circulating in its accustomed courses, and the night air coming chill
over his feverish frame, he smiled with a stern and scornful bitterness
at the terror which had so shaken, and the fancy which had so deluded,
his mind.

Are there not "more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy"? A Spirit may hover in the air that we breathe: the depth of
our most secret solitudes may be peopled by the invisible; our uprisings
and our downsittings may be marked by a witness from the grave. In our
walks the dead may be behind us; in our banquets they may sit at the
board; and the chill breath of the night wind that stirs the curtains of
our bed may bear a message our senses receive not, from lips that once
have pressed kisses on our own! Why is it that at moments there creeps
over us an awe, a terror, overpowering, but undefined? Why is it that we
shudder without a cause, and feel the warm life-blood stand still in its
courses? Are the dead too near? Do unearthly wings touch us as they
flit around? Has our soul any intercourse which the body shares not,
though it feels, with the supernatural world--mysterious revealings--
unimaginable communion--a language of dread and power, shaking to its
centre the fleshly barrier that divides the spirit from its race?

How fearful is the very life which we hold! We have our being beneath a
cloud, and are a marvel even to ourselves. There is not a single thought
which has its affixed limits. Like circles in the water, our researches
weaken as they extend, and vanish at last into the immeasurable and
unfathomable space of the vast unknown. We are like children in the
dark; we tremble in a shadowy and terrible void, peopled with our
fancies! Life is our real night, and the first gleam of the morning,
which brings us certainty, is death.