One, an
insensibility to all common stimulants, however violently applied; the
other, an inward flow of ideas, a dream or vision. It is as well to
provide all words with a precise meaning. The term vision had better be
restricted to mean a dream during trance-sleep.

The behaviour of Grando, who had been buried in the vampyr state, when
they were clumsily cutting his head off, makes no exception to the first
of the above positions. He had then just emerged out of his
trance-sleep, either through the lapse of time, or from the admission of
fresh air, or what not.

It will not be doubted that the mind may have visions in all the grades
of trance-sleep, if it can be proved capable of them in the deepest;
therefore, one example will suffice for all three cases.

Henry Engelbrecht, as we learn in a pamphlet published by himself in the
year 1639, after a most ascetic life, during which he had experienced
sensorial illusions, was thrown for a brief period into the deepest form
of trance-sleep, which event he thus describes:--

In the year 1623, exhausted by intense mental excitement of a religious
kind, and by abstinence from food, after hearing a sermon which strongly
affected him, he felt as if he could combat no more, so he gave in and
took to his bed. There he lay a week without tasting any thing but the
bread and wine of the sacrament. On the eighth day, he thought he fell
into the death-struggle; death seemed to invade him from below upwards;
his body became rigid; his hands and feet insensible; his tongue and
lips incapable of motion: gradually his sight failed him, but he still
heard the laments and consultations of those around him. This gradual
demise lasted from mid-day till eleven at night, when he heard the
watchmen; then he lost consciousness of outward impressions. But an
elaborate vision of immense detail began; the theme of which was, that
he was first carried down to hell, and looked into the place of torment;
from thence, quicker than an arrow, was he borne to paradise. In these
abodes of suffering and happiness, he saw and heard and smelt things
unspeakable. These scenes, though long in apprehension, were short in
time, for he came enough to himself by twelve o'clock, again to hear the
watchmen. It took him another twelve hours to come round entirely. His
hearing was first restored; then his sight, feeling, and motion
followed; as soon as he could move his limbs, he rose. He felt himself
stronger than b