busy, waking mind; with here and there more vivid images of terror or
delight, that one remembered for a few hours with a strange wonder and
questioning, as Coleridge remembered his Abyssinian maid who played
upon the dulcimer (a charming and most original combination).

The whole cosmos is in a man's brains--as much of it, at least, as a
man's brains will hold; perhaps it is nowhere else. And when sleep
relaxes the will, and there are no earthly surroundings to distract
attention--no duty, pain, or pleasure to compel it--riderless Fancy
takes the bit in its teeth, and the whole cosmos goes mad and has its
wild will of us.

[Illustration: "NOTRE DAME DE PARIS."]

Ineffable false joys, unspeakable false terror and distress, strange
phantoms only seen as in a glass darkly, chase each other without rhyme
or reason, and play hide-and-seek across the twilit field and through
the dark recesses of our clouded and imperfect consciousness.

And the false terrors and distress, however unspeakable, are no worse
than such real terrors and distress as are only too often the waking lot
of man, or even so bad; but the ineffable false joys transcend all
possible human felicity while they last, and a little while it is! We
wake, and wonder, and recall the slight foundation on which such
ultra-human bliss has seemed to rest. What matters the foundation if but
the bliss be there, and the brain has nerves to feel it?

Poor human nature, so richly endowed with nerves of anguish, so
splendidly organized for pain and sorrow, is but slenderly equipped
for joy.