Here our conversation stopped, for Amy had now joined us, and, looking up to reply, I saw the child’s innocent face between me and the furrowed brow of the old man. (1) See, on the theory elaborated from this principle, Dr. Hibbert’s interesting and valuable work on the “Philosophy of Apparitions.” (2) What Faber here says is expressed with more authority by one of the most accomplished metaphysicians of our time (Sir W. Hamilton): “Somnambulism is a phenomenon still more astonishing (than dreaming). In this singular state a person performs a regular series of rational actions, and those frequently of the most difficult and delicate nature; and what is still more marvellous, with a talent to which he could make no pretension when awake. (Cr. Ancillon, Essais Philos. ii. 161.) His memory and reminiscence supply him with recollections of words and things which, perhaps, never were at his disposal in the ordinary state,--he speaks more fluently a more refined language. And if we are to credit what the evidence on which it rests hardly allows us to disbelieve, he has not only perception of things through other channels than the common organs of sense, but the sphere of his cognition is amplified to an extent far beyond the limits to which sensible perception is confined. This subject is one of the most perplexing in the whole compass of philosophy; for, on the one hand, the phenomena are so remarkable that they cannot be believed, and yet, on the other, they are of so unambiguous and palpable a character, and the witnesses to their reality are so numerous, so intelligent, and so high above every suspicion of deceit, that it is equally impossible to deny credit to what is attested by such ample and un exceptionable evidence.”--Sir W. Hamilton: Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, vol. ii. p. 274.