ewed delight into the bosom of my bright Ideal.
There then have I found all that the world denied me; there have I
realized the yearning and the aspiration within me; there have I coined
the untold poetry into the Felt, the Seen!"

I found, continued Trevylyan, that this tale was corroborated by inquiry
into the visionary's habits. He shunned society; avoided all unnecessary
movement or excitement. He fared with rigid abstemiousness, and only
appeared to feel pleasure as the day departed, and the hour of return to
his imaginary kingdom approached. He always retired to rest punctually
at a certain hour, and would sleep so soundly that a cannon fired under
his window would not arouse him. He never, which may seem singular,
spoke or moved much in his sleep, but was peculiarly calm, almost to
the appearance of lifelessness; but, discovering once that he had been
watched in sleep, he was wont afterwards carefully to secure the chamber
from intrusion. His victory over the natural incoherence of sleep had,
when I first knew him, lasted for some years; possibly what imagination
first produced was afterwards continued by habit.

I saw him again a few months subsequent to this confession, and he
seemed to me much changed. His health was broken, and his abstraction
had deepened into gloom.

I questioned him of the cause of the alteration, and he answered me with
great reluctance,--

"She is dead," said he; "my realms are desolate! A serpent stung her,
and she died in these very arms. Vainly, when I started from my sleep in
horror and despair, vainly did I say to myself,--This is but a dream. I
shall see her again. A vision cannot die! Hath it flesh that decays; is
it not a spirit,--bodiless, indissoluble? With what terrible anxiety
I awaited the night! Again I slept, and the DREAM lay again before me,
dead and withered. Even the ideal can vanish. I assisted in the burial;
I laid her in the earth; I heaped the monumental mockery over her form.
And never since hath she, or ought like her, revisited my dreams. I see
her only when I wake; thus to wake is indeed to dream! But," continued
the visionary in a solemn voice, "I feel myself departing from this
world, and with a fearful joy; for I think there may be a land beyond
even the land of sleep where I shall see her again,--a land in which a
vision itself may be restored."

And in truth, concluded Trevylyan, the dreamer died shortly afterwards,
suddenly, and in his sleep. And nev