Chapter XII: Part 12

The mania of the “unknown tongues” has almost equalled this delusion. If we presume to analyse, on the principles of philosophy or reason, those religious eccentricities, which seem, even in the mind of the fanatic, to spring from sincerity or conviction, they must yet, I suppose, be termed _maniacal_, and this without the slightest profanation of the Divine will. Evil, doubtless, is permitted for a wise purpose, and while we deplore its _immediate_ effects, we must not hope to reveal its origin or its end.

At Brighton, some time ago, while at one of the Millennium chapels, the wife of Caird, who was then preaching, uttered a dismal howling of this _unknown_ language, which paralysed some, and threw into convulsions many others of the congregation. A young French lady among them instantly was struck with maniacal despondency, and, after some infliction of self-torture, became delirious and died in a hospital.

We learn from Plutarch, that in Milesium there was once a prevalent fashion among the young girls to hang themselves; while the same mania once spread among the demoiselles of Lyons, to drown themselves in the Rhone. The Convulsionists of Paris, in 1724, not only inflicted self-torture, but in their wild delight solicited the bystanders to stone them.

The commission of a great or extraordinary crime to this day produces, not unfrequently, a kind of mania of imitation in the district in which it happened. I have known incidents, falsely called religious, to occasion similar events; and what is remarkable, the scene or place of the _first_ event seemed to favour its repetition, by other persons approaching it. Thus a supposed miracle having been performed before the gate of the convent of St. Genevieve, such a number of similar occurrences happened on the same spot in a few days, that the police was compelled to post a peremptory notice on the gate, prohibiting any individual from working miracles on the place in question. When the locality was thus shut up, the _thaumaturgia_ ceased. It is not long since we witnessed in Paris two events of a similar character. About four years ago, at the Hotel des Invalides, a veteran hung himself on the threshold of one of the doors of a corridor. No suicide had occurred in the establishment for two years previously, but in the succeeding fortnight five invalids hung themselves on the same cross-bar, and the governor was obliged to shut up the passage. During the last days of the empire, again, an individual ascended the column in the Place Vendome, and threw himself down and was dashed to pieces. The event excited a great sensation; and in the course of the ensuing week, _four persons_ imitated the example, and the police were obliged to proscribe the entrance to the column. The same mania was almost induced by the suicide of a foolish girl, who leaped from the balcony of our own city column on Fish-street Hill. Indeed Monseigneur Mare, of Paris, alludes to a society enrolled for the mere purpose of suicide; and there was an annual ballot to decide which of these miserable creatures should be immolated _as the suicide of the year_!!

Dr. Burrows, I remember also, relates cases analogous to these. They occurred in the ranks of some army on the continent, in which there was an epidemic propensity to suicide, until the general began to hang the soldiers on trees as scarecrows. The mania, as you may believe, very soon subsided.

EV. Your curiosities eclipse mine, Ida. But the natural _leaning to the marvellous_, will, without mania or fanaticism, by the mere sympathy of intercommunicating minds, spread wide these illusions, even in the most simple instances. Some time since, a very large assemblage were watching with intense interest the stone lion of the Percies, at Northumberland House. They were unanimous in the conviction that he was swinging his tail to and fro; a false impression, of course, which had gradually accumulated from this solitary exclamation of a passenger: “By heaven, he wags his tail!” Of this sort of illusion I was myself a witness. Beneath the western portico of St. Paul’s, a crowd of gazers were bending their eyes on the image of the saint, who was nodding at them with a very gracious affability. Curiosity had risen to the pitch of wonder at a miracle, when suddenly a sparrow-hawk flew from the ringlets of the saint, and the illusion vanished.

These eccentricities, you will perceive, occurred _spontaneously_; and it is a most interesting study to note the analogies between _these_ diseased actions, and _those_ resulting from the influence of certain gases and vegetable juices.

I have known the seeds of _stramonium_, when swallowed by children, produce a temporary delirium, and a state of _chorea_, singing, dancing, laughing, and other mad frolics, which could not be controlled. And in the “History of Virginia,” by Beverly, it is recorded, that during the rebellion of Bacon, at James Town, some soldiers, after eating the young leaves of _stramonium_ for spinach, enacted “a very pleasant comedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days. One would blow up a feather into the air, another would dart straws at it with much fury, another, stark naked, was seen sitting up in a corner, like a monkey, grinning and making mouths.” In this frantic condition they were confined for safety. In eleven days they recovered, but had no memory of the delirium. Such also is the effect of large quantities of black henbane. Dr. Patouillet, of Toucy, in France, in 1737 witnessed a mania of this sort in nine persons, who had eaten of that root. It was marked by the strangest actions and expressions. In these also there was no recollection of the illusion.

But the closest analogy, in point of concentrated energy, to eccentric somnambulism, is the effect of the inhalation of the “gaseous oxide of azote,” or “protoxide of nitrogen,” the _laughing-gas_. So intense is its impression on the nerves and blood of the brain, that it effects a perfect _metempsychosis_. This gas contains a greater relative proportion of oxygen than common air, and it is inhaled through a tube from a bladder or silk bag. After a little giddiness and headache, the breather soon begins to feel a very delicious thrilling; the eyes are dazzled by even common objects, so much are the senses excited. Pride and _pugnacity_ are quickly developed: we think ourselves grand seignors, and elevated far beyond the common class of mortals. We expect from all a _salaam_, and, with all the proud dignity of papacy, wonder that the people do not fall down and kiss our toe. We turn a deaf ear to all which is addressed to us; in short, we are dissociated from all around us. Sir Humphrey Davy, as the effect was wearing off, seemed to have been charmed into the combined philosophy of Berkley and Hume. He writes, “with the most intense belief and prophetic manner, I exclaimed: ‘Nothing exists but thoughts; the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and pains.’”

