Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 419 | Page 2

my
head back and sat thus with closed eyes, listening to the church-clock
as it struck the hour, I could not but feel that I was passing--very slowly
and gently it is true--towards a time when the closing of the grave
would shut out even that sound so familiar to my ear; and when other
and more precious sounds of life-human voices, dearer than all else,
would cease to have any meanings for me--and even their very echoes
be hushed in the silence of the one long sleep. Following the train of
association, it was natural that I should recur to the hour when that
same church's bells had chimed my wedding-peal. I seemed to hear
their music once again; and other music sweeter still--the music of
young vows that 'kept the word of promise to the ear, and broke it' not
'to the hope.' Next in succession came the recollection of my children. I
seemed to lose sight of their present identity, and to be carried away in
thought to times and scenes far back in my long-departed youth, when
they were growing up around my knees--beautiful forms of all ages,
from the tender nursling of a single year springing with outstretched

arms into my bosom, to the somewhat rough but ingenuous boy of ten.
As my inner eye traced their different outlines, and followed them in
their graceful growth from year to year, my heart was seized with a
sudden and irresistible longing to hold fast these beloved but passing
images of the brain. What joy, I thought, would it be to transfix the
matchless beauty which had wrought itself thus into the visions of my
old age! to preserve for ever, unchanging, every varied phase of that
material but marvellous structure which the glorious human soul had
animated and informed through all its progressive stages from the child
to the man!
Scarcely was the thought framed when a dull, heavy weight seemed to
press upon my closed eyelids. I now saw more clearly even than before
my children's images in the different stages of their being. But I saw
these, and these alone, as they stood rooted to the ground, with a stony
fixedness in their eyes: every other object grew dim before me. The
living faces and full-grown forms which until now had mingled with
and played their part among my younger phantoms, altogether
disappeared. I had no longer any eyes, any soul, but for this my new
spectre-world. Life, and the things of life, had lost their interest; and I
knew of nothing, conceived of nothing, but those still, inanimate forms
from which the informing soul had long since passed away.
And now that the longing of my heart was answered, was I satisfied?
For a time I gazed, and drew a deep delight from the gratification of my
vain and impious craving. But at length the still, cold presence of forms
no longer of this earth began to oppress me. I grew cold and numb
beneath their moveless aspect; and constant gazing upon eyes lighted
up by no varying expression, pressed upon my tired senses with a more
than nightmare weight. I felt a sort of dull stagnation through every
limb, which held me bound where I sat, pulseless and moveless as the
phantoms on which I gazed.
As I wrestled with the feeling that oppressed me, striving in vain to
break the bonds of that strange fascination, under the pressure of which
I surely felt that I must perish--a soft voice, proceeding from whence I
knew not, broke upon my ear. 'You have your desire,' it said gently;
'why, then, struggle thus? Why writhe under the magic of that joy you
have yourself called up? Are they not here before you, the Lost Ages
whose beauty and whose grace you would perpetuate? What would you

more? O mortal!'
'But these forms have no life,' I gasped--'no pulsating, breathing soul!'
'No,' replied the same still, soft voice; 'these forms belong to the things
of the past. In God's good time they breathed the breath of life; they
had then a being and a purpose on this earth. Their day has
departed--their work is done.'
So saying, the voice grew still: the leaden weight which had pressed
upon my eyelids was lifted off: I awoke.
Filled with reveries of the past--my eyes closed to everything
without--sleep had indeed overtaken me as I sat listening to the old
church-clock. But my vision was not all a vision: my dream-children
came not without their teaching. If they had been called up in folly, yet
in their going did they leave behind a lesson of wisdom.
The morning dawned--the blessed Christmas-morning! With it came
my good and dutiful, my real life--children. When they were all
assembled round me, and when,