The philosophy of sleep / [Robert Macnish].

  • Robert Macnish
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The philosophy of sleep / [Robert Macnish]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the centre of the town, although it stands at some distance from it; that the principal steeple was on the opposite side of the street to that on which it stands; and that the great mountain of Ben-Wevis, many miles off, was in the immediate neighbor- hood. The power of imagination is perhaps never so vividly displayed, as in those dreams which haunt the guilty mind. When any crime of an infamous character has been perpetrated, and when the person is not so utterly hardened as to be insensi- ble of his iniquity, the wide storehouse of retri- butive vengeance is opened up, and its appalling horrors poured upon him. In vain does he endeavour to expel the dreadful remembrance of his deeds, and bury them in forgetfulness ; from the abyss of slumber they start forth, as the vampyres start from their sepulchres, and hover around him lke the furies that pursued the foot- steps of Orestes; while the voice of conscience stuns his ears with murmurs of judgment and eternity. Such is the punishment reserved for the guilty in sleep. During the busy stir of active existence, they may contrive to evade the memory of their wickedness—to silence the whispers of the “still small voice” within them, and cheat themselves with a semblance of happiness; but when their heads are laid upon the pillow, the flimsy veil which hung between them and crime, melts away like an illusive vapour, and displays the latter in naked and horrid deformity. Then,
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