This brilliancy is probably the effect of scarlet or highly _oxygenized_ blood, acting on the brain and nerves of the senses.

The duration of this gaseous influence is usually from five minutes to a quarter of an hour. It is not, however, always so transient.

From the record of Professor Silliman, it seems to have converted an “Il Penseroso” into a “L’Allegro.” A man of melancholy became a man of mirth: and, although before his inhalation he had no sweet tooth in his head, he began to eat little except _sugar and sweet cakes_, and to swallow _molasses_ with his meat and potatoes.

Although _sparring_ is the grand amusement of the gas-breather, yet we can often decide on the shades of character, however studiously they may have been concealed from us in sane moments.

A gentleman among my fellow-students threw himself forcibly on his back, by his attempts to spout Shakspere with dignity and effect.

Another threw himself prostrate in the snow, and rolling himself over and back across the quadrangle at Guy’s, turned himself into an immense cylindrical snowball.

Another snapped his fingers in defiance, and walked with a most pompous strut, and without his hat, to the middle of London Bridge, ere he was brought to his senses.

Indeed these experiments seem so replete with the ludicrous, that I wonder Cruikshank and Hood have not often caught a fact, as a theme for their brilliant fancy.

REVERIE.

“That fools should be so deep-contemplative.”

“In his brain
He hath strange places cramm’d
With observation, the which he vents
In mangled forms.”
AS YOU LIKE IT.

ASTR. I was dreaming last night, Evelyn, of your eccentric puppets; and I cannot but wonder at the _contrasted_ influences of nitrous oxide on the brain and marrow, as you say. In one, we see the wondrous phenomena of somnambulism; in the other, a state of apathy, like the almost senseless reverie of the idiot.

EV. You are shrewd, Astrophel, and have hit on these objective analogies with the acuteness of a pathologist. Contrasts they truly are; and yet there is a natural transition from one to the other.

Somnambulism is the most eccentric condition of sleep; and _Reverie_ is that state which constitutes the nearest approximation to slumber. But the French verb, _rêver_, is a comprehensive word, signifying all the eccentricities of mind, from idiocy to divine philosophy; so that its derivative, “Reverie,” may be construed into Dream, Delirium, Raving, Thought, Fancy, Meditation, Abstraction.

You may wonder at this combination, but, however you may smile, the existence of every one is marked by a certain degree of moral or instinctive mania, modified by the peculiarity of habit, taste, or sentiment; and, I may add, of intellectual _monomania_ (“monomanie raisonnante”), in reference to some particular subject. There may indeed be an _incubation_ of madness; and, if circumstances occur to _sit_ and _hatch_, the germs will be developed. When these two, moral and intellectual error (which may _separately_ pass current in the world for eccentricity), unite, then the man is mad, and becomes an irresponsible agent.

The term “Reverie,” then, will imply the varied conditions of that faculty, which phrenology terms _concentrativeness_; the extremes of which mark the idiot and the sage.

Idiocy is the most abject and imperfect condition of the waking mind, resembling closely the first disposition to slumber, the sensation of _doziness_. The creature will commit the most absurd acts, and utter the most ridiculous or profane expressions, without the redeeming apology of being engaged in abstract thought or abstruse calculation.

It is consolatory, however, to know that this weakness is usually _connate_, or manifested at the very dawn of intellect; so that we have not the painful study of contrasting, in one being, the light of mind with its shadowy darkness.

The idiot, indeed, often appears so little more than a laughing or a dancing vegetable, that pity yields to curiosity and mirth; and, instead of mourning, we work into the plot and incidents of a novel or a stage farce, either that strange mixture of weakness and cunning which is delineated in Davie Gellatly, or the absolute imbecility of Audrey, Slender, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

But this melancholy being is not always a _solitary_ curiosity. In many districts, especially in the stream-fed valleys of Europe and Asia, nature fails, by wholesale, in the development of that “paragon of animals,” man.

Such are the _Capots_, or _Cretins_, of Chinese Tartary, as we learn from Sir George Staunton; those of the Rhone and Tyrolese valleys; the _Coliberts_ of Rochelle; the _Cagneux_ of Brittany; the _Gaffos_ of Navarre; the _Gavachos_ of Spain; and the _Gezitani_ of the Pyrenees.

The condition of the lowest class of these wretched beings is indeed that of idiocy; their intellectual power being little more than the mental blank which would mark the _acephalous_, or brainless monsters, could such abortions attain the age of maturity. It is mere _animal life_, with the very faintest stamp of intelligence.

The _Cretin_ is from four to five feet high, cadaverous, flabby, the head immensely out of proportion, the skin studded with livid eruptions, the eyes blear and squinting, the lips slavering, the limbs weak and crooked; and (like the _Stulbings_ of Swift) the senses are imperfect, the hearing and speech often absolutely lost,—the expression being that of a fool or a satyr. And dissection demonstrates the frequent causes of all this; for, in the skull of these beings, we often find a _bluish jelly_, instead of healthy brain. This diseased _pulp_ is thus the source of both animal and intellectual apathy. The idiot will often seem insensible to pain, while his flesh is burning; and objects or subjects do not cause sufficient impression on this pulpy brain to produce their _image_, so that the being may almost live without a sense.

