to.

"It is on such nights as these," said Mordaunt, who first broke the
silence, but with a low and soft voice, "that we are tempted to believe
that in Plato's divine fancy there is as divine a truth; that 'our souls
are indeed of the same essence as the stars,' and that the mysterious
yearning, the impatient wish which swells and soars within us to mingle
with their glory, is but the instinctive and natural longing to re-unite
the divided portion of an immortal spirit, stored in these cells of
clay, with the original lustre of the heavenly and burning whole!"

"And hence then," said his companion, pursuing the idea, "might we also
believe in that wondrous and wild influence which the stars have been
fabled to exercise over our fate; hence might we shape a visionary clew
to their imagined power over our birth, our destinies, and our death."

"Perhaps," rejoined Mordaunt, and Lord Ulswater has since said that his
countenance as he spoke wore an awful and strange aspect, which lived
long and long afterwards in the memory of his companion, "perhaps they
are tokens and signs between the soul and the things of Heaven which do
not wholly shame the doctrine of him [Socrates, who taught the belief in
omens.] from whose bright wells Plato drew (while he coloured with his
own gorgeous errors) the waters of his sublime lore." As Mordaunt thus
spoke, his voice changed: he paused abruptly, and, pointing to a distant
quarter of the heavens, said,--

"Look yonder; do you see, in the far horizon, one large and solitary
star, that, at this very moment, seems to wax pale and paler, as my hand
points to it?"

"I see it; it shrinks and soars, while we gaze into the farther depths
of heaven, as if it were seeking to rise to some higher orbit."

"And do you see," rejoined Mordaunt, "yon fleecy but dusky cloud which
sweeps slowly along the sky towards it? What shape does that cloud wear
to your eyes?"

"It seems to me," answered Lord Ulswater, "to assume the exact semblance
of a funeral procession: the human shape appears to me as distinctly
moulded in the thin vapours as in ourselves; nor would it perhaps ask
too great indulgence from our fancy to image amongst the darker forms in
the centre of the cloud one bearing the very appearance of a bier,--the
plume, and the caparison, and the steeds, and the mourners! Still, as I
look, the likeness seems to me to increase!"

"Strange!" said Mordaunt, musingly, "how strange is this thing whi