also just as many youths as there were maidens; and they were all assorted into couples. Some were seated in alcoves or on ottomans round the room. But from the centre of the room hung bunches of red and pale berries, wreathed and festooned with leaves; and underneath these, in a space kept open, there were many couples joyously dancing. The dance, methought, was a waltz; and, though couple after couple gave in and drew aside, still the waltz went on. Three couples remained; then only two; and, last of all, only one glorious dark-haired youth and his partner, a fair-haired beauty. Round as they whirled-he bold and impassioned, she flushed and conscious-the rest seemed to wait and look on; and the music, which somehow had been unheard by me till then, came upon me as rendered into words like these

Lean to me closer, love;

Shun not my arms:

Be beauty in dancing, love,,
Lavish of charms.
Round as we whirl,

Think this the joy:
Thou art a girl, love,
And I am thy boy!

་

Look in my eyes, my love;
Loose fly thy hair;
Breathe in my face, my love;
Why shouldst thou care?
Round as we whirl,

This still is the joy:
Thou art a girl, love,
And I am thy boy!

Nay, do not start, love,

At thrill of my touch:
Where is the harm, love,
Of loving too much?
Round as we whirl,
Wilder the joy:
Thou art a girl, love,
And I am thy boy!

Clasp me yet closer, love,
Quit not my arms;
I am thy lover, love,
Drunk with thy charms.
Round as we whirl,
O give me the joy:
Be thou my girl, love;
Call me thy boy!

The dance was ended; but one incident flashed from it. In the last round of the dance, it seemed that a white shoe

had slipped from one of the feet of the fair one, which she could not recover as she sank towards the nearest seat. The youth perceived this, and, yet exulting and unfatigued, seized on the precious waif. In one instant, with a graceful yet artificial motion, he had raised it to his lips before all; in another, as if by a new inspiration, he was standing, one foot on a couch and the other on a table near the wall, maintaining an attitude still noble, and, having poured wine into the slipper he had kissed, raised the draught to his mouth. I saw the ruby stain flush through the unusual crystal; and all the surrounding couples, as in admiration of the youth's enthusiasm, raised their hands in act to clap!

Ha! as by a trick, ere the hands could clap, the whole vision was gone! Darkness again, and nothing but darkness-the total blackness once more involving me in which I had been first enveloped, and the consciousness, as then, only of the broad vacant space of the Hollow before me!

4

Glimmer, glimmer, as of faintly returning light! But no luminous disc now; but, after the light had reached its utmost, only a faint, grey, glimmering ground, beginning not far from where I stood, and stretching, as if for several miles, away to an indistinct horizon! It was a vast field of gravesnot grass-coloured, nor earth-coloured, but ash-coloured, mounds and all, or of a dead silver grey. The grey had a certain sheen-not the clear sheen of silver, but rather the duller sheen we see sometimes on a moth's wings. It was a dismal vision-graves, graves, nothing but graves, as far as could be seen; and the graves and the ground all ash-coloured. For a time nothing could I see but the grey, glimmering, grave-mounded plain; but, as I looked, I beheld in the part of the plain nearest to me, arranged at equal distances from each other, as if at the points of an equilateral triangle, three pairs of skulls. The skulls, as they lay on the grey ground, had the polished whiteness of bone. There was no feeling of loathing,

but only of sadness, in looking at them. They seemed as if carefully placed, each two side by side; and of each two, one was larger, but the smaller was of shape more elegant.