CAST. This is a dreary, but, I suppose, a faithful picture, and shows us one of those impressive contrasts which nature is fraught with. The Cretin dwarf amidst the gigantic sublimity of the Alps; the lava stream rolling over the chestnut groves of Valombrosa; the malaria that steams up from the Pontine even to Albano; the murky sulphur cloud that floats over Avernus, and the Solfaterra; and the poison-snake creeping among the honied flowers and purple festoons which gild the prairies and interlace the forests of Columbia, show us how intimately are blended the lights and shadows of creation. Yet Evelyn will let me ask him if there are not many beautiful stories, which we may have deemed the creation of poesy, proving that idiotism is not always _definite_ and _permanent_. I ought to blush while I recite them. The romance of Cymon and Iphigenia is not a mere fable. I have heard a story of a youth who was an idiot to his 17th year. At this time he saw a beautiful girl, and instantly felt deep and devoted love for her; and became, from this almost divine influence, as acute in intellect as his playmates.

ASTR. And what writeth the quaint Anatomist of Melancholy?—“We read in the lives of the Fathers a story of a child that was brought up in the wilderness from his infancy by an old hermite. Now come to man’s estate, he saw by chance two comely women wandering in the woods. He asked the old man what creatures they were. He told him fayries. After a while talking _obiter_, the hermite demanded of him which was the pleasantest sight that he ever saw in his life? He readily replied, the two fayries he espied in the wilderness. So that without doubt there is some secret loadstone in a beautiful woman, a magnetique power.”

IDA. We do not hold your gallantry lightly, Astrophel; there is some hope of your conversion.

EV. That mind is termed _weak_, where there is a want of the power of fixing the attention to one object, a _wandering of the imaginative faculty_. A train of ideas arises, between the links of which there is some remote relation; but its beginning and end may appear _so dissonant_, that the absent person will fail to recognize the connexion, until, by an effort to retrace the steps of thought, the mystery is developed.

IDA. The subjects of this form of reverie are, I presume, the _wool-gatherers_ of society, being “every thing by turns, and nothing long;” and often, like the dog in the fable, losing the substance while they grasp at the shadow; others employ their time by sitting

“Musing all alone,
Building castles in the air,”

forming plans and projecting schemes which shall fill men’s minds with wonder, and their own pockets with gold.

But these castle-builders are, alas! but the dupes of their own mad fancy. The card-house is nearly finished, and one imprudent touch of the child topples it down headlong. One of the most salutary lessons on this foible is the fable of the Persian visionary, the glassman Alnaschar, who, by rehearsing one kick of the foot, that was to indicate his despotic will, broke into ten thousand pieces the basket of merchandize, which, by its accumulating profits, was to raise him to the highest dignities. Such are the results of self-glamourie or castle-building.

EV. It is a moral lesson of great worth, dear Ida. But these wanderings are often assimilating the true delirium of fever, of which the dreams of Piranesi are examples. In his sketches of these illusions he figures himself as ascending by steps so high that he at length vanishes into the clouds.

Now there are many curious instances of forgetfulness, as there may be a confusion of ideas from this deficiency of concentration, memory being, as it were, deranged. From study, or intense thought, a jumble of strange ideas will sometimes force themselves involuntarily on the mind, displacing or confusing the subject of meditation.

Thus a German, of the name of Spalding, of high attainments, informs us, that after great mental labour, he was intending to write this receipt: “fifty dollars, being one half-year’s rate,” but quite unconsciously concluded it thus: “fifty dollars through the salvation of Bra.” And the author of the “Spiritual Treasury,” Mason, during his devotion to its composition, had, as he believed, taken the address of a visitor on whom he was to wait; but on referring to his note, he read, not the address, but—“Acts ii. verse 8.”

Children have _naturally_ a want of power of concentration. I have told you that if a new or more attractive object strikes their sight, they will drop that which they were holding; and Foote would often, while taking a pinch, let his snuff-box fall from his hand, if for a moment his attention was diverted.

ASTR. The reverse of wandering, then, you term _concentrativeness_. You would not stigmatize the passive or involuntary form of abstraction, as the reverie of a _monomaniac_.

EV. No. As attention is concentration of a sense, abstraction is the concentration or attention of the mind; therefore the power of fixing the senses and forgetting the mind, is attention, that of fixing the mind and forgetting the senses, is abstraction—philosophy, if you will.

The active form, the power of fixing the attention on one subject, or of separating ideas and bringing them into association on one point, is the great characteristic of the philosopher and the mathematician. That inattention to _minutiæ_ during this abstraction, has, I grant, caused the shafts of satire to be profusely flung at many a “learned pundit;” for the jokes of Rabelais are eclipsed by the eccentricities of our sages: Dominie Sampson is no caricature.

As I trace these forms of reverie from monomania to its curious contrast, the _folie raisonnante_ of men of one idea, (in which there is an aberration of intellect, or want of consciousness on _all subjects but one_,) and so on to philosophical abstraction, we shall learn, not without some humility, how close an alliance does really exist between great wits and madness.

The records of history and fiction teem with the illusions of the monomaniacs from intense impression. The madness of Ophelia and of Lear, are true and faithful illustrations of the effects of _brooding over sorrow_. In the monarch, indeed, that one momentary glimpse of reason when the word “_king_” like an electric shock falls on his ear, and, for an instant, lights up his intellect, which as suddenly darkness again overshadows, beautifully shows forth by contrast this madness of one idea.

Dr. Gooch relates the case of a lady, who in consequence of an alarm of fire, believed that she was the Virgin Mary, and that her head was constantly encircled by a brilliant halo or glory.

A gentleman, on narrowly escaping from the earthquake at Lisbon, fell into a state of delirium whenever the word “earthquake” was pronounced in his hearing.

In “Pechlin” we read of a lady, who gazed with painless interest on the comet of 1681 until she observed it _through a telescope_ of high power; the terror was so intense, that she was frightened to death even in a few days.

