me
glimpse at least of the swarmmg out to view of the "dwarf-phantoms,
spirits, elfin creatures of the Bells;" to have seen them "leaping,
flying, dropping, pouring from the Bells," unceasingly; to have realised
them anew as a listener, just as the imaginary dreamer beheld them all
about him in his vision--"round him on the ground, above him in the air,
clambering from him by the ropes below, looking down upon him from the
massive iron-girded beams, peeping in upon him through the chinks and
loopholes in the walls, spreading away and away from him in enlarging
circles, as the water-ripples give place to a huge stone that suddenly
comes plashing in among them." In their coming and in their going, the
sight, it will be remembered, was equally marvellous. Whether--as the
Chimes rang out--we read of the dream-haunted, "He saw them [these
swarming goblins] ugly, handsome, crippled, exquisitely formed. He saw
them young, he saw them old, he saw them kind, he saw them cruel, he saw
them merry, he saw them grim, he saw them dance, he heard them sing,
he saw them tear their hair, and heard them howl"--diving, soaring,
sailing, perching, violently active in their restlessness--stone, brick,
slate, tile, transparent to the dreamer's gaze, and pervious to their
movements--the bells all the while in an uproar, the great church
tower vibrating from parapet to basement! Or, whether--when the Chimes
ceased--there came that instantaneous transformation! "The whole swarm
fainted; their forms collapsed, their speed deserted them; they
sought to fly, but in the act of falling died and melted into air. One
straggler," says the book, "leaped down pretty briskly from the surface
of the Great Bell, and alighted on his feet, but he was dead and gone
before he could turn round." After it has been added that some thus
gambolling in the tower "remained there, spinning over and over a little
longer," becoming fainter, fewer, feebler, and so vanishing--we read,
"The last of all was one small hunchback, who had got into an echoing
corner, where he twirled and twirled, and floated by himself a long
time; showing such perseverance, that at last he dwindled to a leg, and
even to a foot, before he finally retired; but he vanished in the end,
and then the tower was silent." Nothing of this, however, was given in
the Reading, the interest of which was almost entirely restricted to the
fancied fluctuation of fortunes among the human characters. All of
the pa