vidly I recall the scene which followed, the more carefully I
restore its different features, and separate the many threads of sensation
which it wove into one gorgeous web, the more I despair of representing
its exceeding glory. I was moving over the Desert, not upon the rocking
dromedary, but seated in a barque made of mother-of-pearl, and studded
with jewels of surpassing lustre. The sand was of grains of gold, and my
keel slid through them without jar or sound. The air was radiant with
excess of light, though no sun was to be seen. I inhaled the most
delicious perfumes; and harmonies, such as Beethoven may have heard in
dreams, but never wrote, floated around me. The atmosphere itself was
light, odor, music; and each and all sublimated beyond anything the sober
senses are capable of receiving. Before me--for a thousand leagues, as it
seemed--stretched a vista of rainbows, whose colors gleamed with the
splendor of gems--arches of living amethyst, sapphire, emerald, topaz, and
ruby. By thousands and tens of thousands, they flew past me, as my
dazzling barge sped down the magnificent arcade; yet the vista still
stretched as far as ever before me. I revelled in a sensuous elysium,
which was perfect, because no sense was left ungratified. But beyond all,
my mind was filled with a boundless feeling of triumph. My journey was
that of a conqueror--not of a conqueror who subdues his race, either by
Love or by Will, for I forgot that Man existed--but one victorious over
the grandest as well as the subtlest forces of Nature. The spirits of
Light, Color, Odor, Sound, and Motion were my slaves; and, having these, I
was master of the universe.

Those who are endowed to any extent with the imaginative faculty, must
have at least once in their lives experienced feelings which may give them
a clue to the exalted sensuous raptures of my triumphal march. The view of
a sublime mountain landscape, the hearing of a grand orchestral symphony,
or of a choral upborne by the "full-voiced organ," or even the beauty and
luxury of a cloudless summer day, suggests emotions similar in kind, if
less intense. They took a warmth and glow from that pure animal joy which
degrades not, but spiritualizes and ennobles our material part, and which
differs from cold, abstract, intellectual enjoyment, as the flaming
diamond of the Orient differs from the icicle of the North. Those finer
senses, which occupy a middle ground between our animal and intellectual