e usually of the simplest kind--as the tinkling
of a bell, of which we all remember the exquisite use made by Hans
Andersen in one of his nursery tales; or the child's own name, at
intervals repeated, just as the little watchful boy heard it in far off
Judaea, when it was the prelude to a wondrous communication from the
unseen world. It came to him as he woke from sleep, before the morning
dawned, while the lamp, lighted overnight, was burning still; and still
it is so far the same that these occurrences which suggest to us
problems that we cannot attempt to solve, mostly take place at times of
transition from the sleeping to the waking state.

The ocular spectra are usually far more vivid and detailed. Those which
occur in the waking state are by no means always painful, though their
strangeness not infrequently alarms the child, and his horror at the
dark arises, not from his seeing nothing, but from his seeing too much.

Some imaginative children amuse themselves with these phantasms, and
then, if encouraged to relate them, will constantly transgress the
boundary line between truth and falsehood, and weave their little
romance. When they happen on waking they are usually preceded by
frightful dreams, but the image which the child sees then is not the
mere recollection of the dream, but a new, distinct, though painful
impression; generally of some animal to which the child points, as now
here, now there. These night terrors from the very circumstantial
character of the impressions which attend them, often, as I have already
said, occasion needless anxiety as to the importance of the cause on
which they depend.

Sleep-walking in its smaller degrees of getting out of bed at night, is
by no means unusual in childhood; but the greater degrees of
somnambulism are certainly rare; and I have always found them dependent
on undue mental work; not always, indeed, on the tasks being excessive,
but sometimes on the over-anxiety of the child to make progress. I have
not yet known a poor person's child a somnambulist.

But not only are the perceptions more acute in childhood than in adult
life, the sensibilities are more intense. The child's emotions, indeed,
are often transitory--generally very transitory; but while they last
they produce results far greater than in the grown person. In the case
of the latter, recollection of the past, anticipation of the future, or
even the duties of the present, control the overwhelming sorro