“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.