ear no resemblance to the objects that address
themselves to his corporeal faculties. This delightful experience, as it
may be called, I have enjoyed this evening, to an exquisite degree, at
the funeral of the king; but, although the whole succession of incidents
is indelibly imprinted on my recollection, I am still so much affected by
the emotion excited, as to be incapable of conveying to you any
intelligible description of what I saw. It was indeed a scene witnessed
through the medium of the feelings, and the effect partakes of the nature
of a dream.

I was within the walls of an ancient castle,

"So old as if they had for ever stood,
So strong as if they would for ever stand,"

and it was almost midnight. The towers, like the vast spectres of
departed ages, raised their embattled heads to the skies, monumental
witnesses of the strength and antiquity of a great monarchy. A
prodigious multitude filled the courts of that venerable edifice,
surrounding on all sides a dark embossed structure, the sarcophagus, as
it seemed to me at the moment, of the heroism of chivalry.

"A change came o'er the spirit of my dream," and I beheld the scene
suddenly illuminated, and the blaze of torches, the glimmering of arms,
and warriors and horses, while a mosaic of human faces covered like a
pavement the courts. A deep low under sound pealed from a distance; in
the same moment, a trumpet answered with a single mournful note from the
stateliest and darkest portion of the fabric, and it was whispered in
every ear, "It is coming." Then an awful cadence of solemn music, that
affected the heart like silence, was heard at intervals, and a numerous
retinue of grave and venerable men,

"The fathers of their time,
Those mighty master spirits, that withstood
The fall of monarchies, and high upheld
Their country's standard, glorious in the storm,"

passed slowly before me, bearing the emblems and trophies of a king.
They were as a series of great historical events, and I beheld behind
them, following and followed, an awful and indistinct image, like the
vision of Job. It moved on, and I could not discern the form thereof,
but there were honours and heraldries, and sorrow, and silence, and I
heard the stir of a profound homage performing within the breasts of all
the witnesses. But I must not indulge myself farther on this subject. I
cannot hope to excite in you the emotions with which I was so profoundly
a