The circumstantial character of the information
given in the dream, takes it out of the general class of impressions of
the kind which are occasioned by the fortuitous coincidence of actual
events with our sleeping thoughts. On the other hand, few would suppose
that the laws of nature were suspended, and a special communication from
the dead to the living permitted, for the purpose of saving Mr. R----d a
certain number of hundred pounds. The author's theory is, that the dream
was only the recapitulation of information which Mr. R----d had really
received from his father while in life, but which at first he merely
recalled as a general impression that the claim was settled. It is not
uncommon for persons to recover, during sleep, the thread of ideas which
they have lost during their waking hours. It may be added, that this
remarkable circumstance was attended with bad consequences to Mr. R----d,
whose health and spirits were afterwards impaired by the attention which
he thought himself obliged to pay to the visions of the night.
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