not content itself with imaginary dishes; but most of our cravings, especially the so-called moral ones, do if my supposition be permissible, that one dreams, to a certain extent, are able and intended to compensate for that accidental non-appearance of sustenance during the day. Why was yesterday's dream full of tenderness and tears, while that of the preceding day was facetious and wanton, and of a previous one adventurous and engaged in a continued gloomy search? Why do I, on one, enjoy indescribable raptures of music; on another, soar and fly up with the fierce delight of an eagle to most distant summits? These fictions, which give scope and utterance to our cravings for tenderness or merriment, or ad-venturousness, or to our longing after music or mountains, —and everybody will have striking instances at hand—are interpretations of our nervous irritation during sleep, very free and arbitrary interpretations of the motions of our blood and intestines, of the pressure of the arm and the coverings, of the sounds of the church bells, the weathercocks, the moths, or other things of the kind. The fact that this text, which, on the whole, remains very much the same for one night as for another, is so differently commented upon, that reason in its poetic efforts, on two successive days, imagines such different cases for the same nervous irritations, may be explained by the prompter of this reason being to-day another than yesterday: another craving requiring to be gratified, exemplified, practised, refreshed and uttered, — this very one, indeed,
