sh at once into a world of phantasms, above
which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing, hovered, predominant, the
one sepulchral Idea.

From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in dreams,
I select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I was immersed in
a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and profundity. Suddenly
there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering
voice whispered the word "Arise!" within my ear.

I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him
who had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at which I
had fallen into the trance, nor the locality in which I then lay. While
I remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect my thought,
the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly,
while the gibbering voice said again:

"Arise! did I not bid thee arise?"

"And who," I demanded, "art thou?"

"I have no name in the regions which I inhabit," replied the voice,
mournfully; "I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am
pitiful. Thou dost feel that I shudder.--My teeth chatter as I speak,
yet it is not with the chilliness of the night--of the night without
end. But this hideousness is insufferable. How canst thou tranquilly
sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies. These sights
are more than I can bear. Get thee up! Come with me into the outer
Night, and let me unfold to thee the graves. Is not this a spectacle of
woe?--Behold!"

I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist,
had caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind, and from each
issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay, so that I could see into
the innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in their
sad and solemn slumbers with the worm. But alas! the real sleepers were
fewer, by many millions, than those who slumbered not at all; and there
was a feeble struggling; and there was a general sad unrest; and from
out the depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling
from the garments of the buried. And of those who seemed tranquilly
to repose, I saw that a vast number had changed, in a greater or less
degree, the rigid and uneasy position in which they had originally been
entombed. And the voice again said to me as I gazed:

"Is it not--oh! is it not a pitiful sight?"--but, before I could find
words to reply, the figure had ceased to grasp my wri