It is not our intention to examine the causes of trance, much less to give a detailed history of this singular affection; but for the purpose of showing the connexion between sensation and memory, it becomes necessary to present its leading physical features, and to exhibit, as far as may be, the condition of mind during its continuance.

Physically considered, it presents the ordinary appearance of the body after dissolution; and exhibits the mind either in an unconscious state as regards external relation, or a susceptibility to surrounding circumstances.

We find the symptoms admirably detailed by Macnish in his Philosophy of Sleep. He says: "During its continuance, the whole body is cold, rigid, and inflexible; the countenance without color; the eyes fixed and motionless; while the breathing and the pulsations of the heart are, to all appearances, at an end. The mental powers, also, are generally suspended, and participate in the universal torpor which pervades the frame. In this extraordinary condition the person may remain for several days, having all, or nearly all, the characteristics of death impressed upon him."

To communicate its phenomena more particularly, we will relate several cases, as nearly to the purpose as may be.

A young woman, who for a long time had been confined with a nervous derangement, gradually failed, until at last, as was supposed by her attendants, she died, but in fact had only fallen into trance, from which she recovered after the burial service was nearly completed, and the coffin lid was about to be nailed down. During the whole period she was cognisant of her condition by the senses of hearing and touch.

"It seemed to her," she said, "as if she was in a dream, and that she was really dead; yet she was perfectly conscious of all that happened around her in this dreadful state. She distinctly heard her friends speaking, and lamenting her death, at the side of her coffin. She felt them pull on her dead clothes and lay her in it. This feeling produced a mental anxiety which is indescribable. She tried to cry, but her soul was without the power, and could not act in her body. She had the contradictory feeling, as if she were in the body, and yet not in it, at one and the same time. It was equally impossible for her to stretch out her arm, or to open her eyes, or to cry, although she continually endeavored to do so. The internal anguish of her mind was, however, at its utmost height when the funeral hymns were begun to be sung, and when the lid of the coffin was about to be nailed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the one that gave activity to the soul, and caused it to operate on her corporeal frame."*

Dr. Duncan of Edinburgh relates the case of a "female who was about to be interred alive. She heard the conversation of the persons present, endured the horrors of seeing her own body prepared for the grave, of being laid out, and the toes tied together, and the chin and jaws enveloped in a bandage! but, when her agony reached a certain point, the spell was broken, she shouted, and was saved." + Dr. Duncan considered this a case of catalepsy, but Dr. Binns, more correctly, thinks it one of trance.

In these two extraordinary cases of trance, it is evident that the several senses were keenly alive to external impressions.

Let us now take an instance where the patient was, so far as can be determined, unconscious of all about her.

"Mrs. Godfrey, sister to the great Duke of Marlborough, had been for a long time ill, in consequence of anxiety brought on by the recent death of the duke; but, one Sunday, fancying herself better than usual, determined to rise, and go to chapel. Probably from unaccustomed exertion, or absolute debility, as she was dressing for that purpose, she fell down, and to all appearance expired. The screams of her attendant, and a lady who was in the room with her, brought Colonel Godfrey to their assistance, who, probably having seen persons similarly attacked, directed that she should be immediately put to bed, and that two persons should sit up constantly with her, till positive symptoms appeared of dissolution. The opinion of the physician was that life was extinct, and his friends entreated Colonel Godfrey to allow her to be interred; but he resisted all their persuasions, continuing firmly to adhere to his first resolution, until the Sunday following, when exactly at the same hour as the syncope, asphyxia, or trance, had attacked her on the proceeding Sunday, signs of returning animation were perceived in the body, and she awoke just as the church-bell was ringing for service, which so perfectly eradicated, says the authoress, every trace from her memory of her insensibility, that she blamed her attendants for not waking her in time to go to church, as she had proposed to do. Colonel Godfrey, taking advantage of her unconsciousness of what had occurred, gave orders that she should by no means be made acquainted with what had happened, lest it should make a. melancholy impression On her mind; and it is supposed that to the day of her death she remained ignorant of the infliction."

* Psychological Magazine. + Binns's Anatomy of Sleep.

There are many singular instances of anomalous states on record, which, by different psychologists, are treated of under various denominations of disease. Nicolai read to the Royal Society of Berlin in 1799, a Memoir of Spectres, in which we find the following case. He says, "My much-lamented friend, Moses Mendeljohn, had, in the year 1792, by too intense an application to study, contracted a malady, which abounded with particular psychological apparitions. For upwards of two years he was incapacitated from doing anything; he could neither read nor think, and was rendered utterly incapable of supporting any loud noise. If any one talked to him rather in a lively manner, or if he himself happened to be disposed to lively conversation, he fell in the evening into a very alarming species of catalepsy, in which he saw and heard everything that passed around him, without being able to move a limb. If he had heard any lively conversation during the day, a stentorian voice repeated to him, while in the fit, the particular words or syllables that had been pronounced, with an impressive accent, or loud emphatic tone, and in such a manner that his ears reverberated."