Somewhat like this, too, was the half-sleeping exclamation of Jarvis Matcham, after he had committed the murder of the drummer boy. Starting from his bed, when roused by the waiter, his first words were: “My God! I did not kill him.”
Ev. A dream will sometimes half wake even a child to a state of terror, although children are with difficulty completely roused. I have known instances in which children would sit up in bed, with their eyes open, sobbing, and talking, and staring, in a sort of trance; nay, they will sometimes start from bed, but still asleep, and, after a time becoming calm, they have again composed themselves to slumber.
I have known sleep-talkers, who have not remembered one iota of their wanderings when awake; and even the ecstatic somnambulist, who pretends to prophecy wisdom, recollects nothing when the ecstacy is over. It is clear also, that the mind varies in sleep and waking, in regard to its memory; for it has been proved that persons who often talk in their sleep, have renewed the exact points of a subject which terminated their last sleep-talking, although, in the waking interval, it was to them oblivion.
Somnambulism is the most perfect paradox among the phenomena of sleep, as it exhibits actions without a consciousness of them; indeed, so complete a suspension of sensibility, that contact, nay, intense inflictions, do not produce that mental consciousness which is calculated to excite alarm, or even attention.
There is a somewhat remote analogy to this, in the want of balance between the judgment and volition of ambitious minds. In the campaign of Russia, Napoleon’s march was a sort of somnambulism, for he must have been madly excited to action against his better judgment. In this he forms a curious contrast with his royal predecessor; for in Louis XVI. we observe a mind that might conceive great things, but which volition hesitated to accomplish.
The points of the mystery of somnambulism were never more forcibly illustrated, to my own mind, than in the following cases:
In 1833, a man was brought before Alderman Thorp, who had a parcel cut from his arm, although he had strapped it tightly on to prevent this, as he was often falling asleep, even during his walk. Yet, even then, he usually took the parcels to their proper directions.
The crew of a revenue boat on the coast of Ireland, about two o’clock in the morning, picked up a man swimming in the water. He had, it appeared, left his house about twelve; and walked two miles over a most dangerous path, and had swum about one mile. After he was taken into the boat, he could not be persuaded that he was not still in his warm bed at home.
In 1834, Marie Pau was admitted into the hospital at Bordeaux, her left hand and arm covered with deep and bleeding gashes, its tendons projecting and the bones broken. She had, in her sleep, gone into a loft to cut wood with a hedging bill. Thinking she was cutting the wood, she had hacked her fore-arm and hand, until she fainted away, and fell bathed in her blood. She had felt no pain, but merely had a sensation as if the parts were pricked with pins.
Some time ago, (I believe in the year 1832,) a journal thus records a case analogous in its nature, although less unhappy in its effects: