men, day after day, spreading around them beggary, and wretchedness, and crime!" Had the author given to each licensed house, one drunkard on an average, I do not think he would have overstepped the bounds of truth. As it is, what a picture of demoralization and wretchedness does it not exhibit!

CHAPTER XI.

SLEEP OF DRUNKARDS.

To enter at large upon the subject of sleep would require a volume. At present I shall only consider it so far as it is modified by drunkenness.

The drunkard seldom knows the delicious and refreshing slumbers of the temperate man. He is restless, and tosses in bed for an hour or two before falling asleep. Even then, his rest is not comfortable. He awakes frequently during night, and each time his mouth is dry, his skin parched, and his head, for the most part, painful and throbbing. These symptoms, from the irritable state of his constitution, occur even when he goes soberly to bed; but if he lie down heated with liquor, he feels them with double force. Most persons who fall asleep in a state of intoxication, have much headach, exhaustion and general fever, on awaking. Some constitutions are lulled to rest by liquors, and others rendered excessively rest

less; but the first are no gainers by the difference, as they suffer abundantly afterwards. Phlegmatic drunkards drop into slumber more readily than the others: their sleep is, in reality, a sort of apoplectic stupor.

I. Dreams.-Dreams may be readily supposed to be common, from the deranged manifestations of the stomach and brain which occur in intoxication. They are usually of a painful nature, and leave a gloomy impression upon the mind. In general, they are less palpable to the understanding than those which occur in soberness. They come like painful grotesque conceptions across the imagination; and though this faculty can embody nothing into shape, meaning, or consistence, it is yet haunted with melancholy ideas. These visions depend much on the mental constitution of the person, and are modified by his habitual tone of thinking. It is, however, to be remarked, that while the waking thoughts of the drunkard are full of sprightly images, those of his sleep are usually tinged with a shade of perplexing melancholy.

II. Nightmare. — Drunkards are more afflicted than other people with this disorder, in so far as they are equally subject to all the ordinary causes, and liable to others, from which sober people are exempted. Intoxication is fertile in producing reveries and dreams, those playthings of the fancy; and it may also give rise to such a distortion

of idea, as to call up incubus, and all its frightful accompaniments.

III. Sleep-walking.- Somnambulism is another affection to which drunkards are more liable than their neighbours. I apprehend that the slumber is never profound when this takes place, and that, in drunkenness in particular, it may occur in a state of very imperfect sleep. Drunkards, even when consciousness is not quite abolished, frequently leave their beds and walk about the room. They know perfectly well what they are about, and recollect it afterwards, but if questioned, either at the moment or at any future period, they are totally unable to give any reason for their conduct. Sometimes after getting up, they stand a little time and endeavour to account for rising, then go again deliberately to bed. There is often, in the behaviour of these individuals, a strange mixture of folly and rationality. Persons half tipsy have been known to arise and go out of doors in their night-dress, being all the while sensible of what they were doing, and aware of its absurdity. The drunken somnambulism has not always this character. Sometimes the reflecting faculties are so absorbed in slumber, that the person has no consciousness of what he does. From drinking, the affection is always more dangerous than from any other cause, as the muscles have no longer their former strength, and are unable to support the person in his hazardous expeditions. If he gets upon a house-top, he does not balance him

self properly, from giddiness; he is consequently liable to falls and accidents of every kind. It is considered, with justice, dangerous to awaken a sleep-walker. In a drunken fit, there is less risk than under other circumstances, the mind being so far confused by intoxication, as to be, in some measure, insensible to the shock.

IV. Sleep-talking. For the same reason that drunkards are peculiarly prone to somnambulism are they subject to sleep-talking, which is merely a modification of the other. The imagination, being vehemently excited by the drunken dream, embodies itself often in speech, which however is, in almost every case, extremely incoherent, and wants the rationality sometimes possessed by the conversation of sleep-talkers under other circumstances.