A wise man has said that of the inward senses Phantasie alone is free upon occasion to escape from her sisters Common Sense and Memory. In time of sleep it is that Phantasie can so break the meshes that hold her when the reason is waking; in time of a man’s sleep she wings whither she will, “producing many monstrous and prodigious things, especially if she be stirred up by some terrible object, presented to her by Common Sense or Memory.” And in my experience the scenes of her most active effort lie not in the depths of sleep, but about the portal of it. Then, and chiefly at the dawn, shall Phantasie be found to wing her wildest flight. In such a morning hour, on the turn of reason’s tide, my airy theatre of dreams was lighted by a blaze of high noon sun, and I, standing upon a green hill, looked down at vast plains where they stretched beneath, and an infinite multitude that thronged them. A people in number like the sands of the shore swept through the great plain, and the sound of them was the sound of a stormy sea. The Kingdoms of the Earth had sent hither these legions, and all Christendom streamed beneath me. To vanward great armies gleamed, and the sun made a shining fire of their steel; the companies of the workers also thundered forward together--the industrial millions that are the circulating heart’s blood in the veins of Nations. Workers in iron and brass; wielders of the hammer, the axe, the spade; diggers and delvers; the men of the soil and the men of the sea--all were here assembled; and the earth shook beneath the tramp of them; the round earth groaned under the accumulated weight of the Nations. In the forefront of this unexampled multitude shone pomp and pageantry, for there--to the peal of trumpet and the bellowing of great ordnance--marched mighty ones: kings and rulers of the earth; monarchs and those that led them; the symbols of power and the banners of power; the keys of all mundane principalities and creeds held in the hands of such as Chance throws crest-high on the tides of human authority and earthly fame. Forward swept the kings of the earth and all the hosts of them, whilst I approached a little nearer and became conscious that before the great wave of this advancing army, walking alone in solemn, solitary state, there moved three maidens. They led the myriads, as it seemed, and their white raiment shone like the snow where they went before, and heeded not the roaring host behind them.