Dr. Morrison relates the case of an insane gentleman who had consulted a gypsy, and was instantly in a state of high excitement, whenever a subject associated with her prophecies was alluded to.

My friend, Dr. Uwins, informed me of an intellectual young gentleman, who from some morbid association with the idea of an elephant, was struck by an horrific spasm whenever the word was named, _or even written_ before him; and to such a pitch was this infatuation carried, that elephant _paper_, if he were sensible it were such, produced the same effect.

The Reverend John Mason, of Water Stratford, evinced in every thing sound judgment, except that he believed that he was Elias, and foretold the advent of Christ, who was to commence the millennium at Stratford.

Dr. Abercrombie writes of a young botanist who had gained a prize: he thought he was in a boat sailing to Greenwich on a botanical excursion, and conversed rationally on all points but that of the prize, which he asserted another student had gained.

Hear, too, another rhapsody of the “Opium-Eater.” After a close and intense study of the works of Livy, the words Consul Romanus seemed to haunt his mind. “At a clapping of hands would be heard the heart-rending sounds of ‘Consul Romanus;’ and immediately came sweeping by in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus Marius girt round by a company of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by the alalagmos of the Roman legions.”

There is a story (written in the seventeenth century) of a youth, who in a playful frolic put a ring on the marriage finger of a marble Venus; and a strange illusion came upon him that she had thus become his wife, and, in obedience to the injunctions of the ceremony, came to his bed when the sable canopy of night was spread around them. So intense was this illusion, and so cold and loveless was his heart withal, that, as the story goes, an _exorcist was employed_ to dissolve the spell which had so firmly bound him.

IDA. I believe it was Mrs. Barry, who (as we read in the “Last Essays of Elia,”) averred that when playing the child of Isabella, she felt the burning tears of Mrs. Porter fall on her neck, as she was breathing o’er her some pathetic sentence. Even the study of Lady Macbeth, in midnight solitude, so intensely excited the imagination of Mrs. Siddons, that Campbell says, as she was disrobing herself in her chamber, she trembled with affright, even at the rustling of her own silk attire.

EV. I could add many stories to yours, Ida. This sensibility, if protracted or in excess, becomes the _Panophobia_ of Esquirol. He attended once a lady whom the slightest noise alarmed, and who was wont to scream with affright at the simple moving of herself in bed.

From the journal of Esquirol I will quote other fragments, in which we see that every object was associated with _one_ image.

“During our promenade he (a gallant general) interrupted me several times, in the midst of a very connected conversation, saying, “Do you hear how they repeat the words ‘_coward_, _jealous_?’ &c.” This illusion was produced by the noise of the leaves and the whistling of the wind among the branches of the trees, which _appeared to him well-articulated sounds_; and, although I had each time combated it with success, the illusion returned whenever the wind agitated the trees anew.

“A young married man was in a state of fury whenever he saw a woman leaning on a man’s arm, being convinced that it was _his own wife_. I took him to the theatre at the commencement of his convalescence, but as soon as a lady entered the saloon accompanied by a gentleman, he became agitated, and called out eagerly several times, ‘That is she, that is she.’ I could hardly help laughing, and we were obliged to retire.

“A lady, twenty-three years of age, afflicted with hysterical madness, used to remain constantly at the windows of her apartment during the summer. When she saw a beautiful cloud in the sky, she screamed out ‘Garnerin, Garnerin, come and take me!’ and repeated the same invitation until the cloud disappeared. She mistook the clouds for balloons sent up by Garnerin.”

CAST. There is here as much romance, as when Ajax mistook a drove of oxen for the armed Greeks, or Don Quixote the windmills for a band of Spanish giants.

EV. Again, Dr. Beddoes relates the case of a scholar, who locked himself up to study the Revelation. The confinement brought on _dyspeptic_ pains and spasms, and he was persuaded that “the monster blasphemy, with ten heads, was preying on his vitals.”

The Reverend Simon Brown died with the conviction that his _rational soul_ was annihilated by a special fiat of the Divine will; and a patient in the Friends’ “Retreat,” at York, thought he had no soul, heart, or lungs.

From “Tulpius” we learn, that the wife of Salomon Galmus sank into a state of extreme melancholy, from the deep conviction that she was a visitant from the tomb, but sent back to the world _without her heart_, for God had detained that in heaven.

Such illusions are sometimes excited by wounds of the brain. A soldier of the field of Austerlitz was struck with a delirious conviction that he was but an ill-made model of his former self. “You ask how Père Lambert is,” (he would say;) “he is dead, killed at Austerlitz; _that_ you now see is a mere machine, made in his likeness.” He would then often lapse into a state of catalepsy insensible to every stimulus.

Dr. Mead tells us of an Oxford student, who ordered the _passing bell_ to be rung for him, and _went himself_ to the belfry to instruct the ringers. He returned to his bed only to die.

A Bourbon prince thought himself dead, and refused to eat until his friends invited him to dine with Turenne and other French heroes long since departed.

There was a tradesman who thought he was a seven-shilling piece, and advertised himself thus: “If my wife presents me for payment, don’t change me.” Accuse me not of transatlantic plagiarism.

Bishop Warburton tells us of a man who thought himself a _goose pie_; and Dr. Ferriday, of Manchester, had a patient who thought he had _swallowed the devil_.

So indeed thought Luther. As in Hudibras,

“Did not the devil appear to Martin
Luther in Germany for certain?”

In Paris there lived a man who thought he had with others been guillotined, and when Napoleon was emperor, their heads were all restored, but in _the scramble he got the wrong one_.

