“A battalion of French soldiers, during the toils and dangers of a campaign, were marching on a certain point on a most oppressive day, and at double the usual speed; their strength was eight hundred men, all hardy, seasoned, and courageous; careless of danger, despising the devil, and little occupied with the thoughts of ghosts and phantasmagoria. On the night of the occurrence in question, the battalion was forced to occupy a narrow and low building at Tropœa, barely calculated to accommodate three hundred persons. Nevertheless, they slept; but, at midnight, one and all were roused by frightful screams issuing from all quarters of the house; and to the eyes of the astonished and affrighted soldiers appeared the vision of a huge dog, which bounded in through the window, and rushed with extraordinary heaviness and speed over the breasts of the spectators. The soldiers quitted the building in terror. Next night, by the solicitations of the surgeon and chef-de-bataillon, who accompanied them, they again resumed their previous quarters. ‘We saw,’ says the narrator, ‘that they slept. We watched the arrival of the hour of the preceding panic, and midnight had scarcely struck when the veteran soldiers, for the second time, started to their feet. Again they had heard the supernatural voices, again the visionary hound had bestrode them to suffocation. The chef-de-bataillon and myself heard or saw nothing of these events.’ ”
The superstitious thought this spectre to be the devil; but the heat and carbonic acid gas were, I believe, enough for the excitement of the phantasm and the feeling.
There can scarcely be imagined a more terrific feeling than this sense of extreme danger, or difficulty, this intense impediment, without a power to avert it. The constant labour of Sisyphus, with his rolling-down stone, and the punishment of Tantalus, would yield in severity to the agony of night-mare, but for its transient existence.
It seems to me, that this want of balance between will and power influences human nature so much, that life itself may be termed one long and painful incubus. The actions we perform seldom reach the perfection which the will desires. Hence arises that constant dissatisfaction, which even the close approach to perfection of some of the most accomplished professors of art and science cannot avert.
We must confess, with Socrates, that the extent of our knowledge is indeed but a conviction of our ignorance. The metaphor of Sir Isaac Newton, on the insignificance of his own scientific attainments, is well known. Sir Joshua Reynolds so highly appreciated perfection in his art, that he was ever discontented with his own paintings; and frequently, as I have heard, by repeated touches, destroyed the effect of a picture, which had been in its early stages beautiful. And Dr. Johnson, after astonishing the world with his perfect specimen of lexicographical composition, confessed that he “had not satisfied his own expectations.” May I add to these the frequent discontent of the unrivalled Paganini?
Ida. The desire of the mind is, indeed, unlimited; and when this is intense, it wishes to appropriate to itself all which it can comprehend. But disappointment must ensue; for all wish to be the whole, when they form but a part. Thus will ever be proved the futility of worldly ambition,—it is never satisfied. But the desires of religion are not a phantom, or an incubus. True devotion, which aspires to heaven, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks, will never fail. Its fervent hopes and devout prayers, we believe, will be blessed by their accomplishment.
Cast. Then the visitations of the incomparable Mab are nought but the infliction of the night-mare? Gentle Master Evelyn, how should I be aweary of your philosophy, but that I am half won over to believe it true? In good faith,
“The Gordian knot of it you do unloose
Familiar as your garter.”
Ev. Then, I pray you, let me counsel you not to court such visits, dear Castaly. There is some peril in the touch both of Mab and Mara; for although rare and transient cases of night-mare excite no alarm, yet its repetition, in a severe form, is not to be slighted. It sometimes has been the forerunner of epilepsy; its immediate cause being obstruction to the course of the blood by which the brain especially is surcharged, and the action of the lungs and heart impeded, as we prove by the extreme labour of breathing at the time we awake.