dreams, to the sight of innocent human natures and of infancy that
in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind I wept, and could not forbear
it, as I kissed their faces.

_VI.--The Agonies of Sleep_

As a final specimen, I cite a dream of a different character, from 1820.
The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams--a
music of preparation and of awakening suspense, a music like the opening
of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a
vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of
innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day--a day of
crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some
mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I
knew not where--somehow, I knew not how--by some beings, I knew not
whom--a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, was evolving like a
great drama or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more
insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature,
and possible issue.

I, as is usual in dreams--where, of necessity, we make ourselves central
to every movement--had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide
it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it, and yet again
had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or
the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than ever plummet sounded,"
I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater
interest was at stake, some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had
pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms, hurryings
to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives--I knew not whether
from the good cause or the bad--darkness and lights, tempest and human
faces, and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and
the features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment
allowed--and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and
then--everlasting farewells! And with a sigh such as the caves of hell
sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death,
the sound was reverberated--everlasting farewells! And again and yet
again reverberated--everlasting farewells! And I awoke in struggles, and
cried aloud, "I will sleep no more."

* * * * *

It now remains that I should say something of the way in which this
conflict of horrors was finally brought to a crisis. I saw