From time to time, somnambulism seems to open a door in the soul to a source of natural revelation, such as William of Auvergne speaks of. The following authentic instance is particularly noteworthy, because the possibility of expectation, having produced, as it often does, what was expected, is precluded. At a school at Thorp Arch, in Yorkshire, at the beginning of the present century, a boy was known to be a somnambulist. One night, the usher saw him rise from his bed and wander down-stairs into the school-room. He followed, and saw the boy go to his desk, take out his slate, and write. On looking over his shoulder, he read: "On such a day of such a month next I shall die." The boy almost directly after went up to bed, and the usher took the slate to the head-master. They agreed to say nothing about it, and another slate was substituted. The boy went on with his routine life, apparently quite unconscious that anything was impending; and, indeed, it is on all hands admitted that somnambulists in their waking state recollect nothing of their somnambulism. When the day came, the boy died. Sister Anne Catherine Emerich (1774-1824), an ecstatica of Westphalia, has expressed herself with considerable precision on the subject of mesmerism. Whilst earnestly warning people against its use as to the last degree dangerous, she admits that the phenomena are objective, and that the power brought into action is _substantially_ natural. What she says is so remarkable that I shall not hesitate to quote at some length.[64] "My impression in regard to it [mesmerism] was always one of horror, and this sprang less from the thing itself than from the enormous danger to which I saw such as practised it almost always fall a prey.