REPOSE, OR SLEEP. 105 



which sir Charles Bell adduces of our pos- 

 session of this sense. " We awake with a 

 knowledge of the position of our limbs ; and 

 this cannot be from a recollection of the action 

 which placed them where they were ; it must, 

 therefore, be a consciousness of their present 

 condition. When a person in these circum- 

 stances moves he has a determined object, and 

 he must be conscious of a previous condition 

 before he can desire to change or direct a 

 movement." After long-continued fatigue, 

 sleep overcomes the frame, often in unnatural 

 attitudes, or under unwonted circumstances. 

 Horse-soldiers and couriers have been known 

 to sleep for hours while travelling on horse- 

 back, sustained in their saddle by the operation 

 of the muscular sense alone. Nay, foot sol- 

 diers have slept as they have wearily marched 

 along, and violin players have been seen to 

 continue playing while wrapped in the slumber 

 of fatigue. Slumber comes upon us insensibly, 

 indistinctness steals over the senses, our eye- 

 lids close, hearing fails, the limbs relax, we in- 

 stinctively assume an easy position, and sleep 

 wraps us in a mantle of temporary forgetfulness. 

 Yet, as we have said, the muscular sense is 

 not lost. Hence the " wet sea-boy," perched 

 aloft amidst the shrouds, slumbers in security. 



But there is a point of fatigue, both bodily 

 and mental, which produces such a condition of 

 the nervous system as to prevent sleep, and 

 induce a morbid watchful restlessness — a rest- 

 lessness which accompanies many diseases, 

 d2 



