
What a singular moment is the first one, whenyou have hardly begun to recollect yourself, afterstarting from slumber! By unclosing your eyes sosuddenly, you seem to have surprised the personagesof your dream in full convocation round your bed,and catch one broad glance at them before they canflit into obscurity. Or, to vary the metaphor, you findyourself, for a single instant, wide awake in thatrealm of illusions, whither sleep has been the passport, and behold its ghostly inhabitants and wondrousscenery, with a perception of their strangeness, suchas you never attain while the dream is undisturbed.The distant sound of a church clock is borne faintlyon the wind. You question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has stolen to your waking ear fromsome gray tower, that stood within the precincts ofyour dream. While yet in suspense, another clockflings its heavy clang over the slumbering town, withso full and distinct a sound, and such a long murmurin the neighboring air, that you are certain it mustproceed from the steeple at the nearest corner. Youcount the strokes--one--two--and there theycease, with a booming sound, like the gathering of athird stroke within the bell.
If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out ofthe whole night, it would be this. Since your soberbed-time, at eleven, you have had rest enough to takeoff the pressure of yesterday's fatigue; while beforeyou, till the sun comes from "far Cathay" to brightenyour window, there is almost the space of a summernight; one hour to be spent in thought, with themind's eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams,and two in that strangest of employments, the forgetfulness alike of joy and woe. The moment of risingbelongs to another period of time, and appears sodistant, that the plunge out of a warm bed into thefrosty air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay.Yesterday has already vanished among the shadowsof the past; to-morrow has not yet emerged from thefuture. You have found an intermediate space,where the business of life does not intrude; wherethe passing moment lingers, and becomes truly thepresent; a spot where Father Time, when he thinksnobody is watching him, sits down by the way-side totake breath. O that he would fall asleep, and letmortals live on without growing older!
Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because theslightest motion would dissipate the fragments of yourslumber. Now, being irrevocably awake, you peepthrough the half-drawn window curtain, and observethat the glass is ornamented with fanciful devices infrost-work, and that each pane presents somethinglike a frozen dream. There will be time enough totrace out the analogy, while waiting the summons tobreakfast. Seen through the clear portion of theglass, where the silvery mountain peaks do notascend, the most conspicuous object is the steeple;the white spire of which directs you to the wintrylustre of the firmament. You may almost distinguishthe figures on the clock that has just told the hour.Such a frosty sky, and the snow-covered roofs, andthe long vista of the frozen street, all white, and thedistant water hardened into rock, might make youshiver, even under four blankets and a woollen comforter. Yet look at that one glorious star! Its beamsare distinguishable from all the rest, and actually castthe shadow of the casement on the bed, with aradiance of deeper hue than moonlight, though notso accurate an outline.
You sink down and muffle your head in theclothes, shivering all the while, but less from bodilychill, than the bare idea of a polar atmosphere. It istoo cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad.You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a wholeexistence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, contentwith the sluggish ecstasy of inaction, and drowsilyconscious of nothing but delicious warmth, such asyou now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought ahideous one in its train. You think how the deadare lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins,through the drear winter of the grave, and cannotpersuade your fancy that they neither shrink norshiver, when the snow is drifting over their littlehillocks, and the bitter blast howls against the doorof the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect agloomy multitude, and throw its complexion over yourwakeful hours.
In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and adungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelryabove may cause us to forget their existence, and theburied ones, or prisoners whom they hide. Butsometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this,when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no activestrength; when the imagination is a mirror, impartingvividness to all ideas, without the power of selectingor controlling them,--then pray that your griefs mayslumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not breaktheir chain. It is too late! A funeral train comesgliding by your bed, in which passion and feelingassume bodily shape, and things of the mind becomedim spectres to the eye. There is your earliest sorrow, a pale, young mourner, wearing a sister's likenessto first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed sweetnessin her melancholy features, and grace in the flow ofher sable robe. Next appears a shade of ruinedloveliness, with dust among her golden hair, and herbright garments all faded and defaced, stealing fromyour glance with drooping head, as fearful of reproach; she was your fondest hope, but a delusiveone; so call her Disappointment now. A sternerform succeeds, with a brow of wrinkles, a look andgesture of iron authority: there is no name for him,unless it be Fatality; an emblem of the evil influencethat rules your fortunes; a demon to whom you subjected yourself by some error at the outset of life,and were bound his slave forever, by once obeyinghim. See! those fiendish lineaments graven on thedarkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery ofthat living eye, the pointed finger, touching the soreplace in your heart! Do you remember any act ofenormous folly, at which you would blush, even inthe remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognizeyour shame.
Pass, wretched band! Well for the wakeful one,if, riotously miserable, a fiercer tribe do not surroundhim, the devils of a guilty heart, that holds its hellwithin itself. What if remorse should assume thefeatures of an injured friend? What if the fiendshould come in woman's garments, with a pale beautyamid sin and desolation, and lie down by your side?What if he should stand at your bed's foot, in thelikeness of a corpse, with a bloody stain upon theshroud? Sufficient without such guilt is this night-mare of the soul; this heavy, heavy sinking of thespirits; this wintry gloom about the heart; this indistinct horror of the mind, blending itself with thedarkness of the chamber.
By a desperate effort, you start upright, breakingfrom a sort of conscious sleep, and gazing wildlyround the bed, as if the fiends were any where but inyour haunted mind. At the same moment, the slumbering embers on the hearth send forth a gleam whichpalely illuminates the whole outer room, and flickersthrough the door of the bed-chamber, but cannotquite dispel its obscurity. Your eye searches forwhatever may remind you of the living world. Witheager minuteness, you take note of the table near thefireplace, the book with an ivory knife between itsleaves, the unfolded letter, the hat, and the fallenglove. Soon the flame vanishes, and with it thewhole scene is gone, though its image remains an instant in your mind's eye, when darkness has swallowed the reality. Throughout the chamber, thereis the same obscurity as before, but not the samegloom within your breast. As your head falls backupon the pillow, you think--in a whisper be itspoken--how pleasant, in these night solitudes,would be the rise and fall of a softer breathing thanyour own, the slight pressure of a tenderer bosom, thequiet throb of a purer heart, imparting its peacefulnessto your troubled one, as if the fond sleeper were involving you in her dream!
Her influence is over you, though she have noexistence but in that momentary image. You sinkdown in a flowery spot, on the borders of sleep andwakefulness, while your thoughts rise before you inpictures, all disconnected, yet all assimilated by apervading gladsomeness and beauty. The wheelingof gorgeous squadrons, that glitter in the sun, issucceeded by the merriment of children round thedoor of a school-house, beneath the glimmering shadow of old trees, at the corner of a rustic lane. Youstand in the sunny rain of a summer shower, andwander among the sunny trees of an autumnal wood,and look upward at the brightest of all rainbows,overarching the unbroken sheet of snow, on theAmerican side of Niagara. Your mind strugglespleasantly between the dancing radiance round thehearth of a young man and his recent bride, and thetwittering flight of birds in spring, about their newmade nest. You feel the merry bounding of a shipbefore the breeze; and watch the tuneful feet of rosygirls, as they twine their last and merriest dance, in asplendid ball-room; and find yourself in the brilliantcircle of a crowded theatre, as the curtain falls overa light and airy scene.
With an involuntary start, you seize hold on consciousness, and prove yourself but half awake, byrunning a doubtful parallel between human life andthe hour which has now elapsed. In both youemerge from mystery, pass through a vicissitude thatyou can but imperfectly control, and are borneonward to another mystery. Now comes the peal ofthe distant clock, with fainter and fainter strokes asyou plunge farther into the wilderness of sleep. It isthe knell of a temporary death. Your spirit hasdeparted, and strays, like a free citizen, among thepeople of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights,yet without wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps,will be the final change; so undisturbed, as if amongfamiliar things, the entrance of the soul to its eternalhome!