And there is the “Visitor of Phantaste” in the old play of “Lingua,” who exclaims: “No marvel, for when I beheld my fingers, I saw they were as transparent as glass.”

You perceive that the illusions of Pope’s “Rape of the Lock” are not all fictions: the maids who fancied they were turned into bottles, were not more in error than these philosophers with their _maladie imaginaire_.

CAST. Is there not wisdom, Evelyn, in nursing _some_ of these innocent illusions? I remember Kotzebue, in his “Journey to Paris,” relates the following anecdote of a young girl, romantically in love. Her lover had often accompanied her on the harp: he died, and his harp had remained in her room. After the first excess of her despair, she sunk into the deepest melancholy, and much time elapsed ere she would sit down to her instrument. At last she did so, gave some touches, and, hark! the harp, _tuned alike_, resounded in echo. The good girl was at first seized with a secret shuddering, but soon felt a kind of soft melancholy: she was firmly persuaded that the spirit of her lover was softly sweeping the strings of the instrument. The harpsichord, from this moment, constituted her only pleasure, as it afforded her the certainty that her lover was still hovering near her. One of those unfeeling men, who want to know and clear up every thing, once entered her apartment. The girl instantly begged him to be quiet, for at that very moment the dear harp spoke most distinctly. Being _informed of the amiable illusion_ which overcame her reason, he laughed, and, with a great display of learning, proved to her by experimental physics, that all this was _very natural_. From that instant the maiden grew melancholy, drooped, and soon after died.

EV. Truth is not always to be spoken, nor too much energy exerted, in our treatment; for many a _mad act_, as it will be called, is resorted to, _as a relief_.

Tirouane de Mericourt was wont to _saturate her bedclothes with cold water, then lie down on it_. Although an extreme _remedy_, it might yield her relief from _burning_ pains. In the darker ages, she would have been chained and scourged.

But from Marcus Donatus we read the following case of still more melancholy interest; another illustration of your question, dear Castaly:

“Vicentinus believed himself too large to pass one of his doorways. To dispel this illusion, it was resolved by his physician that he should be _dragged through this aperture by force_. This erroneous dictate was obeyed; but, as he was forced along, Vicentinus screamed out in agony, that his limbs were fractured, and the flesh torn from his bones. In this dreadful delusion, with terrific imprecations against his murderers, he died.”

ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT.

“I love to cope him in these sullen fits,
For then he’s full of matter.”
AS YOU LIKE IT.

ASTR. So that in these cases it is _one faculty only_ which is interrupted, and not the _combined intellect_. But all the faculties _but_ one may be deranged, may they not?

EV. Yes. When the patient is insane on all points but one, we term it, “Folie raisonnante.”

The very idiot, indeed, is often fond of most exact arrangement. The savage of Aveyron instantly put things in order when they were deranged.

White, in his “History of Selborne,” records the propensities of an idiot, who, he says, was a very _Merops-apiaster_, or Bee-bird. Honey-bees, humblebees, and wasps, were his prey: he would seize them, disarm them of their weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Except in this adroitness, he had no understanding.

Pinel states the case of a mechanical genius, who became insane, believing _his head to be changed_. Yet he invented mechanism of the most intricate combinations. We are informed, too, of a clergyman, who was ever insane, but when delivering his discourses from the pulpit.

I believe some parts of a national establishment were constructed from the plans of one of its inmates, who was to all other intents and purposes a madman.

Dr. Uwins once told me, that some of the lines in his biographical work were written by a maniac in the Hoxton Asylum, who was ever aware of the approach of his mania. These lines were thought to be among the best in the work.

Nay, idiots will sometimes reason, and work out a syllogism. I think Dr. Conolly relates a story of two, who quarrelled, because each asserted that he was the Holy Ghost; at length, one decided that the other _was_ the Holy Ghost, and that he _could not be, because_ there were not two.

From this “folie raisonnante” there is an easy transition to that eccentricity which seems to be a set-off against the _strength of mind_ of the deep thinker. The _permanent_ derangement, however, we term _insanity_; the _transient, eccentricity_.

Marullus informs us that Bernard rode all day long by the Lemnian Lake, and at last inquired _where he was_. Archimedes rushed into the street naked from the bath, in an ecstacy at having discovered the alloy in the crown of Syracuse. Pinel tells us of a priest, who, in an abstract mood, felt no pain, although part of his body was burning.

“Viote,” says Zimmerman, “during his fits of mathematical abstraction, would often remain sleepless and foodless for three days and nights.”

And Plato thus records an instance of the abstraction of Socrates:—“One morning he fell into one of these raptures of contemplation, and continued standing in the same posture till about noon. In the evening, some Ionian soldiers went out, and, wrapping themselves up warm, lay down by him in the open field, to observe if he would continue in that posture all night; which he did until the morning, and as soon as the sun rose he saluted it, and retired.” This is mental abstraction with a vengeance!

ASTR. I will laugh with you at these oddities, Evelyn; yet not a whit less ludicrous are some of the vagaries of the learned Thebans of _modern_ times. The abstractions of Newton were proverbial. It may not be true, that he once inserted the little finger of a lady, whose hand he was holding, into his pipe, instead of a tobacco-stopper; or that he made a small hole in his study-door for the exit of a kitten, by the side of a large one for the cat: it is certain, however, that he was once musing by his fire, with his knees close to the bars, when, finding his legs in danger of being grilled, he rang his bell, and, in a rage, desired his servant to _take away the grate_.

