De Divinatione," discusses the question whether there be a divine influence occasionally embodied in dreams still more largely and conclusively. Called upon to confront strong popular superstitions, he meets them fairly and boldly. But be

does little to illustrate the phemomena or philosophy of the functions in question.

While revelling in the beauty of the poetry, ancient and modern, which has found a theme in sleep and dreams — and none more fertile for fancy to work upon

It would hardly be worth while to preface what we have to say on Sleep and Dreams, by citing what ancient writers philosophers, physicians, and poets-yond this negative conclusion, his treatise have bequeathed to us on the subject. The phenomena were to them the same as to us the dream, perhaps, more exciting to the imagination from its connection with various superstitions of the age. Seeing, indeed, the tendency of their mythology and poetry to deify whatever we cannot look for any fresh knowledge is wonderful in man or nature, it is not from this source. Lucretius, indeed, with surprising that they should clothe these his supreme mastery of verse, comprises great functions of life with a personality, something of the philosophy of dreams in vague indeed in kind, but such as to sat- his grand description of them. From isfy the popular and poetic feeling of the Homer and the Greek dramatists down to time. Nor can we wonder that they Virgil, Ovid, Statius, &c., we have abunshould have been the subjects of super-dant passages, finely describing or invokstitious belief, seeing how variously and ing sleep, but it is the poetry only of the strangely these functions are blended with the spiritual part of our nature. Even now, when science imposes so many new checks upon credulity, the inspired dream the "Οναρ έκ Διὸς has its occasional place among other still less rational beliefs of the world.

Aristotle, whose chapters on Sleep and Dreams rank foremost of all that the ancients have left us on the subject, says on the question of inspiration of dreams, that it is not easy "either to despise the evidence or to be convinced by it" (obre

subject. We must not, however, quit this topic without referring to those many striking passages in Shakespeare where the genius of the man revels in the wild, fantastic world of our sleeping existence. He grasped human nature too universally to leave untouched this wonderful part of it. We need but refer to the passages in "Henry IV.," "Richard III.," "Romeo and Juliet," "Macbeth,” and “Midsummer Night's Dream," in proof of what we are saying. The memory of our readers will furnish them with numerous other

passages on the subject from English, mentions his own habits as to sleep, as German, and Italian poets; but none, we being singularly favourable to these meththink, so abounding in thought and poe-ods of observation; and we are well distry as those of Shakespeare.

We have already stated our reason for taking M. Maury's volume as the text for our article. We learn from his preface that he has zealously devoted himself to the subject for a long series of years; embodying his researches in successive publications, of which this is the latest. These researches comprise certain curious methods of experiment, ingeniously devised, and, as far as we know, never systematically used before. We cannot better illustrate these methods than by giving his own words. After speaking of the need of long, continuous, and cautious observation, to obtain any assured results, he adds:

Je m'observe tantôt dans mon lit, tantôt dans mon fauteuil, au moment où le sommeil me gagne. Je note exactement dans quelles dispositions je me trouvais avant de m'endomir; et je prie la personne qui est près de moi, de m'éveiller à des instants plus ou moins éloignés du moment où je me suis assoupi. Réveillé en sursaut, la mémoire du rêve, auquel on m'a soudainement arraché, est encore présenté à

mon esprit, dans la fraîcheur même de l'impression. Il m'est alors facile de rapprocher les détails de ce rêve des circonstances où je m'étais placé pour m'endomir. Je consigne

posed to believe in the results thus obtained. Nevertheless, the chances of error are so great in this land of shadows, that we should be glad to find the research taken up by others, with such variations as individual temperament may suggest. It is obvious that the latter point is one of singular importance. The sleep and dreams of one man interpret only partially and doubtfully those of another, and we must check as well as multiply the proofs before setting down anything as certain. In common life, the very nature of a dream gives a sanction to a loose or exaggerated relation of it. No one is disposed to quarrel with the relater for filling up gaps in his dream with the little parentheses needed to complete his story; or, if a little of the marvellous be brought into the subject - one of those strange coincidences to which the vision of the night contributes its part we generally find truth more deeply trespassed upon. Stories, vague and loose in their origin, are made more compact by successive additions, and often go on from one generation to another, acquiring a sort of spurious credit from age, and from the impossibility of refuting them by any living evidence.

