Now all thy figures are allowed,
And various shapes of things.
Create of airy forms a stream;
It must have blood and nought of phlegm;
And though it be a walking dream,
Yet let it like an odor rise
To all the senses here,
And fall like sleep upon their eyes,
Or music on their ear.--BEN JONSON.

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy," and among these may be placed that marvel and mystery of
the seas, the island of St. Brandan. Every school-boy can enumerate and
call by name the Canaries, the Fortunate Islands of the ancients; which,
according to some ingenious speculative minds, are mere wrecks and
remnants of the vast island of Atalantis, mentioned by Plato, as having
been swallowed up by the ocean. Whoever has read the history of those
isles, will remember the wonders told of another island, still more
beautiful, seen occasionally from their shores, stretching away in the
clear bright west, with long shadowy promontories, and high, sun-gilt
peaks. Numerous expeditions, both in ancient and modern days, have
launched forth from the Canaries in quest of that island; but, on their
approach, mountain and promontory have gradually faded away, until
nothing has remained but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water
below. Hence it was termed by the geographers of old, Aprositus, or the
Inaccessible; while modern navigators have called its very existence in
question, pronouncing it a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana
of the Straits of Messina; or classing it with those unsubstantial
regions known to mariners as Cape Flyaway, and the Coast of Cloud Land.