sing his figure to its
full dimensions, and holding the book aloft in his left hand, pointed to
a passage in the page which he thus displayed. Although the language was
unknown to our dreamer, his eye and attention were both strongly caught
by the line which the figure seemed thus to press upon his notice, the
words of which appeared to blaze with a supernatural light, and remained
riveted upon his memory. As the vision shut his volume, a strain of
delightful music seemed to fill the apartment--Lovel started, and became
completely awake. The music, however, was still in his ears, nor ceased
till he could distinctly follow the measure of an old Scottish tune.

He sate up in bed, and endeavoured to clear his brain of the phantoms
which had disturbed it during this weary night. The beams of the morning
sun streamed through the half-closed shutters, and admitted a distinct
light into the apartment. He looked round upon the hangings,--but the
mixed groups of silken and worsted huntsmen were as stationary as
tenter-hooks could make them, and only trembled slightly as the early
breeze, which found its way through an open crevice of the latticed
window, glided along their surface. Lovel leapt out of bed, and,
wrapping himself in a morning-gown, that had been considerately laid by
his bedside, stepped towards the window, which commanded a view of the
sea, the roar of whose billows announced it still disquieted by the
storm of the preceding evening, although the morning was fair and
serene. The window of a turret, which projected at an angle with the
wall, and thus came to be very near Lovel's apartment, was half-open,
and from that quarter he heard again the same music which had probably
broken short his dream. With its visionary character it had lost much
of its charms--it was now nothing more than an air on the harpsichord,
tolerably well performed--such is the caprice of imagination as
affecting the fine arts. A female voice sung, with some taste and
great simplicity, something between a song and a hymn, in words to the
following effect:--

"Why sitt'st thou by that ruin'd hall,
Thou aged carle so stern and grey?
Dost thou its former pride recall,
Or ponder how it passed away?

"Know'st thou not me!" the Deep Voice cried,
"So long enjoyed, so oft misused--
Alternate, in thy fickle pride,