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sugillations," which at first sight certainly appear to tell for the agency of a real, and even of a material being, in connection with the terrifying visitation. But, as we said before, it is impossible to prove, either that the nightmare is, or that it is not, a real goblin or devil. In the nature of the thing, neither opinion is susceptible of demonstration, and every one will adopt that to which his view of things in general inclines him. Perhaps the truth would be found in the union of the two, for they are not incompatible. What we call a popular error is often but a one-sided view of some truth; and the unpopular philosophical view which we propound as its corrective, is, in the greatest number of cases, just as one-sided. That which can be scientifically known of a matter is not the whole of a matter. Every thing has its transcendental or supersensuous, as well as its phenomenal side ;and science has to do wholly with the latter, with the accidents of the thing; while faith, imagination, instinctive intuition, which is strongest in the unscientific man, goes direct to the unknown, inaccessible substance ;—on which topic we could be distressingly philosophical, but forbear.

And so,

the ancient popular doctrine, which makes the nightmare an incubating fiend, and the modern physiological doctrine, which resolves it into congestion of blood about the epigastrium, or spasm of the midriff, may be

the two sides of one truth. The nightmare may be a proper entity, a goblin as other goblins, whom either his particular elvish humour, or the law of his being, or some point of infernal economy or etiquette, moves to incubate on such persons as arr, by certain states of the nervous system, or certain spiritual or psychic aptitudes, brought into what the mesmerists call rapport with him. The congestion of the chest, torpor of the vital organs, spasmodic state of the midriff, may act like magnetism on the nerves, (as it is known that magnetism does produce

such torpor, congestion, convulsive action), and so destroying the balance of activities in our wonderful complex being, leave the inward sense to act unantagonized, unseal the mystic eye of the soul, open within us the communication with brighter or darker spheres, and bring us into converse with angelic or elvish intelligences, according as our tendencies at the time are upwards or downwards, or according as the causes which produced our entranced state were of a celestial character or the reverse."

Now, there is nothing elevated about indigestion: it is neither saintly nor, in its unsaintliness, is it sublime. In general, it comes from eating too much, which is not a proceeding of a seraphic tendency, nor the first step of a movement heavenwards. And these affections of the epigastric regions are ordinarily the fruit of indigestion, wherefore the "sleep-waking" state into which they cast us-namely, that sleep of the outward and waking of the inward man-reveals to the eye of the latter a base neighbourhood. The nightmare does not come up into our sphere, but we spiritually descend into his. He is there already, while we are gorging ourselves, but we are not aware of him until the outward senses be sealed in torpor, and the inward world opens in its dim horror on the troubled eye of the soul.

We have met with people who believe that the beasts characterised by the Mosaic law as unclean are not so in a mere ceremonial sense, but in one that has its foundation in nature; in fact that such beasts are in a special wise liable to demoniacal possession. The cat is a long-recognised minister of the darker powers. Dogs and horses see ghosts, which, as we shall presently see, implies a capability of being possessed, and is, in fact, the next thing to it. What is more horrible than to come into "magnetic rapport" with a dog, through infusion of the saliva of the latter into your blood? For the saliva is a great me

dium of magnetic influences, a conductor of psychic agency, wherefore, also, the moods of the soul have a marked operation on its physical qualities, making it a vehicle of sanatory virtue, or a deadly poison. Armstrong af firms that the bite of negroes, when enraged, produces obstinate ulcers and hydrophobia. Gaubius tells of a soldier who, being bit in the arm by a woman whom he had bitterly angered, died in convulsions; as also of a young Italian, who, in a paroxysm of anger, bit himself in the finger, and forthwith became rabid, and died. And Sauvage has recorded the case of a young maiden, who, by sheer intensity of ireful emotion, without any bite at all, of herself or another, man or beast, was thrown into a state exactly resembling canine madness. Even the mere sight of a person in hydrophobia has engendered the same affection in persons of susceptible temperament. Mease relates such a case, wherein the sufferer was a priest. A student of Wittenberg became hydrophobious, after he had seen, with heartfelt sympathy, a violent paroxysm of rabies with which a young maiden, already nigh in the last agonies, was seized. He was indeed restored, but for years laboured under a great weakness and uncertainty of the voice, as well as a painful dread of speaking in public. Themison experienced something of the same kind after attending a friend in hydrophobia, and seeing him die. An inward paralyzing terror took possession of him as often as he recalled to his memory the vivid picture of the suffering he had witnessed. Peter Frank, having merely touched with his fingers a person dying of hydrophobia, was, through the power of imagination, presently affected with symptoms of the disease; and a young physician, mentioned in the "Journal Général de Medecine, 1824," became rabid through a similar operation of phantasy, after the dissection of a child which had died of the bite of a mad dog. The like unhappy fate had a woman, through attending the deathbed of her husband under similar circumstances.

