Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

or they would judge more correctly as to those circumstances about which the Imagination employs them. When I say, awake, perhaps I may be misunderstood: they are awake, as far as regards their customary actions-those actions which they perform independent of the governing or directing power of the judgment; but dormant as far as relates to their detection of the qualities of bodies. They resemble, very much, the state of the senses in insanity, exemplified by the case of a poor gentleman, in Edinburgh, who, in a state of mental derangement, was limited, in his diet, to simple milk-porridge. He was curious in his selection of dainties, (he observed to a visitor), careful in his choice of cooks, had every day a dinner of three regular courses and a desert, but, somehow or other, all he ate smelt and tasted of porridge. The state of this poor gentleman's senses resemble precisely those of the sleep-walker. Negretti had prepared himself a bowl of salad, for which seasoned cabbage was substituted, but he did not detect the deception. Others have taken coffee for snuff, water for wine; imagined when they were struck with a stick that they were bitten by a dog, and resolved all objects, with which they came in contact, into the tenants of their own wandering and distempered fancy. It is not, perhaps, by examining, in an isolated and simple manner, the mental condition in any morbid or erratic state, that we are enabled satisfactorily to explain the phenomena which, under these states, are exhibited to us; but, on comparing one with another, as insanity with sleep-walking-we arrive at a clear and satisfactory elucidation of what before appeared to us a mystery. Thus, in insanity, we find the senses correct in their action; whilst the Imagination throws the hue of its own peculiar colour over the scenes which they present to it; or we find, as in the case I have just alluded to of the Scotch gentlegentleman, one sense bearing direct testimony to the false action of another. In somnambulism, the Imagination is the predominant faculty in activity, and the senses are strictly subordinate to it.

We must admit, with the phrenologists, the appropriation of certain parts of the brain to the fulfilment of certain actions; and, reasoning from this disposition, we may conclude that, when the senses of the sleep-walker correctly judge of what is presented to them, the judgment is, also, awake, at least to a small extent. Thus, Devaud detected wine, in which there was wormwood, by the smell; and the servant girl, at Chelmsford, could not be imposed upon in the colour of the different cottons. In the insane person, all the organs-both of the senses and the intellectual facultiesare awake: but, in somnambulism, parts of these only are watching,

whilst the remainder are in profound repose, and some physiologists have supposed that those which do slumber, do this more profoundly from the activity of those which are awake. The senses may sleep independently of the brain; and portions of the latter without the former. When all the senses are asleep, and the communication with external objects has entirely ceased-when colours of the most brilliant and varied hue, or of the most dazzling brightness, cease to provoke the action of the eye-when the most melodious sounds are lost upon the ear-when the fragrancy of the rose and the daintiest viands affect not the taste and the smell-the intellectual faculties may be in full activity, and all these may be present to the Imagination, to the Memory, or even to the Judgment. In this manner we have dreaming produced; but if the Imaginations of our dreams are of a certain character, or of sufficient degree of vividness, we have called into play the actions of the locomotive organs or the senses, and, in conformity with the Imagination of our dream, we may walk, sing, hear, smell, or taste, according to its character, and the sense, or senses, which are in action.

The endless variety of dreaming and the somnambulatory state can only be explained on the supposition that some parts of the brain wake whilst others sleep, and the opposite; thus forming an endless combination which, like the notes of an octave in different states of combination, afford us music which, at one time, melts to tears, at another excites to love, or at a third, rouses to anger. Somnambulism is comparatively a rare affection, at least in its more marked and singular forms, and is generally connected with a morbid mental or corporeal constitution, commonly preceding or connected with epilepsy, catalepsy, the various forms of lunacy or mania, and other maladies which have their seat principally in the nervous system. It will be recollected that, in my lecture on the Imagination of dreamers, I endeavoured to trace the connexion between the wanderings of the fancy and the variations in the condition of the bodily health; and we shall find that a recurrence to this subject will throw some light on the causes of sleep-walking. The state of our health is hardly the same two hours together; the infinitely various modifications which this undergoes can never be appreciated by us, but may be ascertained, in some measure, by the variable state of the mind. We are troubled with ennui, listless and unhappy we know not why, and again are cheerful, gay, and merry, and are just as ignorant of the cause. The variations in the condition of the body are, in great measure, the origin of this, and the extension of this influence to sleep is the cause of by far the greater

