IT IS NO FICTION.

"Oh! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of
infinite space, were it not that _I have bad dreams_."--_Hamlet_.

"I am wrapp'd in dismal thinkings."--SHAKSPEARE.

I have been a dreamer all my life. The earliest recollections of my
childhood are of dreams of greatness. My boyhood's visions were peopled
with warlike tumults. There were no spring mornings to my brain even in
early youth; my heart was clouded with shadow, and sadness reigned when
mirth and careless glee should have been pre-eminent. My manhood has
been a fitful, feverish, and painful existence. I have outlived all whom
I ever cared for; I have seen those whom I idolized lie before me cold
and senseless; and now, with every event vividly impressed upon my
memory, each tone of the voice of her I loved dropping like liquid fire
into my brain, and drying up the tears that would weep away my
anguish--feeling all this with intensity, and longing for the free air
of heaven, I find myself alone--desolate--and HERE!!

Oh! the horror of this prison-solitude--the anxious watching for the
pale morning after sleepless nights--the horrible nights when fantastic
shapes are alone visible, mocking at and jeering me--when the only
sounds I hear are the ravings of some wretched maniac, confined, like
myself, because we have made for ourselves a world, and our imaginations
have created a presiding divinity; and, should a laugh disturb the
silence, it is the outbreak of a maddened spirit seeking relief from
thought--a laugh frightful, because a mockery--sad in its
boisterousness--"_the laugh which laughs not_."

For many weary years I have been pent up in this prison, pining for
freedom, hoping for things which never existed, conjuring up
anticipations of a brighter future, calling upon her who made

"The starlight of my boyhood,"

to look down upon me from her blest abode, and woo me back to calmness
by one gentle word, one loving glance; and then sinking into hopeless,
bitter despondency, when I remembered that she was gone, and that I
should see her no more.

Sometimes I can think of her in her exquisite beauty, and my soul drinks
in, as it were, the sweet and liquid tones of the voice which once spoke
peace to me, and, fancying her again before me, I sink into an unquiet
slumber, till some hideous dream oppresses me, and I see the fair brow
of my "Julia" contracted, withered; and instead of her silvery v