The gates of Death are open night and day.

Dryden's Translat of Æneid. B, 6.

The dreams which have chiefly seized the imagination, and affected the credulity of man-kind, have been those which appear to have been connected with impending calamities and death, and which, from the importance of their intention, have been thought to justify the supposition of preternatural inspiration, or of the enlargement of the divine powers of the mind, on its approach to the scenes of eternity and spiritual existence.

A belief in the reality of such intimations has very commonly obtained; but upon an accurate consideration of the accounts conveyed to us from antiquity, it will derive little or no confirmation from pagan history, and appear not to have any foundation, except as esta-blished on the relations contained in those Scriptures, which record the testimonies of re-vealed religion.

As the prophetic declarations of the pa-triarchs, which occasionally revealed the fate of their descendants, were often delivered with their expiring breath, the idea originated in fact, and concurring with the most affecting appre-hensions of mankind, was naturally cherished. wherever it was conveyed by tradition.

Traces of the notion are discernible in the most ancient heathen writings. The heroes of Homer predict, at their death, the fate of their victorious adversaries.

Intimations of impending destruction were indeed universally believed to obtain, and various were the fancies of popular superstition.

Euripides, in his tragedy of Rhesus, repre-sents the charioteer as describing himself, when he slept on the fatal night that Ulysses and Diomede dealt destruction in the Thracian camp, to have seen

"Forms tremendous hovering in his dream," and to have beholden

Two visionary wolves ascend Those coursers'backs which he was wont to guide, Oft lashing with their tails they forced them on; Indignant breathing as they champed the bit, And struggling with dismay.

Just images of the warriors, who

"Bore the steeds away, and glittering car."

The accounts, however, which appear to have had any claim to be considered as au-thentic, in addition to those before considered, are very few; such as they are, they shall be produced;

Herodotus relates, that Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus, and brother of the tyrant Hippias, the night before the festival of the Panathenaea, beheld in a vision an impressive figure, which admonished him in the following ambiguous terms of his approaching fate, to be inflicted on him by Aristogiton and Armo-tlius, the assertors of public liberty.

Brave Lion, thy uncenquer'd soul compose.

To meet, unmoved, intolerable woes.

In vain th' oppressor would elude his fate,

The vengeance of the gods is sure, though late *.

Aristotle relates, that Eudemius, a Cyprian and his friend, on arriving at Phaecas, a noble city of Thessaly, on his way to Macedonia, oppressed under the tyranny of Alexander, was taken so ill, that all the physicians despaired of his recovery, when he saw in his sleep a beautiful youth, who assured him that he would soon recover, and that Alexander would die an a lew days, and Eudemius return home five years after; that it immediately happened that Eudemius recovered, and the tyrant was slain by his wife's brother; and that towards the conclusion of the fifth year, when Eudemius began to hope, on the encouragement of his dream, to return from Sicily to Cyprus, he fell in battle at Syracuse; when, for the verification of the whole of the dream, it was in-terpreted, that the soul, on parting from the body, must be understood to return to its na-tive place *.

* Beloe's Translation of Herod. B.v. Ch.55.

Plato represents Socrates as saying, when in public custody, to Crito his friend, that he expected death on the third day; for that he had seen in a dream a woman of remarkable figure and beauty in a white vesture, who addressed him in a verse of Homer †, prophetic of his death, at that period.

Cyrus was a character too distinguished to disappear from the world without some omen to intimate his decease. Xenophon represents him, after having performed some religious offices, and distributed donations with his ac-customed liberality to his subjects, to have dreamed, on retiring to sleep in his palace, that a person with a form more august than human appeared to him, and thus addressed him: "Prepare thyself, Cyrus, for thou art about to go to the gods." In the full persuasion that the dream was a divine warning, Cyrus is farther stated to have performed sacrifices to Jupiter and the Sun, and other gods, on the top of the mountains, as was the Persian cus-tom; to have offered up thanks for the distinguished blessings which he had experienced, without being elated above the remembrance of the dependent condition of his nature; and to have supplicated an auspicious termination of his illustrious life, and blessings on his fa-mily, friends, and country. Three days after which, having delivered an impressive speech to his children, and the chief magistrates of Persia, he expired *. This may be considered as one of those fictitious accounts with which historians are accustomed to embellish their works. The futility of these accounts is illustrated often by the circumstances and consequences which are described. Alexander, for instance, is said to have dreamed, that the hand of Cassander should be fatal to him. To what purpose could the intimation be given? It was not a punishment, for it afforded occa-sion only for a display of a generous disregard of the dream: it was not a salutary warning, for it excited no respect, and warded off no injury; and we may presume, that if a superior being had judged right to interfere for the se-curity of the conqueror, he would have conveyed information that would have challenged attention †.