Again the darkness fell round me and shut out the pale grey field. But

I felt as if I had not long to wait for some other vision that was coming. And so it was. Again the solid gloom in front of me began to resolve itself luminously, and to open out into visible scenery. But this time it was not first a distant luminous disc which I beheld, and which grew on approaching me till I could not see its circumference and was myself included within it; but, on the contrary, I seemed at first within, or almost within, an extended orb of light, which receded till its circumference could be marked, and it dwindled at the due distance to the anticipated disc. Shapes and phantasms also filled the orb, (and flitted through it, as before, while it was receding-shapes, not this time of youths and maidens, but as of men wheeling and tramping in masses, under leaders and captains, and with arms glittering. The arrangements and accoutrements of these visionary bodies of warriors changed as the containing orb receded, becoming less like what I seemed to know and to have seen, and more like what I had imagined or contemplated in picture. In general, however, the representation was the same in substance-always, at the two sides, portions of two opposed spectral armies wheeling from line or from column; and, in the clear middle space, conspicuous men combating singly or wrestling, or sometimes not wrestling or combating in earnest so much as rivalling each other in games and feats of strength. Of all the varied pictures, to this one repeated effect, which I saw, I could keep, from their number and rapid succession, no adequate account; but, when the circle of light had diminished and receded nearly to its utmost, I remarked with more care two of its phantasmagoric shadowings. These seemed to be related to each other, and to linger longer than their predecessors before they vanished.

One was, as I thought, a hunting or hawking-scene in old Norman England, wherein, on a fair country and under a fair sky, there was a group of figures, consisting of a knight, a lady, and their attendants. The lady had a belled hawk on her wrist; there were birds in the air; talking to the knight, she seemed to let loose the hawk; and then the whole group stood with upturned faces, looking after the ascending bird. Anon this scene was gone, and in its place, but in the same kind of country, was a jousting-scene. Many ladies and other spectators were seated in ring round a brave piece of greensward, and two mounted knights in glittering armour were rushing at full tilt against each other in the middle. And, while these scenes were passing there seemed to come to me an interpretation of the same in dialogue :

THE LADY.

As motes in the sky,
See the birds fly!

Where is the bird will fly higher?
Here on my wrist,
As I hope to be kissed,

Is the tercel that never will tire!
See his bold brown eye!
Ting-a-ling! let him fly!

Sir Knight, lo! while I am speaking,
He is over them all,
He is king of them all:

He flutters and scatters them
shrieking.

Sir Knight, every man
Will do what he can :

Of two brave ones, my glove to the
stronger!
Wert thou foremost to-day,
Only fail in one fray,

I am his, and not thine any longer!

THE KNIGHT.

As we dash to the prize,
The flash of fair eyes
Beholding, may yield us a thrill;
But, ladies, 'tis true,
Not from you, nor for you,

Is man's courage to die or to kill.

Ye are seated around

The tourneying-ground,

And we bow as our lances we level;
But, when horse meets horse,
O, the teeth-setting force

Is some phrenzy from God or the devil!

Ere the dialogue had fulfilled itself to the ear, and while the scenes which it interpreted were clear to the eye, lo! again the sudden obliterating darkness, succeeded, after a little, by the dismal grey glimmer, expanding itself into the ghastly ash-coloured plain of innumerable graves! And lo! also again, on the same part of this glimmering ground, a vision of skulls whitely set out and arranged! But the skulls were more numerous than in the former vision, and their arrangement was new. There was one large white ring composed of many of them set close together in several rows, all with the eye-sockets looking inwards; and in the centre, by themselves, with about a yard of space between them, were two, grinning at each other.

As if I were now the fully-initiated spectator of some spectral drama, there was less surprise for me in the general course of what followed, but, as it were, a keener curiosity as to the details. The third time, after the fall of the black curtain, it rose or rolled itself away again, presenting to me the expected luminous stage with its foreground and optical perspective. Again the phantasmagory began with the distant luminous circle -this time perhaps more distant than ever; and again the process was that of the approaching of this circle to me, increasing its diameter slowly but steadily. But this time the circle glowed more luridly-almost like an advancing furnace-mouth; and, though at first, when it was far off, I could only see dark figures on it, as of beings moving among objects which were stationary, yet, as it came nearer, I could construe the whole image. Deep in the perspective of the disc-which became, as I thought, more like as if it were the perspective of a conical tunnel-there was a glowing stationary forge; at the sides, all along from this forge to the gaping tunnel

mouth where it was nearest me and widest, were implements of all kinds, or rather, where the tunnel was nearest and widest, not so much implements as engines and parts of mills, clanking and whirring; and in the centre of the mouth, always coming forward as the mouth moved and widened, was a huge horizontal capstan, into which there were fitted long spokes. And, as I saw, there were many men, of hardy form, pushing at these spokes with all their strength, and slowly turning the capstan round; and, as it turned round, and the men circled at their laborious task, a chain which was round the vast axle slowly uncoiled itself, link after link, towards one side of the tunnel, where its farther course was lost-yet always taking on link after link from the continuation at the other, so that the axle never gained or lost anything, but there were always the same number of coils on it. And, still as the capstan went round, the mouth of the tunnel widened and approached, and new implements and engines seemed to grow up at its sides close to the advancing mouth, and the ribbed and arched vista that was left behind, stretching back to the stationary forge at the other end, became larger and deeper. And ceaselessly round went the spokes and the men pushing at them; and their motion was as if to this song:

When time began, how poor was man!
And all the earth how cold!
Prometheus he, for charity,

Performed his action bold:

So round and round, till the levers break!
O, the good we do, and the money we make!
The brute old earth was great of girth,
A stubborn mass to tame;
But, bit by bit, we've managed it,

And shaped things to our aim:
Then round and round, till the levers break!
O, the good we do, and the money we make!

We're not yet done-no, till the sun

That solar change shall feel,
To see our ball ring-harnessed all,
And plated o'er with steel:

Aye round and round, till the levers break!
O, the good we do, and the money we make!

To the sound of this monotonous chaunt the all but blazing tunnel-mouth,

with the capstan working in it, had advanced to within a little distance of where I stood, so that I gazed immeasurably far into its lurid contracting throat. Then all again collapsed in darkness, to be succeeded as before, after an interval, by the grey interminable plain. Hereon again there was the old sight of skulls-but of skulls in a great confused heap. And then, in a repetition of the swiftly-engulfing blackness, the third act of the vision was finished.

In the fourth act of the vision, when the darkness had rolled away, there was still the round disc of light, whereon the eye was fastened in expectation of figures that were to be seen. But there was now no appearance of distinctive background; nor at the sides were there any groupings of objects, whether of art or nature, to attract the attention. What I saw within the luminous circle was simply, as it were, a level floor or platform, crossing it like a chord-line at about a third of its height. Another difference, this time, there was, in that, during the whole action of the phantasmagory, the luminous ground on which it was presented neither advanced towards me, nor receded, as on the former occasions, but remained always of the same circumference, so that the figures I saw on it were all in the same proportions. And figures I did see-along procession of figures-mostly of men, but with not a few women among them, all' crossing the stage, one at a time, all appearing from the right and disappearing on the left, all walking slowly, meditatingly, and with bowed heads. Still they came and came, no two forms or physiognomies precisely alike; and at each in its turn I gazed, always with a curious interest, often with reverence, and sometimes with a rouse of emotion that held my breath and sent a tingling through my frame. And this seemed to be the song of their march

To each in turn our little walk,

Our time to look and think and know, To perpetrate our little talk,

Our little talk before we go, With, in our ears, the constant hum Of things gone by and things to come!

'Tis well to recollect the old; "Tis well to reason forth the new; 'Tis well to fashion fancies bold,

And phrase with elegance the true :
But every high-commissioned soul
Will strive to apprehend the Whole.
The Whole! Ah! crush in one the years,
The total lapse of human time;
And what in total Man appears

His universal life sublime,
This mighty breathing of our race,
This chieftaincy of Time and Space?

What but a Day between two Nights,
A listening to a double roar,
A running to and fro with lights,

A gathering shells on either shore ;
On either hand a dreadful deep
Of endless change, or else of sleep?

Not wholly! For, as every shell
Moans of the deep from whence it came,
One memory we cherish well,

"The Heart of all is still the same!" Whoso there is that thinks not thus Blasphemes, and is not one of us.

