They went a-roaming over dark plains, lit up with phantom lights; by silver streams, where eerie songs and mysterious calls and gurgling ripples resounded; through vast woods, full of glamour—of knights, of giants, of castles haunted by spectres, of dragons breathing flames. They stood horror-struck at those crossways where vampires screech with laughter; where they that have hanged themselves utter the sobs of the lost; and where the souls of unchristened children flit and hover on bats’ wings. They wandered through dim burying-places, following the shades of such as do penance for self-murder; they listened to uncanny voices in ruins of castles and churches; saw fearful visions of terror pass by in endless procession; were present at battles fought; and looked beneath the waters, where the swallows sleep together in long festoons, to be waked each springtime at the Blessed Virgin’s call, who gives them to the world again! Heaven and hell they passed through—through the dark shadows of the wrath of God, and through the radiance of His tender mercy; through ineffable regions and times of raptures, marvels, miracles; through worlds never seen but in hours of ecstasy, or in dreams—when man looks and gazes, is dizzy and spellbound, and knows not whether he is still in this world or in the next! It was then that, like an ocean before them, there arose an impassable barrier—a barrier of enchantments and bright wonders—between them and the real world, making it fade away, with the cabin, and the thick black night—this world of troubles, miseries, wrongs, tears, unfulfilled desires—and opening their eyes to that other world, far more majestic and beautiful than tongue can tell! They had entered the world of the Fabulous; the life of the Fabulous surrounded them with its rainbow tints; the fables of Dreamland had become realities for them. They were dying with a rapture in which they yet found a new life—the great new life, abounding and sacred, merged and plunged in the Miraculous: wherein all trees speak, all stones are animated, all woods enchanted, and every sod of ground instinct with unknown force: wherein all things great and invisible and superhuman live their life—the sublime life of the Inconceivable. With uttermost longing and a yearning of ecstasy did they aspire towards that life, uniting all things with its infrangible chain—fancy and reality, prodigy and wishes—in a bewildering procession of dream-existences, for which, under the miserable conditions of their earthly days, their weary crippled souls were insatiably pining. And indeed, what was that life of theirs, so dull, so squalid? what was that daily round of deeds, so like the glances of a sick man, veiled in the mists of suffering?—Mere darkness—a sad tedious night, during which, except at the hour of death, no such marvels were ever to be seen with the bodily eyes.