thought I could distinguish from the way the dishes were
lifted from the table, and the motion with which they were carried out
of the room. As soon as they were all taken away, I heard a sound as of
the shutting of a door, and knew that I was left alone. I sat long by
the fire, meditating, and wondering how it would all end; and when at
length, wearied with thinking, I betook myself to my own bed, it was
half with a hope that, when I awoke in the morning, I should awake not
only in my own room, but in my own castle also; and that I should walk,
out upon my own native soil, and find that Fairy Land was, after all,
only a vision of the night. The sound of the falling waters of the
fountain floated me into oblivion.

CHAPTER XI

"A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendour--without end:
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes, and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted."
WORDSWORTH.

But when, after a sleep, which, although dreamless, yet left behind it a
sense of past blessedness, I awoke in the full morning, I found, indeed,
that the room was still my own; but that it looked abroad upon an
unknown landscape of forest and hill and dale on the one side--and on
the other, upon the marble court, with the great fountain, the crest of
which now flashed glorious in the sun, and cast on the pavement beneath
a shower of faint shadows from the waters that fell from it into the
marble basin below.

Agreeably to all authentic accounts of the treatment of travellers in
Fairy Land, I found by my bedside a complete suit of fresh clothing,
just such as I was in the habit of wearing; for, though varied
sufficiently from the one removed, it was yet in complete accordance
with my tastes. I dressed myself in this, and went out. The whole palace
shone like silver in the sun. The marble was partly dull and partly
polished; and every pinnacle, dome, and turret ended in a ball, or cone,
or cusp of silver. It was like frost-work, and too dazzling, in the sun,
for earthly eyes like mine.

I will not attempt to describe the environs, save by saying, that all
the pleasures to be found in the most varied and artistic arrangement of
wood and river, lawn and wild forest, garden and shrubbery, rocky hi