ark veil between us
and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed grey before our hairs.
The mighty changes of the world already appear as but the vain stuff
out of which dramas are composed. We have asked no more of life than
what the mimic images in play-houses present us with. Even those types
have waxed fainter. Our clock appears to have struck. We are
SUPERANNUATED. In this dearth of mundane satisfaction, we contract
politic alliances with shadows. It is good to have friends at court.
The abstracted media of dreams seem no ill introduction to that
spiritual presence, upon which, in no long time, we expect to be
thrown. We are trying to know a little of the usages of that colony;
to learn the language, and the faces we shall meet with there, that we
may be less awkward at our first coming among them. We willingly call
a phantom our fellow, as knowing we shall soon be of their dark
companionship. Therefore, we cherish dreams. We try to spell in them
the alphabet of the invisible world; and think we know already, how it
shall be with us. Those uncouth shapes, which, while we clung to flesh
and blood, affrighted us, have become familiar. We feel attenuated
into their meagre essences, and have given the hand of half-way
approach to incorporeal being. We once thought life to be something;
but it has unaccountably fallen from us before its time. Therefore we
choose to dally with visions. The sun has no purposes of ours to light
us to. Why should we get up?

_Lamb._

WHITSUN-EVE

The pride of my heart and the delight of my eyes is my garden. Our
house, which is in dimensions very much like a bird-cage, and might,
with almost equal convenience, be laid on a shelf or hung up in a
tree, would be utterly unbearable in wet weather were it not that we
have a retreat out of doors, and a very pleasant retreat it is. To
make my readers comprehend it I must describe our whole territories.

Fancy a small plot of ground with a pretty, low, irregular cottage at
one end; a large granary, divided from the dwelling by a little court
running along one side; and a long thatched shed, open towards the
garden, and supported by wooden pillars, on the other. The bottom is
bounded half by an old wall and half by an old paling, over which we
see a pretty distance of woody hills. The house, granary, wall, and
paling, are covered with vines, cherry-trees, roses, honeysuckles, and
jessamines, with great clusters of tall hollyhocks