ay was bright. There was the
blue sky--the green hill--the geese in the surrounding water. 'In
every form of the thing _my dream_ made true and good.' The
distance of this spot from the house of my birth was rather a long
walk for a child so young; and, therefore, I suppose I might only
once or twice have seen it, and then only in the summer, or in
bright weather. I have said that that dream, whenever it recurred,
always impressed me with an indefinite sense of pleasure; was not
this feeling an echo, a redolence, of the happy, lively sensations
with which, as a child, I had first witnessed the scene? It is
singular that, remembering so many objects much less likely to
have fixed themselves on the memory, I should have so utterly
forgotten, in my waking hours, the real existence of that of which
my dream had so faithfully Daguerreotyped; and it is not less
remarkable that I have never had the dream since I recognised its
original. I think I can account for this, but will not now attempt
it, as the length of my epistle may probably have put you in a
fair way of having dreams of your own.--Ever faithfully yours.

"C. S."

This last dream of our friend exhibits one of the phenomena of memory,
which may not be unconnected with another, curious, and I suppose
common. Did you never feel a sense of a reduplication of any passing
occurrence, act, or scene--something which you were saying or doing,
or in which you were actor or spectator? Did you never, while the
occurrence was taking place, suddenly feel a consciousness of its
pre-existence and pre-acting; that the whole had passed before, just
as it was then passing, even to the details of place, persons, words,
and circumstances, and this not in events of importance, but mostly in
those of no importance whatever; as if life and all its phenomena were
a duplicate in itself, and that that which is acting here, were at the
same time acting also elsewhere, and the fact were suddenly revealed
to you? I call this one of the phenomena of memory, because it may
possibly be accounted for by the repercussion of a nerve, an organ,
which, like the string of an instrument unequally struck, will double
the sound. Vibrations of memory--vibrations of imagination are curious
things upon which to speculate; but not now, Eusebius--you must work
this out yourself.

What a curious story is that of Pan.[38] "Pan is dead,"--g