ANIMALS. 15 



pletely miserable. All this, however, is rather 

 fanciful than just : the pleasure dreams can give 

 us, seldom reaches to our waking pitch of happi- 

 ness ; 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 fantas- 

 tic 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 continuance, 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 shewn, by their actions during 

 sleep, that they were very powerfully impelled by 

 their dominion. We have numberless 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 ridi- 

 culous 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 exercise by his tutor, 



