Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847

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Various. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847

M. DE TOCQUEVILLE.1

LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS

IV.—REAL GHOSTS, AND SECOND-SIGHT

V.—TRANCE AND SLEEPWALKING

FOUR SONNETS BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

I. LIFE

II. LOVE

III. HEAVEN AND EARTH. 1845

IV. THE PROSPECT. 1845

ROSAURA: A TALE OF MADRID

THE VISIBLE AND TANGIBLE

A METAPHYSICAL FRAGMENT

CHARLES DE BERNARD

A CONSULTATION

BELISARIUS,—WAS HE BLIND?

ANCIENT AND MODERN BALLAD POETRY.53

THE DEMON LADY

EPITAPH OF CONSTANTINE KANARIS

FROM THE GERMAN OF WILHELM MÜLLER

SCOTTISH MELODIES. BY DELTA

THE MAID OF ULVA

LAMENT FOR MACRIMMON

THE SCOTCH MARRIAGE BILL

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Dear Archy,—You will not expect, after my last letter, that under the title of real ghosts, I am going to introduce to your acquaintance a set of personages resembling Madame Tussaud's wax-work, done in air—filmy gentlemen, in spectral blue coats, gray trousers, Wellingtons; and semi-transparent ladies clad from the looms of the other world. No, Nicolai's case, has extinguished that delusion. The visitant and his dress are figments of the imagination always. They are as unreal and subjective as the figures we see in our dreams. They are fancy's progeny, having under pressing circumstances acting rank, as realities. But, Archy, do dreams never come true? Let them plead their own cause. Enter Dream.

A Scottish gentleman and his wife were travelling four or five years ago in Switzerland. There travelled with them a third party, an intimate friend, a lady, who some time before had been the object of a deep attachment on the part of a foreigner, a Frenchman. Well, she would have nothing to say to him, but she gave him a good deal of serious advice, which I conclude she thought he wanted, and ultimately promoted, or was a cognisant party to his marriage with a lady, whom she likewise knew. The so-married couple were now in America. And the lady, my friend's fellow-traveller, occasionally heard from them, and had every reason to believe they were both in perfect health. One morning on their meeting at breakfast she told her companions, that she had had a very impressive dream the night before, which had recurred twice. The scene was a room in which lay a coffin, near which stood her ex-lover, in a luminous transfigured resplendent state; his wife was by, looking much as usual. The dream had caused the lady some misgivings; but her companions exhorted her to view it as a trick of her fancy, and she was half persuaded so to do. The dream, however, was right notwithstanding. In process of time, letters arrived announcing the death after a short illness of the French gentleman, within the twenty-four hours in which the vision appeared. Exit Dream, with applause.

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In sleep we cease to support ourselves, and fall, if we were previously standing or sitting. That is, we cease to attend to the maintenance of our equilibrium. We forget the majority of our dreams: attention is the soul of recollection.

Our dreams are often nonsense, or involve absurdities or ideas which we know to be false. The check of the attention is absent.

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