cle from which I was withdrawn,
indulge in all sorts of fanciful visions. Then my dream-people were
all full-grown men and women. I do not recollect that I ever thought
about children until I possessed some of my own. Those waking
visions were very sweet--sweeter than the realities of life that
followed; but they were neither half so curious nor half so
wonderful as the dreams that sometimes haunt me now. The imagination
of the old is not less lively than that of the young: it is only
less original. A youthful fancy will create more new images; the
mind of age requires materials to build with: these supplied, the
combinations it is capable of forming are endless. And so were born
my dream-children.

Has it never occurred to you, mothers and fathers, to wonder what
has become of your children's lost ages? Look at your little boy of
five years old. Is he at all, in any respect, the same breathing
creature that you beheld three years back? I think not. Whither,
then, has the sprite vanished? In some hidden fairy nook, in some
mysterious cloud-land he must exist still. Again, in your
slim-formed girl of eight years, you look in vain for the sturdy elf
of five. Gone? No; that cannot be--'a thing of beauty is a joy for
ever.' Close your eyes: you have her there! A breeze-like, sportive,
buoyant thing; a thing of breathing, laughing, unmistakable life;
she is mirrored on your retina as plainly as ever was dancing
sunbeam on a brook. The very trick of her lip--of her eye; the
mischief-smile, the sidelong saucy glance,

'That seems to say,
I know you love me, Mr Grey;'

is it not traced there--all, every line, as clear as when it
brightened the atmosphere about you in the days that are no more? To
be sure it is; and being so, the thing must exist--somewhere.

I never was more fully possessed with this conviction than once
during the winter of last year. It was Christmas-eve. I was sitting
alone, in my old armchair, and had been looking forward to the
fast-coming festival-day with many mingled thoughts--some tender,
but regretful; others hopeful, yet sad; some serious, and even
solemn. As I laid my head back and sat thus with closed eyes,
listening to the church-clock as it struck the hour, I could not but
feel that I was passing--very slowly and gently it is true--towards
a time when the closing of the grave would shut out even that sound
so familiar to my ear; and when other and more precious sounds of
lif