sleep, whose breathing raises its chest at
equal intervals with the same soft sounds.

"You think that nothing changes in this monotonous equality; that
all these days are the same. You are mistaken; you have _perceived_
nothing, yet every day there is a change, slight, it is true, and
imperceptible, which the person, himself changed by little and
little, does not remark.

"It is like a dream in a bark. What distance have you come whilst
you were dreaming? Who can tell? Thus you go on, without seeming to
move--still, and yet rapidly. Once out of the river, or canal, you
soon find yourself at sea; the uniform immensity in which you now
are, will inform you still less of the distance you go. Time and
place are equally uncertain; no sure point to occupy attention; and
attention itself is gone. The reverie is profound, and becomes more
and more so--an ocean of dreams upon the smooth ocean of waters.

"A pleasant state, in which every thing becomes insensible, even
gentleness itself. Is it death, or is it life? To distinguish, we
require attention, and we should awake from our dream.--No, let it
go on, whatever it may be that carried me along with it, whether it
lead me to life or death.

"Alas! 'tis habit! that gently-sloping, formidable abyss, into
which we slide so easily! we may say every thing that is bad of it,
and also every thing that is good, and it will be always true."

It would be painful and repulsive to follow out the acts which the
acquisition of such spiritual ascendancy may suggest to wicked or even a
weak spirit. The result in general is the complete possession of the
whole mind of the subdued victim, which lives, and moves, and has its
being in the will and wishes of its omnipotent tyrant. This change is of
itself destructive of moral independence; but we must not conceal what
the writer before us represents as an ulterior effect, and which, even
as a possibility, must be contemplated with fear and horror.

"To be able to have all, and then abstain, is a slippery situation!
who will keep his footing on this declivity?

* * * * *

"Are you sure you possess the heart entirely, if you have not the
body? Will not physical possession give up corners of the soul,
which otherwise would remain inaccessible? Is spiritual dominion
complete, if it does not comprehend t