eds--the elephant, and the camel--that stare (as
well they might) out of the two last windows next the steerage in that
unique piece of naval architecture. Stackhouse was henceforth locked
up, and became an interdicted treasure. With the book, the
_objections_ and _solutions_ gradually cleared out of my head, and
have seldom returned since in any force to trouble me.--But there was
one impression which I had imbibed from Stackhouse, which no lock or
bar could shut out, and which was destined to try my childish nerves
rather more seriously.--That detestable picture!

I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The nighttime solitude, and
the dark, were my hell. The sufferings I endured in this nature would
justify the expression. I never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose,
from the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life--so far as
memory serves in things so long ago--without an assurance, which
realised its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful spectre. Be old
Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say, that to his picture of
the Witch raising up Samuel--(O that old man covered with a mantle!) I
owe--not my midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy--but the shape
and manner of their visitation. It was he who dressed up for me a hag
that nightly sate upon my pillow--a sure bedfellow, when my aunt or my
maid was far from me. All day long, while the book was permitted me, I
dreamed waking over his delineation, and at night (if I may use so
bold an expression) awoke into sleep, and found the vision true. I
durst not, even in the daylight, once enter the chamber where I slept,
without my face turned to the window, aversely from the bed where my
witch-ridden pillow was.--Parents do not know what they do when they
leave tender babes alone to go to sleep in the dark. The feeling about
for a friendly arm--the hoping for a familiar voice--when they wake
screaming--and find none to soothe them--what a terrible shaking it is
to their poor nerves! The keeping them up till midnight, through
candle-light and the unwholesome hours, as they are called,--would, I
am satisfied, in a medical point of view, prove the better
caution.--That detestable picture, as I have said, gave the fashion to
my dreams--if dreams they were--for the scene of them was invariably
the room in which I lay. Had I never met with the picture, the fears
would have come self-pictured in some shape or other--

Headless bear, black man, or ape--

but,