place which was distant a day's journey from the residence of his mother, he beheld the solemnization of her funeral. The dream being mentioned to many, and the time punctually observed, certain intelligence was brought to him on the succeeding day, that at the same hour his dream happened, his mother expired*.

Jovius relates that, A. D. 1523, Sfortia dreamed in a morning slumber, that having fallen into a river he was in great danger of being drowned, and that on calling for assistance to a man of extraordinary stature who was on the further side of the shore, he was by him slighted and neglected. He related the dream to his wife and servants; on the same day seeing a child fall into a river near the castle of Pescara, he leaped into the river with design to save the child, but being overburdened with the weight of his armour, he was choaked in the mud and perished †.

* Wanley's Wonders, B. 6. C. 8. Was he an ancient

or modern?

+ Heywood's Hierarch. L. iv. p. 224.

Pope Gregory speaks of a monk who in a dream foresaw his own death, together with that of many other members of his monastery, as likewise that of some sisters of a neighbouring convent: but monasteries were the scenes of fiction.

The Bishop of Lombes, who was the intimate friend of Petrarch, pressed him in the most earnest manner to visit him at Lombes, Petrarch had promised to go the beginning of the year following, and had even formed the project of settling entirely near his amiable friend, when he received the melancholy news that the bishop was dangerously ill at Lombes. This information alarmed him exceedingly: he fluctuated between fear and hope. "One night in my sleep," says Petrarch, " I thought I saw the bishop walking alone, and crossing the stream that watered my garden. I ran to him, and asked him a thousand questions at once. From whence came you? Where are you going so fast? Why are you alone? The bishop replied with a smile, Do you recollect

I

the summer you passed with me on the other side the Garonne? The climate and the manners of Gascony displeased you, and you found the storms of the Pyrennees insupportable. now think as you did. I am weary of it myself. I have bid adieu to this barbarous country, and am returning to Rome.' He had continued to walk on while he spake these words, and was got to the end of the garden, I attempted to join him, and begged that I might at least be permitted the honour of accompanying him, the bishop gently put me back with his hand, and changing his countenance and the tone of his voice, 'No,' said he, you must not come with me at present.' After having said this he looked stedfastly at me, and then it was that I saw on his face all the signs of death. The sudden shock of this sight caused me to cry aloud, and awaked me from my sleep; I marked the day, and related the circumstances to the friends I had at Parma, and wrote an account of it to my other friends in many different places. Fiveand-twenty days after this I received the

very

mournful news that the Bishop of Lombes was dead, and found that he died on the day that I had seen him in vision in my garden." "This singular accident," says he to John Andre, “ gives me no more faith in dreams than Cicero had, who, as well as myself, had a dream confirmed by the event *.”

Henry the third of France is related to have had a dream predictive of his unfortunate fate at St. Cloud, but which does not appear to have been attended with any more use; and Louis of Bourbon, Prince of Condè, who lived in the seventeenth century, is said to have dreamed, that after having gained three successive victories, and defeated his great enemies, he should be mortally wounded, and his dead body laid on theirs; as came to pass, for the Marshal de St. Andrè was killed at Dreux, the Duke of Guise, Francis Lorrain, at Orleans; the constable Montmorency at St. Denys; the

* Mrs. Dobson's Life of Petrarch, vol. i. p. 183.

triumvirate that had sworn the destruction of the prince and his religion; at last he himself was slain at Bassac.

Pere Matthieu tells us that the queen of Henry the Fourth of France waking in the night some little time before the assassination of her husband, in great agitation, the king enquired the cause; she said that she had been dreaming that somebody stabbed him with a knife on the staircase. "Thank God," says the king," it is only a dream." Henry was so impressed by those and other prognostics which are represented to have foreboded his fate, that he was desirous of postponing the coronation of the queen, and at length consented with reluctance and apprehension to indulge her wishes, and assist at the ceremony; of which an interesting account may be seen in Sully's Memoirs.

Monsieur Cameron relates of Monsieur Calignan, Chancellor of Navarre, that he was warned at Bearn three times by a voice which