But this reciprocal influence exists between the adjustments of different organs of sense. The eye of the sportsman and the fencer directs the hand, as that of the musician his fingers, in their slight and ever-varying pressure on the strings of his instrument.*

But this exquisite play of adjustments does not end here. Their excitability remains when their palpable objects are no longer present; and the restoration of our adjust

• In a paper on the origin of our notion of distance, drawn up from notes left by the late Thomas Wedgewood, Esq., and published in the third volume of the Journal of the Royal Institution, Mr. W. has this observation:-"The invariable conjunction of the notions of touch and sight prevents our ever ascertaining distinctly their separate properties. Hence the one is frequently mistaken for the other-the secondary for the principal."

In another part of the same paper, speaking of our inference of a solid sphere, which we had before felt, from the merely distant sight of the surface exposed to our eye (i. e., inferring the part that we cannot see from the side that we do see), and which thus excites our conception of the whole, he says, "Here, then, is a visual idea, which may be substituted for the tangible magnitude of Berkley."

ments constitutes our memory, our reveries, and our dreams.*

The slightest external touch suffices to excite their activity.

"Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain.
Awake but one, and, lo! what myriads rise!
Each stamps its image, as the other flies;
Each, as the varied avenues of sense
Delight or sorrow to the soul dispense,
Brightens or fades, yet all with magic art
Control the latent fibres of the heart.

Each thrills the seat of sense, that sacred source
Whence the fine nerves direct their mazy course,
And through the frame invisibly convey

The subtle quick vibrations as they play."

Pleasures of Memory.

By those who may carefully analyse the process of thinking I suspect it will be found, that many of our ideas, received as impressions from external and real objects, are merely reiterations of the adjustments which

*

May not the laws of mental association, so fully enumerated by Aristotle, and insisted on by Hume, be referable to this reciprocal play of adjusting muscles?

occurred in past sensations, and which have a reciprocal influence on each other's appearance. May it not be of such stuff that our dreams, our reveries, and even our memory is made up? May not this speculation afford some clew to guide our researches into the proximate cause of insanity?

"And slight withal may be the things which bring Back on the heart the weight which it would fling Aside for ever it may be a sound

A tone of music-Summer's eve—or Spring

A flower-the wind-the ocean- -which shall wound, Striking the electric chain wherewith we 're darkly bound;

And how and why we know not, nor can trace
Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,
But feel the shock RENEW'D, nor can efface
The blight and black'ning which it leaves behind ;
Which out of things familiar, undesign'd,

When least we deem of such, calls up to view
The spectres whom no exorcism can bind,

The cold-the chang'd-perchance the dead-anew, The mourn'd-the lov'd, the lost-too many !—yet how few!

CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv.

I suspect, therefore, that much of our thoughts—much of which the mind is cognisant, and which we habitually refer to the

E

mind alone-will, on a closer scrutiny, be found to be the mind's perception of the adjustments going on in the body.

In the instance of ocular spectra, Dr. Darwin and Sir David Brewster have adduced most convincing proofs that what had hitherto been considered as phenomena of mind, and solely in the mind's eye, are really no other than reiterated adjustments in the interior of the eye itself the body's eye (see Appendix); and Dr. Hibbert has as satisfactorily demonstrated that the apparitions which in former times "affrighted nations from their propriety," and "with fear of change perplexed even Monarchs," may be accounted for on the same principle of reiteration of sensitive movements from the centre to the circumference of the nervous system-sensations which had first passed from the sentient extremities of nerves on those parts of the circumference which are organs of sense to the centre or brain.

The following passages are taken from an Appendix to Dr. Howe's Report of the Boston Asylum:

"The number of persons who have been deprived of both sight and hearing, has been supposed to be very small. There had been but one case upon record, I believe, in England, before that of James Mitchell, mentioned by Dugald Stewart. There has been one noticed quite recently, in France; and there is the well-known case of Julia Brace, at Hartford.

"But I am inclined to think these melancholy cases are more frequent than has been supposed. I have seen a boy in Rhode Island, who has been deaf, dumb, and blind, since he was four years old: he is now fourteen.

"There is a girl in Vermont, of whose case I have all the particulars, and who will probably be brought here soon.

"A correspondent in Ireland has recently informed me, that a very interesting case had been discovered in Belfast, of a little girl