16. is to the myriads of
forebodings which never come to pass (as the dreams recorded with some solemnity by Herodotus, of Alcibiades; of Croesus, regarding his son Atys; of Astyages and the vine; of Cambyses, respecting Smerdis; Tory Burch Outlet and of Hamilcar, at the siege of Syracusa;) as a drop in the ocean, the fallacy of the doctrine must be evident. I marvel much that credulity, in this reflecting age, can gain a single proselyte. The magi of Persia and the soothsayers of Greece and Rome were constantly in error; and Artemidorus Miraldus, who in the reign of Antoninus wrote his voluminous book "Oneirocriticus," has given Tory Burch Outlet us the most ridiculous interpretations. When the pagan priesthood of old lay down on the reeking skins of their victims Tory Burch Outlet to rouse the inspiration of their dreams, it was to cheat their proselytes. Such were the mummeries in the Temple of yEsculapius. The devotees were first purified by the "lustral water;" and then divine visions came over them, and priestesses in snowy robes, and a venerable priest in the habit of -cheap tory burch handbags that one John Erach, in the Isle of Lewis, assured him that it was his fate to have been led by his curiosity to some who consulted this oracle, and that he was a night within the hide as above mentioned, during which time he felt and heard such terrible things that he could not Tory Burch Outlet express http://www.toryburchsoutletstore.com/featured_products.html them; the impression it made on him was such as could never go off, and he said for a thousand worlds he would never again be concerned in the like performance, for this had disordered him to a high degree. He confessed Tory Burch Outlet it ingenuously and with an air of great remorse, and seemed to be very penitent under a just sense of so great a crime: he declared this about five years since, and is still living in the Lewis for any thing I know." In imitation of this spell for the divine inspiration of a dream, the modern Franciscans, after the ceremony of mass, throw themselves on mats already consecrated by the slumber of some holy visionary, and with all this foolery, they vaunt the divine inspiration of their dream. Cicero, and Theophrastus, and many other sages, were sceptical of these special visitations, and explained rationally dreams and divinations, as Cicero his dream at ^Etina, on his flight from Rome. Then there is this anathema of Ennius:— "Augurs, and soothsayers, astrologers, diviners, and interpreters of dreams I never consult, and despise their vain pretence to more than human skill." And also this caution bequeathed to you by Epictetus: "Never tell Tory Burch Outlet thy dream; for though thou thyself mayest take a pleasure in telling thy dream, another will take no pleasure in hearing it." Astr. Epictetus was himself a dreamer in this