figures grow indistinct, fading into pictures on the air, and now to
fainter outlines, while the fire is glimmering on the walls of a
familiar room, and shows the book that I flung down, and the sheet
that I left half written, some fifty years ago. I lift my eyes to the
looking-glass, and perceive myself alone, unless those be the
mermaid's features, retiring into the depths of the mirror, with a
tender and melancholy smile.

All! one feels a chillness, not bodily, but about the heart, and,
moreover, a foolish dread of looking behind him, after these pastimes.
I can imagine precisely how a magician would sit down in gloom and
terror, after dismissing the shadows that had personated dead or
distant people, and stripping his cavern of the unreal splendor which
had changed it to a palace. And now for a moral to my revery. Shall
it be, that, since fancy can create so bright a dream of happiness, it
were better to dream on from youth to age, than to awake and strive
doubtfully for something real! O, the slight tissue of a dream can no
more preserve us from the stern reality of misfortune, than a robe of
cobweb could repel the wintry blast. Be this the moral, then. In
chaste and warm affections, humble wishes, and honest toil for some
useful end, there is health for the mind, and quiet for the heart, the
prospect of a happy life, and the fairest hope of heaven.