As gentle dreams our waking thoughts pursue;
Or, one dream past, we slide into a new;
So close they follow and such wild order keep,
We think ourselves awake and are asleep;
So softly death succeeded life in her:
She did but dream of heaven and she was there."
DEFINITION OF DREAMS.
Dreams are vagaries of the imagination, and in most instances proceed
from external sensations. They take place only when our sleep is
unsound, in which case the brain and nervous system are capable of
performing certain motions. We seldom dream during the first hours of
sleep; perhaps because the nervous fluid is then too much exhausted; but
dreams mostly occur towards the morning, when this fluid has been, in
some measure, restored.
Every thing capable of interrupting the tranquillity of mind and body,
may produce dreams; such are the various kinds of grief and sorrow,
exertions of the mind, affections and passions, crude and undigested
food, a hard and inconvenient posture of the body. Those ideas which
have lately occupied our minds or made a lively impression upon us,
generally constitute the principal subject of a dream, and more or less
employ our imagination, when we are asleep.
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