Memorials and Other Papers | Page 5

as I was able to give them a most hurried warning of their
danger; but even that not until they stood within the very shadow of the
catastrophe, being divided from the most frightful of deaths by scarcely
more, if more at all, than seventy seconds.
Such was the scene, such in its outline, from which the whole of this
paper radiates as a natural expansion. The scene is circumstantially
narrated in Section the Second, entitled, "The Vision of Sudden Death."
But a movement of horror and of spontaneous recoil from this dreadful
scene naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised,
into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams. The
actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was
transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical

fugue. This troubled Dream is circumstantially reported in Section the
Third, entitled, "Dream-Fugue upon the Theme of Sudden Death."
What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail,--the scenical strife of
action and passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them
moving in ghostly silence; this duel between life and death narrowing
itself to a point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision
neared,--all these elements of the scene blended, under the law of
association, with the previous and permanent features of distinction
investing the mail itself, which features at that time lay--1st, in velocity
unprecedented; 2dly, in the power and beauty of the horses: 3dly, in the
official connection with the government of a great nation; and, 4thly, in
the function, almost a consecrated function, of publishing and diffusing
through the land the great political events, and especially the great
battles during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. These honorary
distinctions are all described circumstantially in the FIRST or
introductory section ("The Glory of Motion"). The three first were
distinctions maintained at all times; but the fourth and grandest
belonged exclusively to the war with Napoleon; and this it was which
most naturally introduced Waterloo into the dream. Waterloo, I
understood, was the particular feature of the "Dream-Fugue" which my
censors were least able to account for. Yet surely Waterloo, which, in
common with every other great battle, it had been our special privilege
to publish over all the land, most naturally entered the Dream under the
license of our privilege. If not--if there be anything amiss--let the
Dream be responsible. The Dream is a law to itself; and as well quarrel
with a rainbow for showing, or for not showing, a secondary arch. So
far as I know, every element in the shifting movements of the Dream
derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual scene, or
from secondary features associated with the mail. For example, the
cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic combination of features
which grouped themselves together at the point of approaching
collision, namely, an arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards
long, under the solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting
overhead in arches. The guard's horn, again--a humble instrument in
itself--was yet glorified as the organ of publication for so many great
national events. And the incident of the Dying Trumpeter, who rises
from a marble bas-relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble lips

for the purpose of warning the female infant, was doubtless secretly
suggested by my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to
blow a warning blast. But the Dream knows best; and the Dream, I say
again, is the responsible party.
4. "The Spanish Nun." [Footnote: Published in "Narrative and
Miscellaneous Essays."]--There are some narratives, which, though
pure fictions from first to last, counterfeit so vividly the air of grave
realities, that, if deliberately offered for such, they would for a time
impose upon everybody. In the opposite scale there are other narratives,
which, whilst rigorously true, move amongst characters and scenes so
remote from our ordinary experience, and through, a state of society so
favorable to an adventurous cast of incidents, that they would
everywhere pass for romances, if severed from the documents which
attest their fidelity to facts. In the former class stand the admirable
novels of De Foe; and, on a lower range, within the same category, the
inimitable "Vicar of Wakefield;" upon which last novel, without at all
designing it, I once became the author of the following instructive
experiment. I had given a copy of this little novel to a beautiful girl of
seventeen, the daughter of a statesman in Westmoreland, not designing
any deception (nor so much as any concealment) with respect to the
fictitious character of the incidents and of the actors in that famous tale.
Mere accident it was that had intercepted those explanations as to the
extent of fiction in