"Almost a quarter of a century ago, I contracted that terrible form of typhus fever known by the name of jail fever,--I may say, not from any imprudence of my own, but whilst engaged in putting in execution a plan for ventilating one of the great prisons of the metropolis.[118] My illness was severe and dangerous; as long as the fever continued, my dreams and deliriums were most painful and oppressive; but when weakness consequent to exhaustion came on, and when the probability of death seemed to my physicians greater than that of life, there was an entire change in all my ideal combinations. I remained in an apparently senseless or lethargic state, but, in fact, my mind was peculiarly active; there was always before me the form of a beautiful woman, with whom I was engaged in the most interesting and intellectual conversation." [118] See page 287, vol. i. for an account of this event. _Ambrosio_ and _Onuphrio_ very naturally suggest that this could have been no other than the image of some favourite maiden which had haunted his imagination; but _Philalethes_ rejects with indignation such an explanation of the vision. "I will not," he exclaims, "allow you to treat me with ridicule on this point, till you have heard the second part of my tale. Ten years after I had recovered from the fever, and when I had almost lost the recollection of the vision, it was recalled to my memory by a very blooming and graceful maiden fourteen or fifteen years old, that I accidentally met during my travels in Illyria; but I cannot say that the impression made upon my mind by this female was very strong. Now comes the extraordinary part of the narrative: ten years after,--twenty years after my first illness, at a time when I was exceedingly weak from a severe and dangerous malady, which for many years threatened my life, and when my mind was almost in a desponding state, being in a course of travels ordered by my medical advisers, I again met the person who was the representative of my visionary female; and to her kindness and care, I believe, I owe what remains to me of existence. My despondency gradually disappeared, and though my health still continued weak, life began to possess charms for me which I had thought were for ever gone; and I could not help identifying the living angel with the vision which appeared as my guardian genius during the illness of my youth." The reader will probably agree with _Onuphrio_, in seeing in this history nothing beyond the influence of an imagination excited by disease. The discourse now turns upon that part of the vision in the Colosæum in which was exhibited the early state of man, after his first creation, and which _Ambrosio_ considers as not only incompatible with revelation, but likewise with reason and every thing that we know respecting the history or traditions of the early nations of antiquity.