Before this speech was finished, Mr Primrose was fast asleep; but short is the sleep in a coach that travels by night. The coach stopped and woke our foreigner from a frightful dream. We do not wish to terrify our readers, but we must relate the dream in consequence of its singularity. He dreamed then, that he was in the island of Laputa, and that having provoked the indignation of some of the learned professors by expressing a doubt as to the practicability of some of their schemes, he was sentenced to be buried alive under a pyramid of encyclopedias. Just as the cruel people were putting the sentence into execution, he woke and found his coat-collar almost in his mouth, and heard the word ‘ology’ from the lips of his fellow traveller. He was very glad to find that matters were no worse. CHAPTER XV. Few indeed are the adventures now to be met with in travelling by a stage coach, and few also, comparatively speaking, the accidents. But our travellers were destined to meet both with accident and adventure. The coach, as our observant readers have noticed, must necessarily have travelled all night. The nights in December are long and dark; and not unfrequently, during the long cold silence of a December night, there gently falls upon the dank surface of the earth a protecting and embellishing fleece of flaky snow. And the morning snow as yet untrodden has a brilliant and even cheerful look beneath a blue and brightly frosty sky; and when a wide expanse of country variegated with venerably-aged trees, and new enclosures and old open meadow lands, and adorned with here and there a mansion surrounded with its appurtenances of larch, pine, and poplar, and divided into unequal but gracefully undulating sections by means of a quiet stream--when a scene like this bursts upon the morning eye of a winter traveller, and shows itself set off and adorned with a mantle of virgin snow, it is indeed a sight well worth looking at. Mr Primrose had not seen snow for sixteen years, and the very sight of it warmed his heart; for it was so much like home. It was one of those natural peculiarities which distinguished the land of his birth from the land of his exile. He expressed to his fellow traveller the delight which he felt at the sight. Mr Kipperson coincided with him that the view was fine, and proposed that, as they were both well clad, and as the scenery was very magnificent, they should by way of a little variety seat themselves on the outside of the coach. The proposal was readily embraced, and they mounted the roof.