Thus mediately and immediately do dogs work us woe. Still every medal, says the Italian, has its reverse, and dogs, oftenest our bane, are sometimes our antidote. An epileptic person, at

Paris, was cured by the sudden spring. ing of a dog at him; but it would seem that the mental shock given to the man reacted with a physically destructive force upon the dog, for it fell down dead on the spot. Convulsions of children are often transferred to beasts of delicate nature, such as cats, which are brought into contact with the sufferers. All convulsive affections are propagated by sympathy. At the Charité, an hospital in Berlin, fourteen sickly women were taken with epileptic fits, at seeing a newly-arrived patient fall into such. At St. Roch, in France, in the year 1786, from fifty to sixty young girls manifested a simi lar effect of sympathy. But this time we have really digressed.

About other unclean animals are observable other marks of spiritual or necromantic aptitudes. The ape is manifestly a diabolical creature; and the idea of Doctor Adam Clarke is not without plausibility, that the form of this obscene brute yielded a lodging to the tempter in paradise: for the rest, there is no shape under which the nightmare is more apt to appear. The hare lends its form to the witch for her twilight flittings and scuddings to the place of some unhallowed rendezvous. And that the swine is a possessed or possessable beast we have testimony not to be cited here. Now it is remarkable that the nightmarevisitations are oftener known to follow

the eating of pork than, perhaps, any other supper. As if the fiend, which had housed itself in the living pig, had the power of oppressing and vexing the stomach into which the flesh thereof comes. As the ghost of one that hath not rest in death will often linger and sit by his new-made grave, so the demon which has been disturbed in his possession of a fat hog, haunts with a strange fondness the place where this latter lies sepulchred -the stomach of him, namely, that has supped upon it. Or is it, perhaps, not more probably so, that the unclean spirit enters into the same magnetic relation to the eater in which it had stood to the beast that is eaten? for possession is, say some, nothing else than magnetic relation between a devil, or between the soul of one that died not in grace, and a man living. And such a relation, but in a less degree of nearness and intimacy, is

also ghost-seeing. He who sees a ghost is but one stage removed from being possessed. Thus Novalis says, that "ghost-appearing were not possible without inspiration." The ghost which we see (the nightmare, for instance) is not without us, but within; yet not in our innermost, which were possession. Our own phantasy projects the apparition into the outer world, wherein it illudes us like a magic-lantern image, (for which reason also, the ghost is before you, turn which way you will); but that which mockingly thus, as spectre, appears to us from without, has in reality its site in the medial (not the central) region of our being; and the phantasy, behind it, is as a lamp, and the outward sense is as a glass before it, whereby its image is thrown out, and appears, huge and threatening, on the wall of the phenomenal.

In the highly interesting Reminiscences of the Marquise de Créquy, which run over a period embracing nearly the whole of the last century, namely, from 1710 to 1802, are recorded two curious cases of nightmare, or of something like it, which we subjoin:

"The Duchess of Devonshire was nightly afflicted by a nightmare in the following wise:-It was the apparition of a frightful ape, which suddenly rose out of the earth, and dragged her out of bed the moment her eyes were closed. Seizing her by the right arm, the monster stretched her on her back in the middle of the floor, having first, with one of his hind paws, shoved a cushion under the small of her back; he then came and squatted himself on her breast, where he remained motionless, his two odious hands spread out upon her cheeks, and stared, as it were, into the depths of her eyes till she awoke. In this manner she passed night after night, and was brought by such horrible sufferings into a miserable state of debility and emaciation. No physician could free her from this nightmare: Tronchin himself went to England for the purpose, but in vain.