What was strangest was that all the figures were known to me. I seemed always to know who was coming next. The truth then dawned upon me. I had, in some manner or another, seen all of them before-some of them in portraits prefixed to books, some of them in pictures, some in statues, in busts, or in medallions. They were the Scholars, the Sages, and the Poets, of whom and whose ways I had formed to myself the clearest and most affectionate conceptions, and with whom I had held, over the pages which preserved their thoughts, the most profound communion. Ah! how many of them were of our own dear British Islands, and how lovingly and proudly I looked at those! One or two there were whom I had seen in my own life, whose hands I had touched, whose voices I had heard. How my heart leaped to these! Oh Memory, Memory! Oh my life unworthy! Oh my patron saints, if such I might invoke ye! Oh my darlings of all the Dead! Others there were, not thus known to me, but otherwise so little removed from me that I had at least known those who had known them; and at these too I looked very eagerly. Among them, and among the last of the whole procession that

crossed the stage, were two of especially familiar mien. One was a silver-haired sage, of calm, white face, and strange irresolute gait. I knew at a glance the philosopher Coleridge. The other was a slack, slouching youth, of small stature, but broad-shouldered, and with a head that looked small, but long in profile. I knew at a glance the poet Keats.

Too well I knew that all those of whom the procession thus appeared to me were numbered with the dead. Why then once more that needless blotting out of the scene of the vision by the intervening wall of marble darkness, and that slow re-transparence of the thick marble gloom only to show me the moth-grey plain of graves, glimmering to the extreme horizon? But nought was spared me. There again was the ash-coloured plain, and on it again the melancholy sight of bonewhite skulls. But not this time in a triangle of pairs, nor in a ring with two foci, nor in a confused heap, nor in any one place, were the skulls set out. There were many of them, and they were scattered, or rather arranged, at regular distances over the whole plain, from its nearest border as far as I could see, so that wide lozenge-shaped interspaces of the grey ground were seen between the points which their whiteness marked. This also was peculiar, that each and every skull, as it lay, wore around it a laurel wreath.

And now it seemed as if the ashgrey ground of sepulture would never vanish again. There it lay glimmering steadily before me, studded with the laurelled skulls. I longed that it would vanish as before, if even the intolerable darkness were to come; but vanish it would not, and it held my eyes fascinated. How long I gazed at its grey unvarying glimmer I know not; but, at length, instantaneously, as if between two motions of the eyelids, one astounding change! All the laurelled skulls. were gone-swept away, or sunk, or what else I could not tell. Nothing now but the grey plain itself, with its endless wave of mounds! Pat this was not all. I became aware also that the

very plain was undergoing some wonderful transmutation-that, from end to end, it was heaving and undulating like a vesture, and that the silver-grey of its hue was passing into a palish and glistering gold. Amazed what this marvel might mean, I raised my eyes to Heaven, to see if I could find a cause. Then, O then, neither pen nor tongue can describe the splendour of that sudden Apocalypse. All the air above was one great dome of deep and starless azure, save at the zenith. At the zenith of this azure there was, as if an opening into the Heaven of heavens; and from this opening descended as if a blaze of rays; and in the blaze of rays was visible as if a great violet eye; and in the centre of the violet eye was as if a saffron iris; and within the saffron iris was as if the image of a Babe. And the rays shot down and slanted more dazzlingly; and through all space there seemed to ring the call of a joyful trumpet. And then, as I looked down again to the spacious plain of graves, what had been that plain was one vast shining golden ground, whereon there stood or floated myriads of minute winged and glittering beings. And, while I gazed, they were no longer on the ground; for the wings of many of them were extended, and through the sapphire air these rose and rose in rustling crowds, and others and others followed them, till, as if with pails of gold connected and ascending, the universal blue from Earth to Heaven was filled with flecks of fire. Never had I seen or imagined aught like such a sight since a dream I had used to have in my childhood of the saints ascending into glory.