400 MAURY OX SLEEP AND DREAMS. 



recollection to attest it. The question admits of being 

 plausibly answered. The best remembered dream is 

 that which immediately antecedes the moment of 

 waking, when the functions suspended by sleep have 

 partially regained their power. The dream itself, in- 

 deed, especially if sensational in kind, is often the 

 direct cause of the change of state ; and such dreams 

 may occur repeatedly in the same night, each leaving 

 its own impress on the brain. Whether there be any 

 absolute blank in this complex series of changes is the 

 question yet unsolved. Bearing on this point is the 

 fact that dreams forgotten in the morning are some- 

 times suddenly recalled by later incidents of the day. 

 A clue once got through some casual association, the 

 recollection often retraces these past visions of the 

 night, which, but for such casualty, would never have 

 been revived. 



We must not, however, speak of their annihilation. 

 Dreams leave traces on the brain, the same in kind, 

 though perhaps less forcibly marked than those im- 

 pressed by the sensations, emotions, and volitions of 

 the waking state. We may plausibly from this source 

 seek explanation of those vague shadows of past events 

 which now and then come across the mind, perplexing 

 it with a sort of semi-reality, but not attested by any 

 collateral recollection. Most of our readers have pro- 

 bably experienced this curious wandering of the mind 

 amidst what we believe to be the shades of old dateless 

 dreams, called suddenly into life, and as suddenly flit- 

 ting away. If this be, as we suppose, an act of 

 Memory reviving ancient dreams, it is but one of the 

 endless wonders of this great faculty of our nature, the 



