is, he will now do well. You need keep him no longer as a patient, but may discharge him. In the Rules of Civility, 1685 (translated from the French), we read, p. 64: "If his lordship chances to sneeze, you are not to bawl out, God bless you, sir,' but pulling off your hat, bow to him handsomely, and make that obsecration to yourself." In the Schcole of Slovenrie, or Cato turn'd wrong side outward, translated out of Latine into English Verse, to the use of all English Christendome except Court and Cittie; by R. F., Gent., 4to. Lond. 1605, p. 6, is the following: "When you would sneeze, strait turne yourselfe into your neibour's face: As for my part, wherein to sneeze, I know no fitter place; It is an order, when you sneeze good men will pray for you; The original of this ironical advice runs thus: "Sternutare volens vicino obvertito vultum : Quo sciat ergo suum te sternutasse sodalem, Illius ad faciem sit tua versa velim. Tu tamen in simili causa bona nulla preceris, The following are found in Roberti Keuchenii Crepundia, p. 113: Sternutamentum. "Sternutamentum medici prodesse loquuntur: Idem. "Sim vitium, sim morbusve, Salus mihi sufficit: ana De nihili præscribe pari medicamine: prosit." It is received at this day in the remotest parts of Africa. So we read in Codignus, that upon a sneeze of the emperor of Monotapha, there passed acclamations through the city. And as remarkable an example there is of the same custom in the remotest parts of the East, in the Travels of Pinto. Sir Thomas Browne supposes that the ground of this ancient custom was the opinion the ancients held of sternutation, which they generally conceived to be a good sign or a bad, and so upon this motion accordingly used a "Salve," or Zev owσov, as a gratulation from the one, and a deprecation from the other. "Omnia quæ sensu volvuntur vota diurno, Vanaque nocturnis meta cavetur equis. Me quoque musarum stadium, sub nocte silenti Claudiani in lib. iii. de Raptu Proserpinæ. Prefat. "Dreams are but the rais'd Cotgrave's English Treasury of Wit and Language, p. 263. DREAMS, as the Sacred Writings inform us, have on certain occasions been used as the divine mediums of revelation. The consideration of them in this view is foreign to our present purpose. The reader, inquisitive on this head, may be referred to Amyraldus on Divine Dreams, as translated by Ja. Lowde, 8vo. Lond. 1676. Dreams, as connected with our present design, may either come under the head of Omens or that of Divination. Homer has told us that the dream comes 1 He adds : "Some finding, depending it, effects to ensue; others ascribing hereto as a cause, what perhaps but casually or inconnexedly succeeded; they might proceed into forms of speeches, felicitating the good and deprecating the evil to follow." from Jupiter, and in all ages and every kingdom the idea that some knowledge of the future is to be derived from them has always composed a very striking article in the creed of popular superstitions. Cornelius Agrippa, in his Vanity of Sciences, p. 105, speaking of Interpretation of Dreams, says: "To this delusion not a few great philosophers have given not a little credit, especially Democritus, Aristotle, and his follower, Themistius; Sinesius, also, the Platonic; so far building upon examples of dreams, which some accident hath made to be true, that thence they endeavour to persuade men that there are no dreams but what are real. But as to the causes of dreams, both external and internal, they do not all agree in one judgment. For the Platonics reckon them among the specific and concrete notions of the soul. Avicen makes the cause of dreams to be an ultimate intelligence moving the moon in the middle of that light with which the fancies of men are illuminate while they sleep. Aristotle refers the cause thereof to common sense, but placed in the fancy. Averroes places the cause in the imagination. Democritus ascribes it to little images or representatives separated from the things themselves; Albertus, to the superior influences which continually flow from the skie through many specific mediums. The physicians impute the cause thereof to vapours and humours; others to the affections and cares predominant in persons when awake. Others joyn the powers of the soul, celestial influences, and images together, all making but one cause. Arthemidorus and Daldianus have written of the interpretation of dreams; and certain books go about under Abraham's name, whom Philo, in his Book of the Gyants and of Civil Life, asserts to have been the first practiser thereof. Other treatises there are, falsified under the names of David and Salomon, wherein are to be read nothing but meer dreams concerning dreams. But Marcus Cicero, in his Book of Divination, hath given sufficient reasons against A writer in the Gent. Mag. for Sept. 1751, vol. xxi. p. 411, wittily observes that" dreams have for many ages been esteemed as the noblest resources at a dead lift; the dreams of Homer were held in such esteem that they were styled golden dreams; and among the