The subject of Chiromancy is a fruitful one. Our author quotes no less than forty-five authors, who have written voluminously on the subject; we pass them all by. Palmistry is now left only to the Norwood gipsies, who, by the way, have, we believe, been rooted out of that far-famed locality. It used to be practiced in a somewhat different fashion, in the past century, in both the military and civil branches of the service, when they were wretchedly underpaid, and had their palms crossed to induce them to wink at all sorts of iniquity. As far as regards them, it has long— long passed away. The circumstance of a judge finding a bag of pagodas upon his breakfasttable on the morning when an important cause was coming on for hearing, or of a commissariat officer having the like temptation placed in his way when tenders for contracts were to be opened, are now merely matters of tradition: would that they had never been, and that the same purity could be found in the lower branches

of the administration; but the evil is not to be thoroughly eradicated by human legislation or human vigilance.

We shall close this chapter with two short anecdotes from Dr. Bräuner, on good and bad omens; and we think that the reader will agree with us that we have tolerably compressed one hundred and two pages of the author. We pass over all the good and bad omens, hundreds of which will occur to the minds of our readers, to mention the only one that bears upon these anecdotes; viz., that it is a bad sign when the Devil is seen standing at the foot of the bed of a dying man, as Giles Scroggins' ghost did at that of the faithless Margaret. We should think it worse when he stands alongside of the bed of a man in full vigour, whose pulses are too apt to respond to his suggestions; but, we are at our "old lunes," digression, and must proceed at once to the anecdotes.

The first is recorded in the Life of St. Martin, of whom it is stated, that when about to expire, he saw Satan on his "post of observation," to whom he sharply, and, somewhat uncivilly, called out, "Quid tu hic stas, horrenda bestia? nihil habes in me." "Why do you stand there, you horrid beast? you have nothing to do with me;" whereon the Devil left him to die in peace.

We fear that Saint Martin, although he has been canonized, was not anything like so good a Christian as the poor man of whom the other story is told, and who, when lying in the last agony, saw a tall man standing by his bed with a huge parchment, and a pen and ink in his hand. "Recount to me all your sins, one by one," said the Devil, "that I may write them down, and carry the record to God." The poor man bethought himself of Scripture, and said, "The seed of the woman shall bruise thy head;" on which the Devil disappeared.

CHAPTER XXIX.

"Ipsi sibi somnia fingunt."

VIRG., Eclog., viii., 108.

"They feign dreams unto themselves."

OF THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS, AND

OF THE FORETELLING OF DEATH BY THE

APPEARANCE OF SPIRITS.

When we consider the marvellous constitution of man, and that, owing to his possessing an immortal spirit which is ever active,

although the external senses remain unchained in slumber, he is the only being which possesses the faculty of dreaming, properly so called, we shall not be surprised at so much stress having been laid, in all ages, upon the interpretation of dreams. We have said that he alone possesses the faculty properly so called, for, although dogs and other animals occasionally dream, the images presented to them are merely raised by the exercise of memory, and that extending only to incidents which have been immediately antecedent to the impressions produced on the brain. The mind of man, however, goes forth into the regions of fancy, and roves over whatever is to be culled from either the material or spiritual world, affected considerably, nevertheless, by the state of the bodily health, and external causes, the two principal of which are the senses of touch and hearing, which are the two that are the least dormant during sleep. The clearest and most connected dreams are