Some of the figures are very quaint.  Thus the interrogation “what?” always excites the idea of a fat man cracking a long whip.  They are not the capricious creations of the fancy of the moment, but are the regular concomitants of the words, and have been so as far back as the memory is able to recall.

When in perfect darkness, if the field of view be carefully watched, many persons will find a perpetual series of changes to be going on automatically and wastefully in it.  I have much evidence of this.  I will give my own experience the first, which is striking to me, because I am very unimpressionable in these matters.  I visualise with effort; I am peculiarly inapt to see “after-images,” “phosphenes,” “light-dust,” and other phenomena due to weak sight or sensitiveness; and, again, before I thought of carefully trying, I should have emphatically declared that my field of view in the dark was essentially of a uniform black, subject to an occasional light-purple cloudiness and other small variations.  Now, however, after habituating myself to examine it with the same sort of strain that one tries to decipher a signpost in the dark, I have found out that this is by no means the case, but that a kaleidoscopic change of patterns and forms is continually going on, but they are too fugitive and elaborate for me to draw with any approach to truth.  I am astonished at their variety, and cannot guess in the remotest degree the cause of them.  They disappear out of sight and memory the instant I begin to think about anything, and it is curious to me that they should often be so certainly present and yet be habitually overlooked.  If they were more vivid, the case would be very different, and it is most easily conceivable that some very slight physiological change, short of a really morbid character, would enhance their vividness.  My own deficiencies, however, are well supplied by other drawings in my possession.  These are by the Rev. George Henslow, whose visions are far more vivid than mine.  His experiences are not unlike those of Goethe, who said, in an often-quoted passage, that whenever he bent his head and closed his eyes and thought of a rose, a sort of rosette made its appearance, which would not keep its shape steady for a moment, but unfolded from within, throwing out a succession of petals, mostly red but sometimes green, and that it continued to do so without change in brightness and without causing him any fatigue so long as he cared to watch it.  Mr. Henslow, when he shuts his eyes and waits, is sure in a short time to see before him the clear image of some object or other, but usually not quite natural in its shape.  It then begins to change from one form to another, in his case also for as long a time as he cares to watch it.  Mr. Henslow has zealously made repeated experiments on himself, and has drawn what he sees.  He has also tried how far he is able to mould the visions according to his will.  In one case, after much effort, he contrived to bring the imagery back to its starting-point, and thereby to form what he terms a “visual cycle.”  The following account is extracted and condensed from his very interesting letter, and will explain the illustrations copied from his drawings that are given in Plate IV.