My favorite way of getting out of bed is to wake up, bid good morning to the newly created day, quietly turn over and go to sleep again without disturbing any one, and sleep the sleep of the just. In that second nap, I visit my Spanish castles. Their architecture is more elaborate and ethereal than ever Wren dreamed of, and they float always in an amber haze just over the Pyrenees. I have leased them all to a goodly company of ladies and gentlemen, and they are the best of pay. Among them are the fair Rosamund; poor Beatrice Cenci; that other Beatrice, who has come down from her shining beatitudes and occupies one of the best of them with Dante; the yellow-haired Gretchen and Faust; the rare and radiant Countess Irma; Spenser's Fairy Queen and Titania; Aspasia, still reclining on beds of roses; Dame Durden, whose house is no longer bleak; Cinderella, with her tiny slipper; Joan of Domremy, still talking with the angels; Undine, bathing in eternal streams; Colonel Newcome, and that prince of good fellows, George Warrington; Wilkins Micawber and Samuel Weller, who are living together--(Uriah Heep and Mr. Chadband made application for one castle, but their references were not good)--Wilhelm Meister and Nathan the Wise; the Lady of Shallott and Hiawatha, who have become firm friends; the fair Florinda and the Princess Scherezade, who amuse each other with rare stories; Sinbad and Aladdin and Rasselas; and Donatello, who never can agree with Werter. When I arrive, they hang out the banners, and such music as Malibran and Sontag sing, which Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert have been writing for them, you don't hear in our concert halls. All the charming women and good fellows, of all times, come in to breakfast and we drink ambrosial wines, sweeter than the honey of Hymettus, and breakfast on fruits which have mellowed in the hanging gardens. There is no such lotus, by the bye, on the Nile banks as grows in those gardens. Time would fail me to narrate the sonnets that Dante is writing; the good jokes that George Warrington and Sam Weller have with each other over Wilkins, who is still waiting for something to turn up; the philosophical speculations of Rasselas, and the Munchausenisms of Sinbad; to tell you of a magnificent Spanish symphony that Beethoven has just finished, and the delight with which he listens to a new Ave Maria by Schubert, for the grand old master's hearing has been restored; the songs of Irma, as she looks down upon the mountains of her transfiguration; and the great joy of Faust and Gretchen, who have deciphered the vital problem they could not solve in the baneful shadow of Mephisto. The most beautiful castle is reserved for the friend who died years ago and passed away from me, but who is now like the living, because he greets me every morning in my castle with the warm grip of the hand and the cheery voice and the pleasant face of old times. He has not grown old since then, and I.... February 15, 1868.