212 A HISTOR OF 



houra i t.ie twenty-four ; the extreme activity of his mind, when 

 awake, in son e measure called for an adequate alternation of repose- 

 and, lam apt to think, that when students stint themselves in this par 

 ticular, they lessen the waking powers of the imagination, and weaken 

 its most strenuous exertions. Animals that seldom think, as was said, 

 can very easily dispense with sleep ; and of men, such as think least, 

 will, very probably, be satisfied with the smallest share. A life ol 

 study, it is well known, unfits the body for receiving this gentle re- 

 freshment ; the approaches of sleep are driven off by thinking: when, 

 therefore, it comes at last, we should not be too ready to interrupt its 

 continuance. 



Sleep is, indeed, to some, a very agreeable period of their existence 

 and it has been a question in the schools, which was most happy, the 

 man who was a beggar by night, *nd a king by day ; or he who was a 

 beggar by day, and a king by night ? It is given in favour of the 

 nightly monarch, by him who first started the question: "For the 

 dream," says he, " gives the full enjoyment of the dignity, without its 

 attendant inconveniences : while, on the other hand, the king, who 

 supposes himself degraded, feels all the misery of his fallen fortune, 

 without trying to find the comforts of his humble situation. Thus, by 

 day, both states have their peculiar distresses : but, by night, the ex- 

 alted beggar is perfectly blessed, and the king completely miserable." 

 All this, however, is rather fanciful than just ; the pleasure dreams 

 can give us, seldom reaches to our waking pitch of happiness: the 

 mind often, in the midst of its highest visionary satisfactions, demands 

 of itself, whether it does not owe them to a dream ; and frequently 

 awakes with the reply. 



But it is seldom, except in cases of the highest delight, or the most 

 extreme uneasiness, that the mind has power thus to disengage itself 

 from the dominion of fancy. In the ordinary course of its operations, 

 it submits to those numberless phantastic images that succeed each 

 other, and which, like many of our waking thoughts, are generally 

 forgotten. Of these, however, if any, by their oddity, or their con- 

 tinuance, affect us strongly, they are then remembered ; and there 

 have been some who felt their impressions so strongly as to mistake 

 them for realities, and to rank them among the past actions of their 

 lives. 



There are others upon whom dreams seem to have a very different 

 effect, and who, without seeming to remember their impressions the 

 next morning, have yet shown by their actions during sleep, that they 

 were very powerfully impelled by their dominion. We have number- 

 'ess instances of such persons, who, while asleep, have performed 

 many of the ordinary duties to which they have been accustomed 

 when waking ; and, with a ridiculous industry, have completed by 

 night what they failed doing by day. We are told, in the German 

 Ephemerides, of a young student who, being enjoined a severe exer- 

 cise by his tutor, went to bed despairing of accomplishing it. The 

 next morning awaking, to his great surprise, he found the task fairly 

 written out, and finished in his own hand-writing. 



He was at first, as the account has it, induced to ascribe this strange 

 production to the operation of an infernal agent ; but his tutor, willing 



