spirit,--how much more so is the Sleep of Life!

I was lying in my bed, in a deep delicious repose, in my own bed, without
either care, or cold, or gout, to molest me even in my dreams; I had been
occupied during the evening with some elementary algebraical processes in
the company of my dear son who was to prepare them for examination at
school on the following day and who had succeeded in arriving at correct
results, had copied off his work, and packed it in his satchel for the
morning.

Methought, while I slept, my son and I stood together hand in hand in the
Church where we were accustomed to worship. We were very near the altar,
but with our faces directed toward the organ and front gallery. There is
in my mind some recollection of another person, I believe our Rector, near
us but a little behind us.

Presently the surface of the gallery extended itself in breadth and
height, so greatly as to cover the entire organ-loft with it's increased
plane, and it became an immense practising-board, such as, upon a small
scale, teachers of mathematics use to resolve problems upon for the
instruction of a class, and it immediately assumed the deep slate-coloured
hue that such boards are frequently painted.

And now there arranged themselves upon this board, in white characters,
problem after problem in Equation; the Rule in which we had been
exercising. I cannot describe the celerity with which these problems were
stated upon the board, and worked out to the intense gratification of my
son and myself; the most difficult and apparently unequal quantities being
with the rapidity of thought interchanged neutralized reduced and
determined, so that what seemed at the outset extremely involved, became
lucid as day, and the unknown quantities made specific to our perfect
satisfaction in an instant of time.

We were delighted with the lesson. I felt the hand of my son gently
pressing mine, as he was accustomed to do when he would evince his
satisfaction at any thing we examined successfully together; and we agreed
with each other to cherish the recollection of these elucidations for
future practice.

Turning again toward the board, we found it entirely freed from any trace
of what had been wrought upon it. And now, in a manner which I have no
possible means of imparting to the Reader, the good and evil of Life
formed the specific and the unknown quantities that were wrought out upon
the board. Problem succeeded problem, formed