1J8 ON REVERli:. 



to read in his tent, at midnight when his frame was de- 



bilitatedj and his spirits were exhausted by a long march, 



and by the heat of the morning ; — w lien his mind was un- 



The spectre strung, and prerented by weariness from everting its 



which appear- pQ^yers with one fixed direction. May not the spectre 

 ed to Brutus. * , ^ ,....* , , 



have been a creature of his imagination when thus pre- 

 disposed for reverie ? when his ideas consisted of confused 

 conceptions, furnished partly by his book and partly by 

 his fancy. And will it be deemed extravagant to conjec- 

 ture, that the passage he was reading may have been the 

 story of the dying Bramin, who prophetically warned 

 Alexander that they should meet at Babylon ? 

 Fact supposed I am aware, that the mind, when deeply engaged in 

 ^ntrary to study, sometimes overcomes sleep, and assumes a new vi- 

 gour at a late hour of the night. In this case, certain 

 degree of fever, in other words, of increased action, has 

 taken place ; which will be followed, and proved to have 

 existed, by commensurate mental debility and nervous- 

 ness. 



'^ Some,'* says a modern author, '^ look over what 

 they want to remember, immediately before going to sleep 

 at night, because then the mind is nt)t afterwards busied 

 about any ideas that might drive it away : or in the morn- 

 '^ ing on first getting up, because the mind is not then 

 pre-occupied with any ideas which may hinder the sub- 

 ject's getting fast hold of it." Gerard's Pastoral 



Care. 



*0n the whole, whatever destroys the balance between 



Diseased sensi- * it is a law in the animal oeconomy, that sensibility accumulates 

 bility and im- as irritability is exhausted : In other words, that the nervous fibre 

 paired muscu- becomes more sensible to Impressions, as the muscular fibre becomes 

 Jar vjgour are j^^g g^^ ^^^^ ^j^.^ ygrsa. — Preternatural or diseased sensibility is not 

 concomi ant. f^^^j j^ jj^^ strong labourer so much as in the hysterical and debili- 

 tated female. The author of this essay, who can encounter without 

 mental pain, any scenes of distress which he may witness in his pro- 

 fessional character, in the morning, when the frame Is In tone, has 

 observed In himself a propensity to be much affected by them; when 

 presented to him after fatigue and long fasting. Whatever accu-* 

 mulates sensibility, Increases the mind's liability to be acted upon 

 by external stimuli, and carried away by them from Its steady ob- 

 servance of the object of its study. And since the exhaustion of 

 irritability produces this effect, the propriety gf the feregoing In-, 

 junction! is evident. 



body 



