Another proof of increased memory given by this sleepwaker was his comprehending and speaking English (which otherwise he was remarkably slow to learn) far better in the mesmeric than in the natural state. · A circumstance to be remarked, as showing a connection between the mesmeric and the common sleep, is this- sleepwakers will remember those nocturnal dreams which they can by no means recall when waking. I once asked Anna M if she could recollect any thing in sleepwaking which, out of it, she had forgotten. She replied, "Certainly, many things; and just now I clearly remember something which I wished to recollect when I was awake, but could not. It is a dream which I had on Sunday night. (She said this on Wednesday, 14th February, 1838.) I screamed out in my sleep, and alarmed my mother; but I could not call to mind what I had been dreaming about: now, however, I know what it was. I thought that a very frightful old woman entered the room: she was dressed in scarlet, and had a white fillet bound across her forehead. She came slowly in, and, coming up to me in bed, laid her hand upon my chest. I tried to scream, but could not at last, however, I screamed, and woke my mother." Afterwards, when the sleepwaker had returned to her natural state, she was questioned about the dream; but it had again past from her memory. Wishing to establish the circumstance by as much evidence as possible, I took an opportunity of speaking to her mother on the subject, when the latter corroborated all that Anna had affirmed, and added that her daughter was in the habit of relating her dreams to her family at breakfast; but of this particular one she had been able to give no account. E. A. could also, in sleepwaking, recall the visions of the night, which had gone from him as the dream from the Babylonian monarch. Moreover, he had been, as a child, a natural sleepwaker, and he assured me, when in the mesmeric state, that all the minutest circumstances of his early sleepwaking recurred to him. When asked if the mind ever ceased to think in slumber, he replied, "Never for an instant: the soul is wise, and learns much during sleep. It reflects on all it has seen and heard, and profits more by this than in the daytime. We cannot, indeed, be aware of this, because we are in a different state when waking, and forget what we think of by night. Yet, he continued, have you not remarked that, if you read a thing over-night, you remember it better on awaking the next morning? This is the fruit of the soul's labour (c'est le fruit du travail de l'âme), though we do not know whence it comes. Asked again about dreams, he replied, "In general they are a kind of recreation of the soul, an exercise of its inventive faculty; but we are only acquainted with the results. As a carpenter takes a tree and saws it into boards, and then from those boards constructs something which he had previously determined, so the soul arranges the mechanism of the brain to form a dream; and the dream itself, which we imagine to last a long time, passes, in fact, with inconceivable rapidity. It only occupies the moment immediately previous to our waking. Other dreams, again, are, as it were, forced upon the soul by something disordered in the brain: but they all agree in this they immediately precede our waking." I relate the above, as curiously consonant with a circumstance in the life of Lavalette. He had in prison a horrible dream, in which he saw an infernal procession pass by his cell. Whole armies seemed to defile before him; but the riders were all skeletons, and the horses, stripped of their skins, presented a mass of raw and bleeding flesh. A clanking of chains accompanied the terrific vision, which seemed to be of infinite duration. He was awakened by the gaoler entering his dungeon, when he found that the dream, which had been an "eternity to thought," was, in reality, the impression of a moment, caused by the dropping of the chains in unfastening his door. The last phenomenon of memory, which may here be mentioned as regarding the sleepwaker alone, is that, when the mesmeric sleep is perfect, the subsequent oblivion is perfect too. Of the truth of this fact, it has been generally asserted that there is no other assurance than the allegations of the sleepwakers themselves. I cannot concede this point. Place a mesmeric patient under circumstances different to those in which he went to sleep, but without hinting that you expect any display of surprise on his part, and he must be shrewd indeed, as well as a consumate actor, if he can counterfeit to the life such an astonishment on waking as he must exhibit naturally, supposing him really to have forgotten the events of his sleepwaking. Mademoiselle M, under circumstances the more remarkable, because not at all arranged for the specific purpose, was once evidently almost alarmed into illness by finding herself in a different apartment (whither, it may be remembered, she had been brought to see an invalid lady) from that in which she had been mesmerised. She started, shuddered, looked wildly around her, exclaiming, "Good God! what is this? How did I come here? This is too much;" and was thrown into a fit of trembling which we had much difficulty to allay. Again, supposing a sleepwaker to be under the same roof with yourself, his mesmeriser, and exposed to your constant observation, the chances are that, if he feigns, he will sometimes be caught tripping. A deceiver cannot be always on his guard; and what a power of memory does it presuppose in the fictitious sleepwaker to imagine that he can arrange and separate in his own mind those circumstances of which he may or may not speak! Passing a great portion of his time in sleepwaking, will it not be difficult, nay impossible, for him never to advert to that which has engaged his attention so much and has formed, indeed, half his life? I conceive, then, that when I assert that, during four months, E. A. was staying in my house, and constantly mesmerised |