"The celebrated Cazotte, author of the Diable amoureux, who had at this time become a member of the mystical order of Martinez de Pasqualis, heard of the affliction of the English Duchess. Chronic nightmare,' said he, often comes from abuse of magnetism; it may, also, arise from unskilful magnetic treatment, Unbelievers or mate

And

Cazotte, then, it would seem, had cured her: how, the second case gives us an intimation. We need not suppose that the Duchess was really dragged out of the bed, but that she seemed to herself to be so in the half-waking, soporose state which is peculiar to such morbid dreamings. And from the position in which she believed herself to be placed, namely, with the breast hanging backwards, one would be the more tempted to ascribe her disease to a congested state of the heart or lungs, which, reaching on the nerves of the head, stirred up the imagination to that ghastly activity. the dreaming phantasy, having once, from some accidental suggestion, taken up the image of the ape, the same would afterwards, on similar suggestion, reproduce itself night after night. And so, no doubt, did the physicians of the time, pointed at by Cazotte under the designation of " unbelievers or materialists," explain the phenomenon. But it was just in reference to such explanations that the illuminated disciple of Martinez de Pasqualis said, "The thing is not what people believe it to be." It is not to be doubted that magnetism, by opening the inward eye, and by other influences peculiar to it, may, when used incautiously, have mischievous effects. What, but magnetism abused, was the witchcraft of the middle ages? For the rest, we have no evidence that the Duchess of Devonshire was addicted to the use of this power: it was, however, the period when Mesmer stood in the zenith of his reputation.

One would gladly have had a word more from Cazotte, who seems to have seen through the thing. But he answered not; he held it not far permitted, or he knew nobody would believe him.

The Comtesse Fanny de Beauharnais, aunt to the first husband of the Empress Josephine, who died at Paris, in the year 1813, was afflicted with a

I

"Her complaint was a nightmare, of the same character as the Duchess of Devonshire's. It could, however, be ascribed to no use or abuse of magnetism, for she had a mortal dread, an insuperable horror of magnetism. might say she regarded it with execration, were not the word out of place in reference to a character marked by so much moderation as hers. I can assure you that she was, at all times, of the purest sincerity. Harbour, therefore, no suspicion of the truth of her recital, of which I will endeavour to omit nothing, and to which you may be sure I shall add nothing of my own.

"As soon as her women had left her bed-chamber, and her curtains were closed, she was sensible of a feverish oppression; she rang, but nobody came. She opened her curtains a little to avoid suffocation, and there presented itself the following strange illusion.

"First, she remarked on the hearth a clear coal-fire; she heard the foldingdoors open, which connected her bedroom with the adjoining apartment; and hereupon she heard an obstinate, rasping cough.

Now came into the room a very tall woman, miserably clad, ragged and filthy; her head was covered with a linen cloth, which yet did not prevent horns being seen on her forehead. These horns were only a finger's length, and like those of a young cow; they were not sharp, and one was somewhat shorter than the other, and appeared as if the end had been forcibly broken off, leaving only a stump. This very repulsive person went directly to the fire, which she began to stir.

"In the room, and chiefly about the bed, was a legion of frightful figures, which, in profound silence, changed themselves into formless things, and presented themselves again under new

shapes, with continually varying form and size.

"The hero of this nightly drama was a little monster of a child, which had the whooping cough; it coughed like a diable enrhume-a devil with a cold (which it was)—and it was at length led into the chamber, with measured steps, with every appearance of great importance, and an infinity of precautions. It was conducted by a sort of medical devil, who in features resembled the Dowager Marquise de Beauharnais, and its retinue consisted of a multitude of demons, who lavished upon it caresses and endearments, befondlings and befawnings, to no end. Among these goblin lackeys were no monstrous figures like those which floated every where in the chamber, and met the eye, wherever it turned, like a living ghostly tapestry; but there were faces so diabolically foolish, so idiotic-parasitic, so abject, toady and lickspittle, that it was a thing to make one desperate. The young sufferer, whom they made sit on a sofa-cushion at the fire-side, was of the size of a child from five to six years old. He wore a habit of blue taffety, he was swollen like a boil, but very pale; his head was of enormous bigness; he had red hair, standing quite straight and stiff up from the roots, and you saw on his forehead buds of horns, which looked like snail-shells.

