years I have dreamed of this scene. It has hung on my memory, it
has haunted my thoughts, at intervals, with the pertinacity of an
object connected with human affections. I have visited this scene
again. Neither the dream could be dissociated from the landscape,
nor the landscape from the dream, nor feelings, such as neither
singly could have awakened, from both.

But the most remarkable event of this nature, which ever occurred
to me, happened five years ago at Oxford. I was walking with
a friend, in the neighbourhood of that city, engaged in earnest
and interesting conversation. We suddenly turned the corner of a
lane, and the view, which its high banks and hedges had concealed,
presented itself. The view consisted of a wind-mill, standing
in one among many plashy meadows, inclosed with stone walls; the
irregular and broken ground, between the wall and the road on which
we stood; a long low hill behind the windmill, and a grey covering
of uniform cloud spread over the evening sky. It was that season
when the last leaf had just fallen from the scant and stunted ash.
The scene surely was a common scene; the season and the hour little
calculated to kindle lawless thought; it was a tame uninteresting
assemblage of objects, such as would drive the imagination for
refuge in serious and sober talk, to the evening fireside, and the
dessert of winter fruits and wine. The effect which it produced on
me was not such as could have been expected. I suddenly remembered
to have seen that exact scene in some dream of long--. [Footnote:
Here I was obliged to leave off, overcome by thrilling horror.]

[1815; publ. 1840]