Dr. Hamilton, author of the acute “Essay on the National Debt,” visited his college class in the morning with his own black silk stocking on one leg, and his wife’s white cotton on the other; and would sometimes occupy the whole class time by repeatedly removing the students’ hats from his table, which they as often placed there. He would run against a cow, and beg madam’s pardon, hoping he had not hurt her; and he would bow politely to his wife in the street, without recognition. Yet with all this he would, at any time, directly converse on a scientific subject beautifully and eloquently.

Bacon, the sculptor, in a rich full dress was finishing Howard’s statue in St. Paul’s, and, being cold, put on a ragged green and red shag waistcoat. In this trim he walked out to call on some ladies in Doctors’ Commons. On his return he told his son that they were sadly disposed to laugh about nothing. On being convinced, however, of his condition, he remembered the people he passed _also_ giggled, and cried out, “He does it for a wager.”

Hogarth paid a visit, in his new carriage, to the Lord Mayor, and, after his audience, walked home in his state clothes, leaving his carriage at a private door of the Mansion-House.

Dr. Harvest, of Ditton, a very learned man, would unconsciously allow his horse to be loosened from his grasp, and walk home _with the bridle on his arm_. He would walk into his church on Sunday, _with his fowling-piece_. He would write a letter, address it, and send it to _three different persons_. He lost a lady, the daughter of a bishop, as his wife, by going out to _catch gudgeons_, forgetting that it was the morning of his marriage ceremony; and he once threw a glass of wine at backgammon, and swallowed the dice!

After this we can no longer call caricatures the abstract philosopher who boiled his watch, and held the egg in his hand as the time-keeper; or the American, who put his candle to bed, and blew himself out; or the lady, who believed herself to be a post-letter, but waited patiently until the letter-sorter had examined her, to ascertain if she was single or double.

EV. There is some hope of you now, dear Astrophel, for you are returning to matters of fact.

From the deep interest of _dramatic scenes_ may spring the same apathy as that which _you_ have illustrated. Dr. Fordyce writes of one who forgot he was sitting on a hard bench, when Garrick brought in his dead Cordelia in his arms. And even the impression of _fatigue_ and _pain_ will often, for a time, leave us, when we are gazing on architectural or picturesque beauty.

IDA. Are not those minds which are easily influenced by morbid sensibility, the minutiæ of existence, often thus depressed into a condition somewhat resembling the moroseness of these half-idiots?

EV. Ay, even the mighty minds of heroes and of monarchs. Queen Elizabeth was often wont to sit alone, _in the dark_, in sorrow and in tears. We know not if the fate of Essex or of Mary were the cause, but the marble mind of Elizabeth was dissolved before she died. In Sully’s “Mémoires,” also, we read that the solitude of Charles IX., of France, was saddened by remorse, for his memory was ever pealing in his ear the shrieks and groans of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. During this influence we may often find that the features or actions are so deeply expressive as to prove an involuntary, though correct, index of the thought. According to the passions or subjects which occupy the mind, will be the play of feature or the movement of the body.

“We might almost suppose the body thought.”

This “brown study” is the slightest form of that state which the French term _ennui_, in which the mind too often is left to prey upon itself, having, as it were, no sympathy with the world. Its more severe symptoms are those of _misanthropy_, _melancholy_, and _hypochondriasis_, inducing but too often that extreme _tedium vitæ_, the climax of which is suicide. Out of the first, which is but the mere ripple of derangement, we may be laughed or coaxed; nay, it may yield to the positive _suffering_ of the _body_. The second is like the deep still water, the awful calmness antecedent to a tempest. In the words of Lord Erskine, “Reason is not driven from her seat, but distraction sits down on it along with her, holds her trembling on it, and frights her from her propriety. And then comes often o’er the mind a very coward sentiment, echoing the demoniac resolution of Spenser’s “Cave of Despair”:

“What if some little payne the passage have,
That makes frayle flesh to fear the better wave?
Is not short payne well borne, that brings long ease,
And layes the soule to sleep in quiet grave?”

IDA. Despair will often rouse even the most sensitive beings to the most patient fortitude. How is this?

EV. Not rouse, but depress—not fortitude, but apathy. I could excite your deepest sympathy and wonder, Ida, by the history of the young and beautiful Ann G——n, who was hung for child-murder; in whom the convulsive agony which followed her sentence at length ended in a resignation which some would term heroism. During the nights in which I myself watched her slumbers, both from deep scientific interest, and the request of her judges, her actions were automatic; her existence was one perfect trance; and she met her fate as if life and its consciousness had long been parted.

Even an intense blow will sometimes, as it were, annihilate sensibility, creating an icy apathy to all subsequent inflictions; which was the effect on Mandrin, during the tortures of the wheel; for he smiled at the _third_ blow, to find that it hurt him so little.

IDA. Then we are to contrast the state of the unhappy girl with the _voluntary_ endurance of heroism depending on the power of _concentrating mind_? The almost superhuman endurance of pain is finely displayed among the North American Indians, who even chant their own death-song calmly amidst worse than the tortures of the Inquisition, or sustain with a smile those probationary trials for the dignities of a chief, or the admission to the class of warriors, that are modelled with all the refinement of cruelty. On the banks of the Orinoco, especially, (if Robertson be right, or Gumilla, his authority, to be believed,) the ordeal begins by a rigid fast, reductive of the body’s energy; then commences a flaying of his body by lashes as dreadful as the knout, by the hands of the assembled chiefs, and then, if the slightest sensibility be evinced, he is disgraced for ever. His raw and reeking flesh is then exposed to the stings and venom of insects and reptiles, and again suspended over the scorching and suffocating flames of herbs of the most disgusting odour; and, to close this tale of torture, it is not seldom that the victim sinks in mortal agonies beneath the dreadful ordeal.