"Between the friends of this little monster and its physician (who was so like the Marquise de Beauharnais) there took place regularly every evening a noisy discussion, carried on with prodigious animation in an unintelligible language, broken in upon only by the fits of passion and the whooping of the little wretch with his cough. The proceedings became more and more confused and tumultuous, till all was uproar, hubbub, and fantastic chaos, in the course of which Madame de B. was dragged out of her bed. A kind of giant, with a white beard, lifted her up by the hair of the head, and, holding her in a perpendicular direction, impinged her again and again on the floor until her knees bent. Her legs were then laid back, and bent upwards with such violence, that the joints were put out, causing the cruelest pain in both knees; and the legs, doubled up along the back in this fashion, were made fast to her body by means of a small chaine à tourniquet, of which they made her a kind of girdle. They did not omit to set both her hands on her hips, taking care at the same time to keep the arms well out from the body, in order to round them off into the form of handles. The next thing was to stuff into her throat, in a rude and quite inhuman

manner, white onions. roots of marsh. mallows, sticks of licorice, bundles of couch-grass, apples cut in four, and lumps of dried figs. To this were added brown honey and honey of Narbonne, which they brought into her mouth and gullet by means of wooden spatulas. and then came large handfuls of quatrefleurs-whatever that is-which, as she said, choked her worse than all the rest. Her torment was only somewhat lightened when they let an extraordinary quantity of water down her throat by means of a leaden tunnel.

"They then took her by her two handles, like a paving-rammer (one would say like a coffee-pot, only that a coffee-pot of her shape and of such a capacity was never seen on earth), and put her on the fire to boil all the night, like a pipkin of tisane. 'No,' said she, with a sigh, and weeping at the recollection of her torments, even while the absurdity of the whole made it impossible for her not to laugh; 'no, never has mortal had to endure a misery like what I suffer night after night. I think I hear myself bellow for anguish and then the tall woman begins and says"Go, you foolish body! you are only too happy to suffer for this sweet angel!" Sometimes we have lectures or dissertations of that unworthy wretch of a physician, that enrage me outright-namely, when he undertakes to demonstrate to all those devils-while they laugh till the tears come in their eyes at the rareness of the joke that I have nothing to suffer but what a water-kettle has to suffer as such, and am no more to be pitied than any other pipkin or pot, on the ground, as he says, that I have in me the requisite quantity of fluid, not to burn, “Oh! if I had not supplied her with the mass of water required by the laws of physic to prevent a complete desiccation-ce serait different that would be quite a different affair! In that case, I grant you, she would have a right to complain; but you are all well aware that vessels filled with liquid receive no damage from being placed on the fire." In short, it is enough to drive one mad, suppose one were really nothing but an earthen pot!-and just this hellish pedant, with his science and his self-complacency, is my worst torment, to say nothing of his likeness to my mother-in-law, which amounts to perfect illusion.'

"Is it possible-is it really true,' cried I, that you can have so very odd and tormenting a dream with such surprising regularity?'

"I swear to you,' replied she, 'all these incredible, absurd particulars, and long talk, with which I have wearied you, about what I seem to myself to feel, to see, and to hear, are true to the

minutest details: the very same dream, the very same sufferings, await me, night after night. You know that I never tell stories, and you see how this kind of life has brought me down. I suffer so horribly from it all, that I am come to the determination not to go to bed any more."

It is a pity that Madame de B. has not told us whether the dream ever went so far as the pouring out of the decoction, and how the little sick devil took his physic. We are informed by a poet, whose name, as far as we are aware, has not reached posterity, that,

"When the devil was sick,

The devil a monk would be:"

but that was, no doubt, a grown-up devil, and it would perhaps be too much to expect to find such very serious impressions in an imp of six years old.

Cazotte at last cured the Comtesse B. of her nightmare, and all that she could say of the means he used was, that he had pronounced certain forms of prayer, at the same time touching her hands. Perhaps he used the particular prayer which, as we know, our fathers had against this visitation, and which was termed the "nightspell." After his death, (he was guillotined in 1792,) his noble patient was visited, if not by the same plague, yet by others not less distressing, in consequence of which she had adopted the custom of sleeping in an armchair this made strangers think her a little mad, but those who knew her better, did her more justice.

That the "spiriting," the infernal farce which visited this afflicted lady every night, was mere play of her own phantasy, is hard to believe. Hallucination and monomania are words which seem to say a great deal, but in reality leave the ground of such things unfathomed. That Madame de B., with the first feverish oppression, instead of falling into a healthy natural sleep, came into a condition of ecstacy, a certain half-sleep, (intersomnium,) with opening of the inward eye and that to this the lying in bed was more favourable than the sitting in the arm-chair, a position which lessened the afflux of blood towards the epigastric region-all this we are warranted to assume, and so far acquire a clear view of the matter, in its psychological and physiological aspects.