* Fulgos. Ex. Lib. i. C. 5. p. 131. † B. ix. 1.363.

Equally fruitless was the intimation reported Valerius Maximus, L. i. C, 7, to have been given to Aterius Rufus, a Roman knight, who, agreeably to a dream, was accidentally wounded at the Theatre by the trident of one of the Retiarii, who had compelled his adversary to the place where Aterius Rufus sat as a spectator*.

Valerius Maximus informs us, that Calphur * nia, the neglected wife of Julius Caesar, dreamed, on the night preceding the assassination of her husband, that she saw him lying in her bosom dead and covered with wounds : that in consequence she and others had incessantly entreated him to stay away the next day from the senate; but that he, unwilling to appear influenoed by a woman's dream, or per-iiaps confiding in the fidelity of the public, went to the senate, and was murdered by Brutus and his associates. The flattery of Valerius represents this as an intimation from the gods of the approaching admission of mature virtue into heaven but we see nothing in the revelation of impending murder, that could convey grateful tidings to its object, and can consider it only as one of the many prodigies fabricated with lavish credulity on the death of the illustrious man.

* Hist L. viii.

* Valerius Maxim. L. i. C. v.

There was not any greater use in the dream of the emperor Mauritius, who is said to have foreseen that he and his whole family should be killed by Phocas. The emperor, if he believed the dream to have been divinely suggested, was censurable for neglecting his danger, merely in consideration of the low condition of Phocas, who was a notary in his army, as the gods might be religiously believed to perform great actions by feeble instruments; but we know not on what ground he could be expected to regard the dream at all, though it is related, that he and his whole progeny were put to death agreeably to it by the command of Phocas *.

* Fulgos. L. i. C. 5. p. 124.

The fate of Caius Gracchus is said to hart been denounced to him by his brother, who in a dream informed him, that he could not possibly escape the fate which had overwhelmed himself when driven from the Capitol *.

Who however does not see, that it might naturally happen, that Caius, conscious of the same guilty ambition with his brother, should be terrified with the forebodings of. a mind apprehending the same fate?

So Caracalla, who was assassinated, is related to have dreamed, that his father threatened to Skill him, as he had before slain his brother †.

Sylla, in his retirement at Cumae, imagined in a dream, that he was summoned by Fate, In the apprehension of the accomplishment of his dream, he apprized his friends of his approaching death; and having made his testament he was seized with a fever, and expired on the night which succeeded his dream *•

* Valerius Maxim, † Dion. Cass. L. vii.

Glaphyra, the wife of Archelaus before men-tioned, who had been married to Alexander, his brother, and afterwards to Juba, king of Lybia, and who, on the divorce of Mariamne, had been united to Archelaus, dreamed that Alexander her first husband, by whom she had children, stood by her bedside, and said to her, "Glaphyra, thou hast eminently confirmed the truth of that observation, that wives are generally unfaithful to their husbands; for whereas thou wert married to me in thy virginity, and also hast children by me, thou didst yet make trial of a second match; and, not content with inflicting that injury upon me, hast taken to thy bed a third husband, and he my brother; but I will free thee from this reproach, and before long challenge thee for my own." Glaphyra, being troubled with the dream, the effect of an awakened conscience, told it to the ladies of her acquaintance, and not long after expired, the victim probably of guilty fears. Josephus considers this dream as a certain argument of the immortality of the soul, and of Divine providence.

* Appian.

Vespasian, it is related, fancied in his sleep that he beheld a balance suspended in the imperial palace, in one scale of which were Claudius and Nero, and in the other the emperor and his sons; by which was understood to be intimated an equal allotment of period to the reigns of each party.

But images in sleep deceive the mind,

When friends removed by death we seem to find *.

The emperor Marcion is said to have dreamed, that he saw the bow of Attila, king of the Huns, broken ; and soon after to have beard, that this scourge of the empire died on the night on which the dream oecurred.

* Lacret. L. v. 1.64,65.

Upon the whole it appears evident, that the dreams here referred to are not sufficiently credible, important, and well authenticated, to demonstrate the reality of preternatural com-munications.