AND BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. 231 



Their Imaginations are brilliant or morbid as it may happen ; ting- 

 ing the whole moral aspect of events with the sunshine of summer, 

 or shading them with the gloom of winter. On this account, fe- 

 males, students, philosophers, physicians, and statesmen, are parti- 

 cularly liable to it; whilst others whose occupations relate rather to 

 things tangible and real than to ideas, are comparatively exempt 

 from its attacks The young are more subject to it than the old, 

 and its accession is more to be expected in spring and autumn than 

 in summer and winter. The most curious point in the history of 

 the Imagination of sleep-walkers appears to be " From what source 

 the sensorium derives its ideas during this state." I have described 

 somnambulism to be the result of vivid dreams, occurring in consti- 

 tutions of peculiar nervous irritability, these dreams being depen- 

 dent upon bodily complaint or not. In this case, the ideas of the 

 sleep-walker would be the product of his Imagination alone, with 

 the assistance of Memory, without which, it will be at once per- 

 ceived, that the former could not exist. Three opinions divide the 

 scientific world on this subject, and in illustrating them I shall 

 have to bring forward some cases of a most singular an4 amusing 

 character. 



The first opinion considers the sleep-walker, as I have described, 

 acting from the Imagination of his dreams. A young nobleman, in 

 the citadel of Brenstein, was observed by his brothers, who occupi- 

 ed the same room, to rise in his sleep, put on his cloak, and, having 

 opened the casement, to mount, by the help of a pulley, to the roof 

 of the building. There he was seen to tear in pieces a magpie's 

 nest, and wrap the young birds in his cloak. He returned to his 

 apartment and went to bed, having placed his cloak by him with 

 the birds in it. In the morning he awoke, and related the adven- 

 ture as having occurred in a dream, and was greatly surprised when 

 he was led to the roof of the tower, and shewn the remains of the 

 nest, as well as the magpies concealed in his cloak. — A gentleman 

 of ray acquaintance, invariably acts his dreams, when they happen 

 to bear upon the events or occurrences of real life. He dreams that 

 the house is on fire, and instantly the family is aroused by the most 

 vociferous cries for assistance. I remember him once having a 

 dream of this kind at an inn in London, the whole household of 

 which would have been alarmed and the engines summoned had not 

 a friend who was with him, and aware of his propensity, awoke 

 him. 



Bertrand and Professor Heinroth both positively assert that som- 

 nambulism is a distinct affection from dreaming, since, in dreams. 



