_perception_ of sensible objects is required. Of what nature is that of
which he so marvellously evinces the possession? You may adopt the
simple hypothesis,--that the mind, being disengaged from its ordinary
relations to the senses, does without them, and perceives things
directly. Or you may suppose, if you prefer it, that the mind still
employs sensation, using only impressions that in ordinary waking are
not consciously attended to, for its more wonderful feats; and otherwise
common sensation, which, however generally suspended, may be awakened by
the dreaming attention to its objects.

The following case of somnambulism, in which the seizure supervened, in
a girl affected with St Vitus's dance, and combined itself with that
disorder, is given by Lord Monboddo:--

The patient, about sixteen years of age, used to be commonly taken in
the morning a few hours after rising. The approach of the seizure was
announced by a sense of weight in the head, a drowsiness which quickly
terminated in sleep, in which her eyes were fast shut. She described a
feeling beginning in the feet, creeping like a gradual chill higher and
higher, till it reached the heart, when consciousness or recollection
left her. Being in this state, she sprang from her seat about the room,
over tables and chairs, with the astonishing agility belonging to St
Vitus's dance. Then, if she succeeded in getting out of the house, she
ran at a pace with which her elder brother could hardly keep up, to a
particular spot in the neighbourhood, taking the directest but the
roughest path. If she could not manage otherwise, she got over the
garden-wall with surprising rapidity and precision of movement. Her eyes
were all the time fast closed. The impulse to visit this spot she was
often conscious of during the approach of the paroxysm, and, afterwards,
she sometimes thought she had dreamed of going thither. Towards the
termination of her indisposition, she dreamed that the water of a
neighbouring spring would do her good, and she drank much of it. One
time they tried to cheat her by giving her water from another spring,
but she immediately detected the difference. Towards the end, she
foretold that she would have three paroxysms more, and then be well--and
so it proved.

The following case is from a communication by M. Pigatti, published in
the July Number of the _Journal Encyclopedique_ of the year 1762. The
subject was a servant of the name of Negretti, in the hou