these immortal impresses. And the dream which closed the
preceding section, together with the succeeding dreams of this, (which
may be viewed as in the nature of choruses winding up the overture
contained in Part I.,) are but illustrations of this truth, such as
every man probably will meet experimentally who passes through similar
convulsions of dreaming or delirium from any similar or equal
disturbance in his nature.[11]

LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW.

Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. I knew her by her Roman
symbols. Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for
very much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you.
Levana was the Roman goddess that performed for the newborn infant the
earliest office of ennobling kindness--typical, by its mode, of that
grandeur which belongs to man every where, and of that benignity in
powers invisible, which even in Pagan worlds sometimes descends to
sustain it. At the very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for
the first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the
ground. _That_ might bear different interpretations. But immediately,
lest so grand a creature should grovel there for more than one instant,
either the paternal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near
kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised it upright, bade it look erect
as the king of all this world, and presented its forehead to the stars,
saying, perhaps, in his heart--"Behold what is greater than yourselves!"
This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. And that
mysterious lady, who never revealed her face, (except to me in dreams,)
but always acted by delegation, had her name from the Latin verb (as
still it is the Italian verb) _levare_, to raise aloft.

This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has arisen that some
people have understood by Levana the tutelary power that controls the
education of the nursery. She, that would not suffer at his birth even a
prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less could be
supposed to suffer the real degradation attaching to the non-development
of his powers. She therefore watches over human education. Now, the word
_educo_, with the penultimate short, was derived (by a process often
exemplified in the crystallization of languages) from the word
_educo_, with the penultimate long. Whatsoever _educes_ or
developes--_educates_. By the education of Levana