Then suddenly would come a dream of far different character--a tumultuous dream--commencing with a music such as now I often heard in sleep, music of preparation and of awakening suspense. The undulations of fast gathering tumults were like the opening of the Coronation Anthem; and like that, gave the feeling of a multitudinous movement, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day--a day of crisis and of ultimate hope for human nature, then suffering mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, but I knew not where,--somehow, but I knew not how,--by some beings, but I knew not by whom,--a battle, a strife, an agony, was traveling through all its stages,--was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty drama; with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in dreams, where of necessity we make ourselves central to every movement) had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then like a chorus the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro; trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me; and but a moment allowed--and clasped hands, with heart-breaking partings, and then--everlasting farewells! and with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated--everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated--everlasting farewells! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, "I will sleep no more!" THE DEAD SISTER From 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'