w drew away into a horror of infinite distance and infinite
littleness, the poor soul was very well aware of what must follow, and
struggled hard against the approaches of that slumber which was the
beginning of sorrows. But his struggles were in vain; sooner or later
the night-hag would have him by the throat, and pluck him, strangling
and screaming, from his sleep. His dreams were at times commonplace
enough, at times very strange: at times they were almost formless, he
would be haunted, for instance, by nothing more definite than a certain
hue of brown, which he did not mind in the least while he was awake, but
feared and loathed while he was dreaming; at times, again, they took on
every detail of circumstance, as when once he supposed he must swallow
the populous world, and awoke screaming with the horror of the thought.
The two chief troubles of his very narrow existence--the practical and
everyday trouble of school tasks and the ultimate and airy one of hell
and judgment--were often confounded together into one appalling
nightmare. He seemed to himself to stand before the Great White Throne;
he was called on, poor little devil, to recite some form of words, on
which his destiny depended; his tongue stuck, his memory was blank, hell
gaped for him; and he would awake, clinging to the curtain-rod with his
knees to his chin.

These were extremely poor experiences, on the whole; and at that time of
life my dreamer would have very willingly parted with his power of
dreams. But presently, in the course of his growth, the cries and
physical contortions passed away, seemingly for ever; his visions were
still for the most part miserable, but they were more constantly
supported; and he would awake with no more extreme symptom than a flying
heart, a freezing scalp, cold sweats, and the speechless midnight fear.
His dreams, too, as befitted a mind better stocked with particulars,
became more circumstantial, and had more the air and continuity of life.
The look of the world beginning to take hold on his attention, scenery
came to play a part in his sleeping as well as in his waking thoughts,
so that he would take long, uneventful journeys and see strange towns
and beautiful places as he lay in bed. And, what is more significant, an
odd taste that he had for the Georgian costume and for stories laid in
that period of English history, began to rule the features of his
dreams; so that he masqueraded there in a three-cornered hat, a