And now, for a moment, I knew that I was dreaming; and oh, grievous disappointment, I half awoke to a consciousness that the vision was slipping away from me. How I clutched at it! how I hugged it, and refused to have a word to say to my senses! Did you never try this plan and succeed in it? If not, I would not give a fig for your dreams. But I caught up the thread of mine. Bravo! It was a narrow escape, though. They told me, next day, that there had been a false alarm of fire in the village, during the night. I would have been roasted alive, rather than not have dreamed out my dream. * * * * * Day-light, and early summer, and we were hovering over the icy land and icy sea, scarcely now distinguishable, one from other. Nor can I, indeed, describe much of what I saw; for methought, that we were driving hither and thither, not only in the dreary realm of the Frost-king, but up, and down, and athwart the ordinary current of times and seasons. So was there much confusion. Anon it was that awful Winter, whose cold will eat, like red-hot iron, into the unguarded flesh, or more fatal still, will palm off Death upon his victim under the alluring disguise of Slumber--Winter, with his terrible silence, more fearful than the roar of his fiercest hurricanes--Winter, with his blinding mantle of unbroken white, and his snowdrifts wherein cities might be engulphed--Winter, with his one redeeming beauty, one attendant goddess, one Aurora, the Borealis, whose coruscations were so marvellous to behold, so changeful, so grand, so brilliant, that I smiled in looking on them, to think that ever human skill had fabricated fire-works, and that their display could throw spectators into ecstacies. And anon it was the Arctic summer--and the blue waters peeped at intervals between giant pyramids of ice--pyramids, and pinnacles, and turrets, and all shapely and all shapeless masses. And these were floating in the sunlight--some majestically sailing through the ever opening spaces, coming never in contact with their fellows--others jarring, and crashing, and splintering into a thousand fragments, as the upheaving waves compelled them perilously to embrace each other; and their greeting was as the roar of thunder-storms. And uncouth walrusses were playing their clumsy antics on detached fragments of the ice, and the seal was basking in the sun, and the huge whale was spouting, and the seagull was skimming the surface of the loosened deep, dipping therein the tips of his wings, as though to assure himself that it was indeed liquid. Landward, too--for there was land, also, beneath us--I seemed to see the scanty blades of a dwarfish vegetation thrusting themselves pertinaciously through the snow; and anon the garb of the earth seemed changing from one universal white, to varied hues of brown and green.