part of the phenomena of our dreams. Persons who never dream till they grow up are generally visited, soon after their first experience of this kind, by a change in the bodily constitution terminating in acute disease, or death. Of all dreams with whose characters we are acquainted, those which produce sleep-walking are the most vivid, intense, and real, and are excited, in persons predisposed to this affection, by the most trivial occurrences. Under ordinary cir cumstances, we are hardly led to recur to the events of the day in our dreams, except these have been of an unusually stimulating or impressive character. But the somnambulist dreams from the merest trifle; his Fancy is like the vane, veering towards any point from the faintest idea that strikes it. It is sufficient to determine the Imagination of the sleep-walker by impressing his attention with any subject immediately before retiring to rest. If we tell or read to him of a shipwreck, he no sooner closes his eyes in slumber, than he is immediately transported to the foaming billows, and he manifests, by his attempts at swimming, and the most convulsive movements, his sense of danger, and anxiety to escape from it. Devaud was devoted to reading tales of robbers; and dearly did he pay for his indulgence, undergoing a thousand terrors, during the somnambulatory state, from their fancied attacks. Commonly, however, the sleep-walker's imaginings are limited to the scenes of his home, with which he is most familiar, and its accompanying or surrounding circumstances and localities; and it is natural to suppose that the scenes with which he is most conversant when awake, should be most frequently the area of his dreaming fancy. As in ordinary dreams, so in those accompanied by somnambulism, evident bodily disorder, as fever, local congestion or determination of blood, particularly towards the head, dyspepsia, or indigestion, aggravate, in a great degree, all the phenomena of sleepwalking, and render the attacks longer, and more dangerous. Circumstances which have a tendency to favour the removal of an increased quantity of blood determined towards the head, likewise have a tendency to mitigate or prevent attacks of somnambulism where there is a predisposition to it. Signor Pozzi, physician to Pope Benedict XIV., had an unusual quantity of hair, and it was only by keeping it close cut that he could counteract the tendency to sleep-walking. The bodily affections, however, upon which sleepwalking depends, are extremely variable; its essential character consisting in a natural irritability of mind, liable to be aggravated by any morbid change in the corporeal constitution with which that mind is so intimately connected.

VOL. IV.NO. XVI.

S

[ocr errors]

Insanity is, in many cases, a disease of the fancy alone, unconnected with any appreciable bodily complaint; and, in these instances, somnambulism, in certain forms, bears a strict analogy to it. We have no attendant disorder, to which it can be attributed; but all its phenomena are alone referable to the ungovernable activity of a morbid imagination.

Reverie consists in an inactivity of the senses to the impression of surrounding objects; the concentration of all the powers of the mind upon one point, or a limited number of ideas; whilst, although the person be wide awake, the senses are not alive to the impression of external objects. Sounds cease to affect the ear, light makes no impression upon the eye, and to such an extent does the deadness to external stimuli occasionally rise, that some are said to have stared at the meredian sun without pain, others to have been undisturbed with a report of a cannon; and there is extant a story of an Italian nobleman, who was so absorbed in the scenes which his fancy pictured, as to be insensible to the torture of the rack. The appearance of a person in intense reverie is not unlike that of the somnambulist, and so little difference is to be detected in their respective affections, that Darwin has considered somnambulism as a variety of reverie. The countenance is vacant, the eye dull, and without speculation; and the whole character listless and unimpassioned. So active and vivid is the predominant idea which possesses the imagination, that it appears to have abstracted all the energy of other organs to concentrate them upon itself. It arises commonly from two causes-from intense study, or from some overwhelming passion of joy or grief. The latter cause, only, will merit our attention here. It is not under ordinary circumstances, or from common causes, that reverie amounts to a degree sufficient to demand more than passing attention or remark; but when the result of a mental affection, which occupies all the energies of our very being, it sometimes acquires a pitch which is only exceeded by certain forms of insanity. The predominant idea which possesses the mind becomes one round which all the faculties at length assemble; and relates, as in the case of dreams, to the situation in which we are placed, or to the circumstances with which we are surrounded; to the hopes which allure us, to the griefs which depress, to the joys which animate, or to the cares which distress, harrass, and corrode. The imagination now becomes so active, that an additional beauty is given to one class of ideas; whilst, by the same law of mental abstraction, those of an opposite character are invested by a deeper gloom. We cease to be excited by external objects

the world which surrounds us passes unheeded, and we are occupied alone by the pictures of fancy. Occasionally our Imagination is led into this state of reverie, by occurrences which bring back upon the memory, scenes and objects long since forgotten: the home of our childhood, the hopes of our youth, the objects of an early and blighted affection, by some particular and unlooked for event, are again presented to the mind; and the Imagination, giving the rein to its workings, plunges us again into these scenes, recals events over which oblivion for years had drawn her veil, and deludes us by hopes long dead, and joys whose very memory is grief.

HISTORICAL MEMORANDA OF WIGMORE CASTLE,

HEREFORDSHIRE.

BY SIR SAMUEL RUSH MEYRICK, K. H.

[Concluded from the last Number].

SIR Edmund Mortimer, after the battle of Shrewsbury, fled into Scotland; but his nephew, being captured, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. He was received with great kindness by the king of Scotland, who made him laird of Craigivar, in the highlands of Aberdeenshire, where his successors continued for two hundred years, some even being said to be still extant.* It is very doubtful whether Sir Edmund married a daughter of Owain Glyndwr, as it has been asserted,† and all means of ascertaining the truth are destroyed by the statute of the 4th of Henry IV. passed in 1403, which enacted "that no Englishman should marry with any of the family of Owain Glyndwr, nor should any such marriage previously formed be considered valid." Thus it became politic to conceal the fact.

The Earl of March remained a captive until after the close of Henry's reign, in 1413; but his son, being anxious to heal all dissensions, admitted, in the next year, a great many to favour; and thus wisely added to the number of his friends, at the time he claimed the crown of France and prepared for war with that coun

* Anderson's Royal Genealogies, table 492.

† Anderson and others.

« ZurückWeiter »