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sur un cahier ces observations, comme le fait We come now more directly to the subun médecin pour les cas qu'il observe. Et ject before us, embodying, as M. Maury en relisant le répertoire que je me suis has done, under a single title our considainsi dressé, j'ai saisi entre des rêves qui eration of these great acts of life - Sleep s'étaient produits à diverses époques de ma and Dreaming. They cannot, indeed, be vie, des coincidences, des analogies dont la treated of separately. Their conjunction similitude des circonstances qui les avaient is so general, if not universal, and they provoquées m'ont bien souvent donné la clef. are linked together by such complex ties, M. Maury goes on to state the neces- that we are almost compelled to view sity of having a coadjutor with him in this them as a single function of our being. inquiry, not solely for the purpose here Still there are certain considerations mentioned of being awakened at particu- which must be admitted as possible lar times, but also for the due observation grounds of distinction. We cannot prove of what may be called the utterances of that the conjunction of sleep and dreams sleep. Sounds made and words spoken is absolute and universal. There may be by the sleeper, must be recorded in rela- times and conditions of sleep, in which tion to the dreams afterwards remem- there is a total inactivity of brain — a bered. Even simple attitudes and move-complete absence of those images and ments of the body, especially such as ex- trains of thought which form the dream. press agitation, require the same record, In connection with this comes the furand for the same purpose. M. Maury ther consideration, that sleep is a neces

sity of our nature a state required for | Sir William Hamilton, Sir Henry Hol the rest and repair of functions, both bod-land, Drs. Carpenter, Laycock, and Macily and mental, which are incapable of nish, have severally, in one way or other, being repaired in any other way. The encountered this problem. Lord Brougsame cannot be said of dreams. They ham has grappled with it, amidst the many depend on functions of the brain, which, other questions which exercised his bold though unchecked by the senses and the and facile pen. He considers dreams an will, and distorted in their mode of ac- incidental not a constant part of sleep tion, are yet identical in kind with those a sort of fringe edging its boders. Sir which are exercised in evolving the W. Hamilton, on the contrary, believes thoughts and emotions of the waking that no condition of sleep exists without state. The notion of repair and restora- dreaming; but all have felt the difficulty tion can hardly therefore be associated of dealing only with incomplete or negawith the act of dreaming. Frequent ex- tive evidence, and the question remains perience, moreover, teaches us that what in abeyance for future research or hypothwe call "unrefreshing nights are at- esis to work upon. tended by troublous dreams; and, though this may often admit of other explanation, yet is the fact significant as regards the distinction just drawn. The repose and restoration obtained from sleep would seem to be in an inverse ratio to the intensity of the dreams attending it.

Hypothesis and speculation may well indeed be awakened by this particular mystery of our nature. In theory we cannot affirm that a total suspension of the mental functions is more impossible than the actual changes they undergo in dreaming, in the delirium of fever, insanity, intoxication, and other morbid conditions of the brain. The sleep of the newly-born infant cannot be construed otherwise than as a state in which sensorial actions either do not exist, or are limited to some vague recurrence of the simple impressions made on the untutored senses. An ordinary fainting-fit leaves no trace behind of any thing having passed during the time of deliquium. To the patient this time is a nullity of his being. It may be that the memory only is annihilated, that the mind never actually ceases in its workings; but this view is little more than a subterfuge to meet a difficulty which we cannot otherwise encounter.

Is there then any condition or moment of sleep absolutely devoid of dreaming? a state in which all thoughts and emotions, whether connected or vaguely incongruous, are annulled, and our mental or conscious existence lost in the simple physical condition of sleep? The import of this question will readily be understood. The answer might seem easy, but is far from being so. Positive proof is wholly wanting, and the only evidence attainable is that derived from the memory of the dreamer, or the observations of those who watch him during those hours of which he has no remembrance. It is certain from such observation, and indeed from common experience, that dreams are of Plunging thus far into the metaphysical very frequent occurrence, of which all in-perplexities of this question, whether the stant memory is lost. Aristotle, in dis- mind, or sensorial consciousness, is actucussing this very topic, puts the question, ally lost during certain times of sleep, why some sleep occurs with dreams, oth- and recovered, as far as dreaming can be er sleep without? or, if always dreaming, called recovery, we are bound to notice a why some dreams are remembered, others doctrine closely connected with this innot? The question, so propounded, marks quiry, to which the name and writings of the clear intelligence of the philosopher. Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Laycock, and others In the memory or oblivion of dreams we have justly given authority. This is, the trace their connexion with our physical hypothesis of "Unconscious Cerebraorganization, and thus gain a step, though tion"—so termed because it supposes a slight one, to the better understanding the brain capable, under certain condiof their nature. tions, of acts or changes utterly without mental consciousness, yet strictly analo

The doubt just denoted as to the universality of dreams during sleep, has con-gous to those through which it ministers tinued to our time. If ever resolved, it must be by some such methods as those adopted by M. Maury. He does not himself, indeed, meet the question in its distinct form, or dwell upon its profound metaphysical relations. Other writers on the subject, among whom we may name

to mental functions-acts of intellect, detached, as it were, from the intellectual personality of our being. This is a bold assumption; but curious cases are produced which might seem to authenticate it. Such are instances where some ques❘tion left on the mind at bed-time unsolved,

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