Grecians we find a whole country using no other way for information but going to sleep. The Oropians, and all the votaries of Amphiaraus, are proofs of this assertion, as may be seen in Pausan. Attic." the vanity and folly of those that give credit to dreams, which I purposely here omit." Henry, in his History of Great Britain, vol. iii. p. 575, tells us : "We find Peter of Blois, who was one of the most learned men of the age in which he flourished, writing an account of his dreams to his friend the Bishop of Bath, and telling him how anxious he had been about the interpretation of them; and that he had employed for that purpose divination by the Psalter. The English, it seems probable, had still more superstitious curiosity, and paid greater attention to dreams and omens than the Normans; for, when William Rufus was dissuaded from going abroad on the morning of that day on which he was killed, because the Abbot of Gloucester had dreamed something which portended danger, he is said to have made this reply: 'Do you imagine that I am an Englishman, to be frighted by a dream, or the sneezing of an old woman?" " In the Sapho and Phao of Lilly (the play-writer of the time of Queen Elizabeth), 4to. Lond. 1584, are some pleasant observations on dreams, act iv. sc. 3: "And can there be no trueth in dreams? Yea, dreams bave their trueth. Dreames are but dotings, which come either by things we see in the day, or meates that we eate, and so the common sense pre 1 In Moresini Papatus, p. 162, we read: "Somniandi modus Franciscanorum hinc duxit originem. Antiqui moris fuit oracula et futurorum præscientiam quibusdam adhibitis sacris per insomnia dari: qui mos talis erat, ut victimas cæderent, mox sacrificio peracto sub pellibus cæsarum ovium incubantes, somnia captarent, eaque lymphatica insomnia verissimos exitus sortiri. Alex. ab Alex. lib. iii. c. 26. Et monachi super storea cubant in qua alius frater ecstaticus fuerat somniatus, sacrificat missam, preces et jejunia adhibet, inde ut communiter fit de amoribus per somnia consulit, redditque responsa pro occurrentibus spectris," &c. Bartholinus de Causis contemptæ a Danis, &c. Mortis, p. 678, says Itaque divinationem ex somniis apud omnes propemodum gentes expetitam fuisse certissimum, licet quædam magis præ aliis ei fuerint deditæ. Septentrionales veteres sagaci somniorum interpretatione pollentes fuisse, Arngrimus annotavit ; in tantum sane eorum fuerunt observantes, ut pleraque quæ sibi obversabantur, momentosa crediderint et perfectam idcirco ab eis futurorum hauriendam cognitionem." In the same work, p. 677: Pronunciante apud Ordericum Vitalem Gulielmo Rege dicto Rufo, somnia stertentium sibi referri indignante, quod Anglorum ritus fuerit, pro sternutatione et somnio vetularum, dimittere iter suum, seu negotium." 66 Lowde's Amyraldus, p. 22. Thus Shylock, in the Merchant of Venice, says― "There is some ill a brewing towards my rest, For I did dream of money-bags to-night." Bishop Hall, in his Characters of Vertues and Vices, speaking of the superstitious man, observes: "But, if his troubled fancie shall second his thoughts with the dreame of a faire garden, or greene rushes, or the salutation of a dead friend, he takes leave of the world, and sayes he cannot live. . . There is no dream of his without an interpretation, without a prediction: and, if the event answer not his exposition, he expounds it according to the event." In Sir Thomas Overbury's Character of a faire and happy Milkmaid is the following passage: "Her dreames are so chaste that she dare tell them; only a Fridaies dream is all her superstition, that she conceales for feare of anger." 18. "that if a That, if a 19. That Melton, in his Astrologaster, p. 45, No. 13, says, man be drowsie it is a signe of ill lucke. man dreame of egs or fire, he shall heare of anger. to dreame of the devil is good lucke. 20. That to dreame of gold is good lucke, but of silver ill." He observes in No. 33, in which he will find few of a different opinion, "that it is a very ill signe to be melancholy." In the Country-mans Counsellor, 12mo. Lond. 1633, p. 330, by way of dialogue, I find the following to our purpose: "Q. What credit or certainty is there to be attributed to dreames, and which are held the most portendous and significant?-A. These, as they are observed by experience, and set downe by authors. To dreame of eagles flying over our heads, to dreame of marriages, dancing, and banquetting, foretells some of our kinsfolkes are departed; to dreame of silver, if thou hast it given to thyselfe, sorrow; of gold, good fortune; to lose an axle toth or an eye, the death of some friend; to dream of bloody teeth, the death of the dreamer; to weepe in sleepe, joy; to see one's face in the water, or to see the dead, long life; to handle lead, to see a hare, death; to dream of chickens and birds, ill luck," &c. In the twelfth book of a Thousand Notable Things are the following interpretations of dreams:-"28. If a woman dream she is kindling a fire, it denotes she will be delivered of a male |