for my dreams. Often I used to see, after painting upon the
blank darkness a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and
perhaps a festival and dances. And I heard it said, or I said to myself,
"These are English ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. These are
the wives and the daughters of those who met in peace, and sate at the
same table, and were allied by marriage or by blood; and yet, after a
certain day in August 1642, never smiled upon each other again, nor met
but in the field of battle; and at Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at
Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, and washed away
in blood the memory of ancient friendship." The ladies danced, and
looked as lovely as the court of George IV. Yet I knew, even in my
dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries. This
pageant would suddenly dissolve; and at a clapping of hands would be
heard the heart-quaking sound _of Consul Romanus_; and immediately came
"sweeping by," in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus or Marius, girt round by a
company of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and
followed by the _alalagmos_ of the Roman legions.

Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's, Antiquities of Rome,
Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by
that artist, called his _Dreams_, and which record the scenery of his own
visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them (I describe only
from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls, on
the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels,
cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, &c. &c., expressive of enormous power
put forth and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls
you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was
Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further and you perceive it
come to a sudden and abrupt termination without any balustrade, and
allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the extremity except into
the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi, you suppose at
least that his labours must in some way terminate here. But raise your
eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again
Piranesi is perceived, but this time standing on the very brink of the
abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs
is beheld, and again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring la