tions of insanity, though less changeful and fleeting than those of the dream, yet have various characters in common with the latter. Such especially are those where the mind may be considered wholly in a subjective state-the brain coining images, ideas, and associations within itself, uncorrected by the senses, or by any clear memories of the past. The singular phenomena of spectral illusions, in which the sense of hearing also is concerned, furnish a striking example of this connexion. Images of objects which have no reality, voices equally imaginary, haunt the brain of the madman as they do that of the dreamer-less urgently, indeed, in the latter case, and with powerlessness as to any consequent action, yet still marking a state of the sensorium common to both conditions.

We might dwell further on this subject, and its curious relations to the phenomena of ecstasy, hysteria, the delirium of fever, and drunkenness. But even if not admonished by want of space, we should be taxing the patience of our readers too severely by detaining them longer in this region of shadows, where realities and mockeries are so strangely intermingled, and where mental and bodily states mutually excite, control, or partially annul one another, leaving a long page of problems to be solved, if such solution be ever possible.

The only topic now remaining to us is that of the physical causes proximately concerned in producing sleep and dreams. Here, again, notwithstanding researches recently directed to this part of physiology, and valuable works describing them, we are still forced upon the admission of diversity of opinion and imperfect knowledge. These researches have chiefly regarded the influence of the circulation npon the functions of the brain, and upon sleep, as one of the most important of them. This varying influence is recognised in every part of the body, and at every minute of life; but the cerebral circulation has specialities distinguishing it from that of any other organ. The confinement of the brain within the close cavity of the cranium, and the peculiar distribution of the arterial and venous system in the medullary and cineritious substance, in the membranes and sinuses of this organ, have embarrassed hitherto every question on the subject. It has been the most general opinion of physiologists that a certain amount of pressure on the brain, chiefly from congestion of venous blood, was necessary for the state of sleep. More recently, this opinion has been modified, if not contradicted, by the experiments of Mr. Durham, Dr. Hammond, and others; furnishing evidence that sleep depends on a lessened quantity and force of blood in the brain, and especially in the arterial part of the

cerebral circulation. Though this inference is fortified by various known facts, such as the sleep produced by exposure to intense cold, by loss of blood, by pain, and other causes of vital exhaustion, it still leaves the physical theory an ambiguous one; embarrassed by our ignorance of the relative proportions of arterial and venous blood during sleep-by questions as to the mode of action of the vascular portion of the brain upon the medullary and other cerebral tissues and by a further question, of higher interest but harder of solution, viz., the nature of those changes in the cerebral substance itself, through which dreams, and other concomitant phenomena of sleep, have their origin?

The latter question involves difficulties which, with all just regard to the prowess and high attainments of modern science, we must yet believe to be insuperable. It is in truth the selfsame problem as that put before us by the normal and waking state of our sensorial existence. The dream of the night is connected with the same organisation which ministers to the sensorial functions of the day. Through the microscope and other means much has been discovered of the minute anatomy of the brain and its appendages. Medullary cells and fibres, ganglionic centres, and new nervous inter-communications have been disclosed; and, though less assuredly, certain functions localised as regards the parts of the brain fulfilling them. But of the infinitesimal motions and changes in the nervous substance itself, we are as entirely ignorant as we are of that mystery which associates these changes in invisible mechanisms with the intellectual and spiritual part of our nature, with the sensations, thoughts, memories, and emotions, which in their succession and combinations, constitute the mental being of man. We must not indeed vaunt our knowledge of the brain until all dispute is settled as to the functions of the Cerebellum-one of the most prominent part of the cerebral system, and unquestionably fulfilling functions essential to the integrity of the whole.

What, however, we are mainly concerned with here is the fact that actions analogous in kind, though variously altered in operation, occur alike in the sleeping and waking brain. In reasoning upon the physical causes of these phenomena, we do not reach our end in merely proving the influence of changes in the cerebral circulation and of varying pressure thus produced. We advance a step, but only one step, by this demonstration; leaving it unsettled whether the exhaustion of nerve force, the primary cause of sleep, is not also the immediate cause of these very changes in the vascular system of the

federacy to avoid all topics that would excite angry discussion or hostile feeling: '* who turned their faces steadfastly away from the ambitions and hopes of the dead past to seek compensation for defeat and loss in the steady performance of humble daily duties: whose blameless lives and peaceful bearing in adversity have testified to their love of country more gloriously than deaths upon the battle-field: whose conduct, in short, when conquered, has won involuntary admiration from the adversaries who once heaped curses upon their rebellious names. Many such there must have been, victims of fate, sacrifices to political necessity, innocent expiators, if the truth be told, of wrongs done in ages past to helpless Africans, among the leaders of the late Secession. One such, at least, all recognise in Robert Lee, General-inChief of the ex-Confederate forces, better known as the Commander of the Army of Virginia, who passed away, after five years' endurance of his altered position, without the sign of ailment outwardly, without a word of pain, that great heart which repined not for his own loss of dignity or of ancestral fortune, giving way at last under the continued pressure of the ruin and degradation of the beloved State to the freedom of which the prospects of his whole life had been sacrificed.