EV. The two great springs of voluntary endurance of pain are _religion_ and _honour_. Thus, among other heroic acts of England’s martyrs, Cranmer held the apostate hand which signed his recantation in the midst of the flames until it was _wasted_. And the unyielding fortitude with which the victim bore the rack and other excruciating tortures of the popish Inquisition is almost beyond belief.

The fanaticism of the wild enthusiasts of the east it were profanation to call religion; but with the hope of rejoining her husband in the realms of bliss, the Hindoo widow clasps his corpse in her arms, and, without a sigh, sets the torch to his funeral pile. And, to inherit the paradise of Brahma, the Fakir or Yoghee keeps his fist clenched for years, until the nails grow through his hand; or forces the hooks between his ribs, and whirls himself aloft until he expires, or throws himself prostrate beneath the crushing wheels of Juggernaut.

It is written that Cardan rendered himself by great efforts insensible to external irritants.

And analogous to this, was the almost superhuman effort of that determined action of Muley Moloch quoted in the “Spectator,” from Vertot’s “Revolutions of Portugal:”—“In a condition of extreme prostration he was borne in a litter with his army. On the sounding of a retreat, although in a half-dying state, he leaped from the litter, and led his quailing troops to a charge, which ended in victory. Ere this was accomplished his life was fast ebbing, and, reclining on his litter, and enjoining the secrecy of his staff, with his finger on his lip, he died.”

But my analysis will be incomplete, if I do not revert to a point that I had almost forgotten. These abstract moods have often been confounded with the visions of slumber, being adduced as proofs of the perfection of mind during sleep.

You reminded me, Astrophel, of the brilliant parody composed by Mackenzie, of the versification of Voltaire and La Fontaine, of the solution of the difficult problem by Condorcet, of the discussion of abstruse points of policy by Cabanis. You might have added Condillac, who asserts that when he was composing the “_Cours d’Etudes_,” he often left a chapter unfinished, but had it all in his mind when he awoke. And Franklin assures us, that he often _dreamed_ of the issue of important events in which he was engaged, believing the vision to be the influence of inspired prophecy. Dr. Haycock, of Oxford, too, is said to have composed and preached sermons in his sleep, in despite even of buffetings.

These are not dreams, but the reveries of philosophers and poets. The faculties of perception are suspended: one only object occupies the mind, and the impression on the memory is vivid and permanent. Of this reverie I do not recollect a more interesting illustration than the “_Dream_ of Tartini,” and its exquisite product, “La Sonata di Diavolo.” This admirable violinist and once esteemed composer, relates the following anecdote as the origin of his _chef-d’œuvre_, the “Devil’s Sonata.” “One night, it was in the year 1713, I dreamed that I had made over my soul to his satanic majesty. Every thing was done to my wink; the faithful menial anticipated my fondest wishes. Among other freaks, it came into my head to put the violin into his hands, for I was anxious to see whether he was capable of producing anything worth hearing upon it. Conceive my astonishment at his playing a sonata, with such dexterity and grace, as to surpass whatever the imagination can conceive. I was so much delighted, enraptured, and entranced by his performance, that I was unable to fetch another breath, and, in this state, I awoke. I jumped up and seized upon my instrument, in the hope of reproducing a portion, at least, of the unearthly harmonies I had heard in my dream. But all in vain: the music which I composed under the inspiration, I must admit the best I have ever written, and of right I have called it the ‘Devil’s Sonata;’ but the falling off between that piece and the sonata which had laid such fast hold of my imagination is so immense, that I would rather have broken my violin into a thousand fragments, and renounced music for good and all, than, had it been possible, have been robbed of the enjoyment which the remembrance afforded me.”

In the cases of precocious children, who are said to have “lisp’d in numbers,” I do not doubt that the secret may be referred to this concentration of genius. Mozart composed a sonata at the age of four. The precocious little girl, Louisa Vinning, who was called the “_Infant Sappho_,” has yet eclipsed Mozart in this; that at the age of two years and eight months she sang repeatedly a melody perfectly new, and so perfect, that it was written down from her lips, and entitled, “The Infant’s Dream.” During all this, the little creature was in such a state of apparent abstraction, that it was believed by all around her that she walked and talked in _her sleep_.

These mental concentrations can, by some enthusiasts, be produced at pleasure. The paroxysm of the improvisatore, for instance. But it is an effort which, like the dark hour of the Caledonian seer, is not endured with impunity: it points, indeed, emphatically to the limit beyond which mind should not be strained.

The Marquis de Moschati expressed himself to us, as experiencing excitement like intoxication when he _sat himself_ to compose, and threw his whole soul into his subject. It commenced with irregular and laborious breathing, excessive palpitations, _vertigo_, _tinnitus aurium_,—the perception of objects being lost. Then came romantic fancies, like the visions of opium, “thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.” At the conclusion was felt excessive exhaustion, and a state of mild catalepsy ensued for five or six days together. This excited talent, therefore, is an evanescent madness.

CAST. Another fling at poesy. Were I an improvisatrice, you would not so libel my inspiration. “Listen, lords and lady gay.” In the summer of 18—, after the _Eisteddfod_ at Cardiff, we wandered over the hills to Caerphilly, the gigantic towers of Owain Glyndwr.

