y do not ascend, the most
conspicuous object is the steeple, the white spire of which directs
you to the wintry lustre of the firmament. You may almost distinguish
the figures on the clock that has just told the hour. Such a frosty
sky and the snow-covered roofs and the long vista of the frozen
street, all white, and the distant water hardened into rock, might
make you shiver even under four blankets and a woollen comforter. Yet
look at that one glorious star! Its beams are distinguishable from all
the rest, and actually cast the shadow of the casement on the bed with
a radiance of deeper hue than moonlight, though not so accurate an
outline.

You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all the
while, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polar
atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad.
You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed
like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of
inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth such
as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its
train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and
narrow coffins through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot
persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver when the snow
is drifting over their little hillocks and the bitter blast howls
against the door of the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect a
gloomy multitude and throw its complexion over your wakeful hour.

In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the
lights, the music and revelry, above may cause us to forget their
existence and the buried ones or prisoners whom they hide. But
sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung
wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive
sensibility, but no active strength--when the imagination is a mirror
imparting vividness to all ideas without the power of selecting or
controlling them--then pray that your griefs may slumber and the
brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late. A
funeral train comes gliding by your bed in which passion and feeling
assume bodily shape and things of the mind become dim spectres to the
eye. There is your earliest sorrow, a pale young mourner wearing a
sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed
sweetness in her melancholy features and grace in the flow of her