bered, we often wake with a consciousness of having dreamed vividly, and yet memory refuses to lend its aid in supplying one atom of the subject matter.

"How wonderful is sleep!" said I, wishing to continue the conversation on this topic. "It is indeed," said L, "it is like every other function of Nature, wonderful and beautiful: I own, I delight in looking at a person stretched in refreshing slumber. Did you never watch the sleep of innocence, of infancy? you may fancy the senses wrapped in threads of gossamer. Contrast with this, the oppressed, but half-forgetful night-heaviness, I can call it by no other name, of some of riper years, the slaves of passions, of desires foreign to their nature; note the clenched hand grasping vacancy, the muscular contortion in every feature is their's the temporary oblivion, the periodical renewal of tone and vigour to both body and mind, given by Nature to all her children? Surely not. Sleep is besides wonderful, inasmuch that the brain though suspended in many of its nicer operations, turns to, and is sharpened in others; it loses its powers of discrimination, but acquires increased fertility of imagination; is still affected by extrinsic incident: if the digestive organs are impeded, the owner fancies himself eating,

to sickness; if the nostrils are oppressed, he struggles with a sense of suffocation; and if sudden noise breaks the film in which it has become enveloped, it again throws itself into functional arrangement. But, we are at the entrance, we will ascend this building; the prospect from the summit will amply repay our toil. When we arrive at the top, I mean to hazard a few conjectures.

We began the ascent, and after considerable fatigue emerged through an aperture near the summit; I still felt giddiness and terror, which were not at all diminished by the steepness of the ascent. When we came to the rails of iron which surround the circular walk we stood on, I clung to them to prevent my falling; I thought the building rocked in the gale, but the freshness of the latter soon dispelled my oppression, and I felt ready to hear L's remarks. "Now," said he, "that you are recovered, draw back and listen." I did so, and heard the hubbub of the multitude below ascending through the haze, like the night-roar of the ocean, heard while unseen. The dwellings of men joined in every variety of form and size, were seen intersected by passages now seemingly narrow, along which an endless succession of human beings, reduced to an insignificant size from the distance, poured

in all directions, like ants in the paths of our

woods. On another side, the river which divides the city might be traced, winding sluggishly along, bearing on its dark surface innumerable vessels; and its banks lined with quays and buildings; many of the latter throwing up columns of smoke.

"Well," said L--, "what think you, is not this an astonishing scene?"—“I know not what to think," replied I, "my faculties are enchained.""No wonder," said he, "so were mine once; but I have long since learned to soar above first impressions, they are seldom correct, and always need accurate weighing. I am no longer bewildered, but pierced with sorrow; not from the reflection that, in a short space, every one of these myriads will be extinct; but from the awful conviction that this city, now so crowded with animal life and swelling in boastful pride, will in a space of time, which in the abyss of eternity will be but as a drop of water in the ocean, lie prostrate in her own dust, and silent as the desert.'

"Impossible!" said I: "from what causes will such mighty changes spring? What adequate catastrophe will work events so improbable, so contrary to the present state of things?" "You know not what you say," said L"when you speak of that as improbable, which

must inevitably happen; which must come to pass, as much from necessity, as yonder smoke flies upwards.""At any rate," said I, "if posterity knew your sentiments, and heard the traditions of these your declarations, you would be well deemed a true prophet, if these events take place."-"Talk not to me of prophecy," said he angrily, "I beg your pardon for speaking so hastily; but really I lose all patience at the name. That's an old game, and has been played off successfully a long while, and on divers occasions; how much longer it will last remains to be seen. We have had quite enough of predicting events which must happen in due course, being in themselves unavoidable; of clothing prediction of future occurrences, depending on contingencies, in terms of language so loose and ambiguous, that let them happen when or how they may, or even not at all, those who foretold shall claim the merit of prescience. No, no, my friend, I vaunt not thus; I merely assert, without assuming the slightest pretensions to foreknowledge, that this apparently improbable change will happen from causes purely natural, and of course: it will take place from the very same reasons which caused the downfal of governments and imperial cities of false renown, in ages past. This city

will become a shapeless mass of ruins, because it is swayed by unnatural laws; because it is not bound by the indissoluble cement of a social compact, mixed up from the unalloyed ingredients of equality and liberty: because its component parts are not laid in the equal proportions necessary to give symmetry and durability to the whole; because its inhabitants have departed from the original simplicity of their common nature, and are acting in violation of her immutable laws: where are Nineveh and Babylon, Thebes and Memphis, and Palmyra? They are gone; their place is known no more.

"I tell you," he continued, "this river, its waters restored to their pristine clearness, shall again reflect on its bosom the shadows of trees hanging over it in wild luxuriance; again shall its banks, clothed with reeds and sedge, be peopled with the heron and the bittern, who shall glide as heretofore, on noiseless wing, secure across the stream: again shall it shift its bed, and choke in shoals, forming swamps as it toils to join the ocean. See you those bridges reared on massive arches, which seem to claim the waters as their own? the trout shall hide her spawn in their pavement, the otter shall dive through them.While this proud edifice whereon we stand,