As I lay under the celebrated Hanging Tower, which is projecting eleven feet beyond its base, I reflected on the strange circumstance of the arrest of so gigantic a mass in its progress to prostration. “What,” I exclaimed, “is the power by which it is suspended?” My imagination heightened my reverie, and placed before me the image of the Destroyer, with his emblematic scythe and glass, and he answered me thus:—

“Half-dreaming mortal, listen! It is _I_,
Time, the destroyer, whose gigantic arm
Lifted this pond’rous ruin from its base.
Why hangs it thus, arrested in its course,
In bold defiance of attraction’s law?
Why, like its once proud lord, renown’d Glyndwr,
Sinks not its mouldering grandeur to the ground?
Behold an emblem of vitality!
A type of mortal man, of thee, of all!
Like this grey wall, thy tott’ring steps are staid,
And on a thread thy fragile life is hung;
Yet leaning, ever leaning, to the grave.
One moment more, an atom of an age,
This mould’ring ruin, trembling on its base,
May, like the marble shafts of lone Palmyra,
Be hurl’d to earth, and crumble into dust;
And, like the ruin, thou!”

And yet _I_ was not mad.

EV. I talk not of a gentle heart like yours, fair Castaly; but of that extreme, when ideas are received by a mind nearly exhausted, and lie for a while dormant. As sleep and fatigue wear off, and consciousness returns, these images are suddenly and brilliantly lighted up. If intense impression shall have been made on the heart or mind, intense will be the abstraction of the enthusiast. Until _one_ thought is touched, the patient is sane; but, when the chord vibrates, then, as in the pathetic episode of Sterne’s Maria, the paroxysm is expended in a flood of tears, or in a mad fit, or in a gush of wildest music.

To the latter cause, we owe many beauties of composition. Demarini, the Italian tragedian, acted a prison-scene before Paganini, in which, with the pathos of deep distress, the victim prayed for death. The maestro retired to bed, but not to sleep; his excited brain relieved its painful sympathies by the composition of the “_Adagio apassionato_.”

Carl Maria Von Weber witnessed the waltzing of his wife with a gallant cavalier. He retired in a mood of jealous frenzy, and expressed the ideas which rankled in his heart by the “_Invitation à la Walse_.”

ASTR. Well, is there not something special in all this?

EV. Yes, truly,—a power imparted to some, withheld from others,—_genius_.

ASTR. Yet, in explanation of this abstract reverie, the phrenologist will, I dare say, satisfy himself by merely deciding that the organ of concentrativeness is strongly developed.

EV. It is clear, at least, that the deep interest of the subject of reflection overbalances the influence of the external senses. The impression of objects is either too slight, or rapid, to produce perception, or (in other words), however the impression may be imparted to the brain by the nerve, the brain is not _sensible_ of it, and there is therefore no perception.

So intense indeed has been this influence, that Pliny contemplated the volcanic philosophy amidst the ashy cloud of Vesuvius by which he was destroyed. And Archimedes was so intent in solving a problem, during the siege of Syracuse, that no sense of danger impelled him to avoid the storm, or fly from the dagger of the assassin.

While Parmegiano was painting at Rome the “Vision of St. Jerome,” which now adorns the National Gallery of England, the famous siege of that city was concluded by its spoliation. Yet Parmegiano (absorbed with his painting) was unconscious of the tumult, until his _studio_ was burst open by some of the soldiers of the enemy. A similar story is told, also, of Protogenes, when Demetrius was laying siege to Rhodes.

CAST. The flappers of Laputa would soon have dispelled this reverie.

EV. But if they had thus flourished their official bladders, perhaps the “Principia Mathematica” had not been written; for Newton explained the extent of his discoveries by his “always thinking unto them.”

Somewhat like the effect of intense study on the mind, the muscles of the limbs will be influenced _by one long-directed habit_. Paganini was observed, on board a steam-boat, constantly to repose on the sofa. During this state of reverie, his left arm assumed the peculiar attitude in which he held his violin, until he saw that he was noticed, when he altered its position.

The right hand of Benjamin West, of which I saw a posthumous model at Lord de Tabley’s, appeared to have taken that form in which he was wont to hold the pencil.

By this concentration, this full possession of the mind, the wildness of fancy in the dark is often the source of terror; but this is ever lessened or dispelled by any sound or sight which presents a subject to the _perceptive_ faculty. Such is the sudden glimmer of a light, the barking of a dog, or the almost instinctive effort of the school-boy,

“Whistling aloud to keep his courage up.”

All these cases, then, indicate concentration of mind. “Mental conception is uninfluenced by conscious perception.”

I may add, that, in the heat of engagement, soldiers and sailors are often unconscious of being even seriously wounded. In the battle of Lake Thrasymene, the armies of Rome and Carthage were so absorbed in the tumult and din of war, that an earthquake, which spread desolation around them, was unheeded by these determined soldiers.

IDA. I have gleaned enough from your illustrations, Evelyn, to believe that we may explain by them that solemn and last reverie of the dying, when all other ideas have ceased to influence, but the _most impressive_—

“The ruling passion strong in death;”

when earthly life is on the wane, and the spirit, in this expiring thought, takes its last farewell of the flesh. I remember some beautiful evidences of this influence.

It was observed that Porson, after a paralytic fit, scarcely uttered a word of English; but to the last moment spoke _Greek_ fluently.

Dr. Adam (a master of Sir Walter Scott), on the subsidence of delirium, exclaimed, “It grows dark—the boys may dismiss;” and instantly expired.

The last words of Dr. Abercrombie were addressed to an imaginary patient, regarding the care of his digestive functions.

Some time after the trial of the Bristol magistrates, Lord Tenterden lapsed into a stupor from exhaustion. A short period before death he rallied, and, after conversing with his friends for a few minutes, he raised himself on his couch, and said, “Gentlemen of the jury, you may retire;” and then fell back and expired.

SOMNOLENCE.—TRANCE.—CATALEPSY.

——“In this borrow’d likeness of shrunk death,
Thou shalt remain full two and forty hours,
And then awake, as from a pleasant sleep.”
ROMEO AND JULIET.