Whilst he lived, General Lee never ceased to contemplate (as we know from his private correspondence with ourselves) giving a record of his own career to the world. But the time never came when in his judgment this could be honestly and fully done without stirring up the bitter feelings he would have sacrificed all he could give to allay. Now that he has passed away, others cannot be so reticent. And Mr. Cooke has lately produced a life of the dead hero, which, if wanting in many particulars, is more so, perhaps, from the greatness of the subject than from the imperfections and partiality of the writer. A large part of his volume is, of course, directed to those campaigns which have placed the name of Lee in the very foremost rank of the world's great commanders. These, however, have long been well known and studied in England in their general outlines. They were known and admired here before the American public could bear a critical recital of the defeats of the Union generals. Be it our present task rather to speak of those portions of Lee's eventful life which are less known on this side of the Atlantic: what sacrifices he made

General Lee's words to an author undertaking to write the life of 'Stonewall' Jackson.

national generosity in its purposes. Traveller after traveller through the limits of the overthrown Confederacy brings back the sad story of ceaseless dissension and widespread ruin. Rival legislatures, born of mean fraud or open violence, contest the political supremacy here. There negro revolt, unchecked by law, threatens summary vengeance for the long-endured wrongs of the slave. In other districts secret and bloody societies strive by illegal combination to prolong the rule which has passed away from the white. Everywhere rises the same story of corrupt administration and finances involved to enrich the mean adventurers, who have swarmed in upon the prostrate States for booty, as foul birds seek their prey when the carnage is over. And the ruler, who called upon the nation that elected him to join in the noble wish, Let us have peace,' has found his task of political pacification more arduous, more thankless, and withal far more prolonged, than the command of the Union armies for the overthrow of Secession.

6

If to us afar off this defeat of the first hopes that came with the victory of the Union seems sad and surprising, how must those feel it who dwell near the contending parties that prolong the strife, without sharing their political passions? Even among those that lend themselves to prolong the intolerable state of things in the reconquered States, must be many who regret the results bitterly, while they excuse the means used by the false reasoning of expediency. And doubtless. in the Northern States there are thousands of good men to whom each phase of the political conflict that makes its market in the strife of the South seems an unmixed evil, which mars, in their view, the full freedom and growing greatness of the Union. But all these can look on with comparative serenity. For how much happier are such than those whose lot has been cast among the storms that sweep over the face of what they once dreamed of as an independent, well-governed republic: who have watched sorrowfully the growth of the evils they could not ward off from the States which gave them birth: who had offered their lives freely in battle to save these from what they deemed oppression, and yet, when the cause for which they had fought fell, bowed their heads meekly before the victors' yoke, in hopes that their submission, possibly their sacrifice, might save their humbler fellow-citizens from ruin who, when called upon to set the example of prudence, thought it no shame to ask pardon at the hands of that government which once their victories had shaken: who the writers that would extol the brief-lived glories of

:

federacy to avoid all topics that would excite angry discussion

or hostile feeling: '* who turned their faces steadfastly away from the ambitions and hopes of the dead past to seek compensation for defeat and loss in the steady performance of humble daily duties: whose blameless lives and peaceful bearing in adversity have testified to their love of country more gloriously than deaths upon the battle-field: whose conduct, in short, when conquered, has won involuntary admiration from the adversaries who once heaped curses upon their rebellious names. Many such there must have been, victims of fate, sacrifices to political necessity, innocent expiators, if the truth be told, of wrongs done in ages past to helpless Africans, among the leaders of the late Secession. One such, at least, all recognise in Robert Lee, General-inChief of the ex-Confederate forces, better known as the Commander of the Army of Virginia, who passed away, after five years' endurance of his altered position, without the sign of ailment outwardly, without a word of pain, that great heart which repined not for his own loss of dignity or of ancestral fortune, giving way at last under the continued pressure of the ruin and degradation of the beloved State to the freedom of which the prospects of his whole life had been sacrificed.

Whilst he lived, General Lee never ceased to contemplate (as we know from his private correspondence with ourselves) giving a record of his own career to the world. But the time never came when in his judgment this could be honestly and fully done without stirring up the bitter feelings he would have sacrificed all he could give to allay. Now that he has passed away, others cannot be so reticent. And Mr. Cooke has lately produced a life of the dead hero, which, if wanting in many particulars, is more so, perhaps, from the greatness of the subject than from the imperfections and partiality of the writer. A large part of his volume is, of course, directed to those campaigns which have placed the name of Lee in the very foremost rank of the world's great commanders. These, however, have long been well known and studied in England in their general outlines. They were known and admired here before the American public could bear a critical recital of the defeats of the Union generals. Be it our present task rather to speak of those portions of Lee's eventful life which are less known on this side of the Atlan ifices he made