den with garden mould, afforded us the only available shelter. We made
the best of it, and passed the night on board. I slept in one of the
only two berths in the vessel--and the berths of a sloop of sixty or
twenty tons need scarcely be described. That which I occupied had no
bedding of any kind. Its extreme width was eighteen inches. The distance
of its bottom from the deck overhead was precisely the same. I found it
a matter of exceeding difficulty to squeeze myself in. Nevertheless, I
slept soundly, and the whole of my vision--for it was no dream, and no
nightmare--arose naturally from the circumstances of my position--from
my ordinary bias of thought--and from the difficulty, to which I have
alluded, of collecting my senses, and especially of regaining my memory,
for a long time after awaking from slumber. The men who shook me were
the crew of the sloop, and some laborers engaged to unload it. From the
load itself came the earthly smell. The bandage about the jaws was a
silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my head, in default of my
customary nightcap.

The tortures endured, however, were indubitably quite equal for the
time, to those of actual sepulture. They were fearfully--they were
inconceivably hideous; but out of Evil proceeded Good; for their very
excess wrought in my spirit an inevitable revulsion. My soul acquired
tone--acquired temper. I went abroad. I took vigorous exercise. I
breathed the free air of Heaven. I thought upon other subjects than
Death. I discarded my medical books. "Buchan" I burned. I read no "Night
Thoughts"--no fustian about churchyards--no bugaboo tales--such as
this. In short, I became a new man, and lived a man's life. From that
memorable night, I dismissed forever my charnel apprehensions, and with
them vanished the cataleptic disorder, of which, perhaps, they had been
less the consequence than the cause.

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of
our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell--but the imagination
of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas!
the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether
fanciful--but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage
down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us--they must be
suffered to slumber, or we perish.

THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM

The garden like a lady fair was cut,
That lay as if she slumbered in delight