DREAMS.
I went to bed early, and tried in vain to sleep. The events of the day passed continually through my brain, and brought on a nervous headache. All the blood in my body seemed concentrated in my head, leaving my feet and hands paralyzed with cold. After tossing about for many hours, I dropped off into a sort of mesmeric sleep, full of confused images, among which the singular face of Dinah North haunted me like the genius of the night-mare.
Dreams are one of the greatest mysteries in the unsolved problem of life. I have been a dreamer from my cradle, and if any person could explain the phenomena, the practical experience of a long life ought to have invested me with that power.
Most persons, in spite of themselves, or what they consider to be their better judgment, attach a superstitious importance to these visions of the night; nor is the vague belief in the spiritual agency employed in dreams, diminished by the remarkable dreams and their fulfilment, which are recorded in Holy Writ, the verity of which we are taught to believe as an article of faith.
My eyes are scarcely closed in sleep, before I become an actor in scenes of the most ludicrous or terrific nature. All my mental and physical faculties become intensified, and enjoy the highest state of perfection; as if the soul centered in itself the qualities of its mysterious triune existence.
Beautiful visions float before the sight, such as the waking eye never beheld; and the ear is ravished with music which no earthly skill could produce. The dreaming sense magnifies all sounds and sights which exist in nature. The thunder deepens its sonorous tone, ocean sends up a louder voice, and the whirlwind shakes the bending forest with tenfold fury.
I have beheld in sleep the mountains reel; the yawning earth disclose her hidden depths, and the fiery abyss swarm with hideous forms, which no waking eye could contemplate, and the mind retain its rationality. I have beheld the shrinking sea yield up the dead of ages, and have found myself a guilty and condemned wretch, trembling at the bar of Eternal Justice.
"Oh! what have I not beheld in sleep?"
I have been shut up, a living sentient creature in the cold, dank, noisome grave; have felt the loathsome worm slide along my warm, quivering limbs; the toad find a resting-place upon my breast; the adder wreath her slimy folds round my swelling throat; have struggled against the earthly weight that pressed out my soul and palsied my bursting heart, with superhuman strength; but every effort to free myself from my prison of clay was made in vain. My lips were motionless; my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth and refused to send forth a sound. Hope was extinct. I was beyond the reach of human aid; and that mental agony rendered me as powerless, as a moth in the grasp of a giant.
I have stood upon the edge of the volcano, and listened to the throbbings of Nature's fiery heart; and heard the boiling blood of earth, chafing and roaring far below; while my eyes vainly endeavoured to explore its glowing depths. Anon, by some fatal necessity, I was compelled to cross this terrible abyss—my bridge, a narrow plank insecurely placed upon the rounded stems of two yielding, sapling trees. Suddenly, frightful cries resounded on every side, and I was pursued by fiend-like forms in the shape of animal life. I put my foot upon the fearful bridge, I tried its strength, and felt a horrid consciousness that I never could pass over it in safety; my supernatural enemies drew nearer—I saw their blazing eyes—heard their low muttered growls; the next moment I leaped upon the plank—with a loud crash it severed—and with the velocity of thought, I was plunged headlong into the boiling gulf—down—down—down—for ever whirling down—the hot flood rushed over me. I felt the spasmodic grasp of death upon my throat, and awoke struggling with eternity upon the threshold of time.