I
grew cold and numb beneath their moveless aspect; and constant
gazing upon eyes lighted up by no varying expression, pressed upon
my tired senses with a more than nightmare weight. I felt a sort of
dull stagnation through every limb, which held me bound where I sat,
pulseless and moveless as the phantoms on which I gazed.

As I wrestled with the feeling that oppressed me, striving in vain
to break the bonds of that strange fascination, under the pressure
of which I surely felt that I must perish--a soft voice, proceeding
from whence I knew not, broke upon my ear. 'You have your desire,'
it said gently; 'why, then, struggle thus? Why writhe under the
magic of that joy you have yourself called up? Are they not here
before you, the Lost Ages whose beauty and whose grace you would
perpetuate? What would you more? O mortal!'

'But these forms have no life,' I gasped--'no pulsating, breathing
soul!'

'No,' replied the same still, soft voice; 'these forms belong to the
things of the past. In God's good time they breathed the breath of
life; they had _then_ a being and a purpose on this earth. Their day
has departed--their work is done.'

So saying, the voice grew still: the leaden weight which had pressed
upon my eyelids was lifted off: I awoke.

Filled with reveries of the past--my eyes closed to everything
without--sleep had indeed overtaken me as I sat listening to the old
church-clock. But my vision was not all a vision: my dream-children
came not without their teaching. If they had been called up in
folly, yet in their going did they leave behind a lesson of wisdom.

The morning dawned--the blessed Christmas-morning! With it came my
good and dutiful, my real life--children. When they were all
assembled round me, and when, subdued and thoughtful beneath the
tender and gracious associations of the day, each in turn
ministered, reverently and lovingly, to the old mother's need of
body and of soul, my heart was melted within me. Blessed, indeed,
was I in a lot full to overflowing of all the good gifts which a
wise and merciful Maker could lavish upon his erring and craving
creature. I stood reproved. I felt humbled to think that I should
ever for a moment have indulged one idle or restless longing for the
restoration of that past which had done its appointed work, and out
of which so gracious a present had arisen. One idea impressed me
strongly: I could not but feel that had the craving of my soul been
answered in