ight sparkling in
happiness which they manifestly wished him to share? Did he indeed in
his heart believe that the moon, in spite of her shining midnight face,
was made of green cheese? Not only are the foundations dug and laid in
boyhood, of all the knowledge and the feelings of our prime, but the
ground-flat too built, and often the second story of the entire
superstructure, from the windows of which, the soul looking out, beholds
nature in her state, and leaps down, unafraid of a fall on the green or
white bosom of earth, to join with hymns the front of the procession.
The soul afterwards perfects her palace--building up tier after tier of
all imaginable orders of architecture--till the shadowy roof, gleaming
with golden cupolas, like the cloud-region of the setting sun, set the
heavens ablaze.

Gaze up on the highest idea--gaze down on the profoundest emotion--and
you will know and feel in a moment that it is not a new birth. You
become a devout believer in the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine of
metempsychosis and reminiscence, and are awed by the mysterious
consciousness of the thought "BEFORE!" Try then to fix its date, and
back travels your soul, now groping its way in utter darkness, and now
in darkness visible--now launching along lines of steady lustre, such as
the moon throws on the broad bosoms of starry lakes--now dazzled by
sudden contrast--

"Blind with excess of light!"

But back let it travel, as best or worst it may, through and amidst eras
after eras of the wan or radiant past; yet never, except for some sweet
instant of delusion, breaking dewdrop-like at a touch or a breath,
during all that perilous pilgrimage--and perilous must it be, haunted by
so many ghosts--never may it reach the shrine it seeks--the fountain
from which first flowed that feeling whose origin seems to have been out
of the world of time--dare we say--in eternity!

CHRISTMAS DREAMS.

How graciously provided are all the subdivisions of Time, diversifying
the dream of human life! And why should moralists mourn over the
mutability that gives the chief charm to all that passes so transitorily
before our eyes!--leaving image upon image in the waters of memory, that
can bear being stirred without being disturbed, and contain steadier and
steadier reflections as they seem to repose on an unfathomable
depth!--the years, the months, the weeks, the days, the nights, the
hours, the minutes, the moments, each in itself a di