Sounds also may be partly associated with the dream at waking, and with reality, when awake. Under this illusive impression, even murder has been _innocently_ committed, on one, who waked, and stabbed his brother at the moment he was _dreaming_ of assassins. CAST. And so may be explained, I suppose, this funny anecdote. A young lover was drooping into a day-dream, while sitting with his brothers and sisters, and his thought had turned on the cruelty of his mistress. He was for a moment dreaming of her, when pussy, stretching her paws, scratched his leg with a claw: there was an instant association, I presume, of the wound with the lady’s cruelty, for he started and exclaimed, “Oh Arabella, don’t!” EV. Hippocrates quaintly alludes to the dreaming about seas and lakes as an indication of _hydrothorax_; and to others, as symptomatic of _effusion on the brain_: and it has been asserted, that gloomy dreams in fevers indicate danger. But all this is hypothesis; indeed, the delirious dreams of fever are often bright and cheerful. The “Opium-Eater” has a strange fancy regarding his dreams of “silvery expanses of water;” “these haunted me so much, that I feared that some dropsical state or tendency of the brain, might thus be making itself _objective_, and the sentient organ project itself as its own object.” I hope you understand this, Astrophel—I do not. In the morbid condition of _hypochondriasis_, which is a sort of permanent _daymare_, similar fancies are excited. Esquirol’s patient at Notre Dame thought the pope held council in her belly;—her intestines were found _closely adherent_ together. Another monomaniac thought the devil had stretched a cord across her stomach;—her heart was _adherent to its bag_. Another believed that her body was stolen by the devil;—she was in reality paralytic, and _insensible_ to blows or pricking. To explain some of these illusions, Jason Pratensis very gravely asserts, that “the devil being a slender incomprehensible spirit, can easily insinuate and wind himself into human bodies, and, cunningly couched in our bowels, terrify our souls with fearful dreams.” I may add that we see, in some, a delirious _transmigration of sensation_. Parkinson relates these cases. One referred his own sensation to others, telling his nurse that his visitors were hungry, while his own voracity plainly indicated that the _hunger was in himself_. Another, in a fit of intoxication, insisted on undressing all his family, as they were drunk, and could not do it themselves. Now we certainly move ourselves unconsciously in our sleep as a relief from painful positions. If, however, these uneasy sensations are increased from stagnant blood about the heart and lungs, the oppression is extreme, and _loads_ the moving powers; producing a transient agony and an intense effort. If this were unsuccessful on the limbs and speech, the result would be often destructive.