'In the middle of 1817, the faculty, common amongst children, of painting as it were, upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms, became increasingly distressing to me: at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions moved along continually in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my mind were as sad and solemn as stories drawn from times before Œdipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And, concurrently with this, a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented, nightly, scenes of more than earthly splendour. And the four following facts may be mentioned as noticeable at this time: -

'1. That as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one point - that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace, by a voluntary act, upon the darkness, was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams; and at length I feared to exercise this faculty: for, as Midas turned all things into gold, that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, to have lived for seventy or a hundred years in one night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience.

'4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived. I could not be said to recollect them; for, if I had been told of them when waking, I should not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. But placed as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, I recognised them instantaneously. I was once told by a near relative of mine, that, having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death, but for the assistance which reached her at the last critical moment - she saw in a moment her whole life, clothed in its forgotten incidents, arrayed before her as in a mirror, not successively, but simultaneously; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. This, for some opium experience, I can believe; I have, indeed, seen the same thing inserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which probably is true - viz., that the dread book of account, which the Scriptures speak of, is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual. Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible; a thousand acci-dents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind. Accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil. But alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed whenever the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn.

'Having noticed these four facts, as memorably distinguishing my dreams from those of health, I shall now cite a few illustrative cases; and shall then cite such others as I remember, in any order that may give them most effect as pictures to the reader.

'I had been in youth, and ever since, for occasional amusement, a great reader of Livy, whom I confess that I prefer, both for style and matter, to any other of the Roman historians; and I had often felt, as solemn and appalling sounds, emphatically representative of Roman majesty, the two words, so often occurring in Livy, Consul Romanics; especially when the Consul is introduced in his military character. I mean to say that the words king, sultan, regent, or any other titles of those who embody in their own persons the collective majesty of a great people, had less power over my reverential feelings. I had also, though no great reader of history, made myself critically familiar with one period of English history - viz., the period of the Parliamentary War, having been attracted by the moral grandeur of some who figured in that day, and by the interesting memoirs which survive of those unquiet times. Both these parts of my lighter reading having furnished me often with matter for reflection, now furnished me with matter for my dreams. Often I used to see, after painting upon the blank darkness, a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival and dances. And I heard it said, or I said to myself, "These are English ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. These are the wives and daughters of those who met in peace, and sat at the same tables, and were allied by marriage or by blood; and yet, after a certain day in August, 1642, never smiled upon each other again, nor met but on the field of battle, and at Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, and washed away in blood the memory of ancient friendship." The ladies danced and looked as lovely as the Court of George IV. Yet even in my dream I knew that they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries. This pageant would suddenly dissolve; and, at a clapping of hands, would be heard the heart-shaking sound of Consul Romanus, and immediately came "sweeping by," in gorgeous palu-daments, Paulus or Marius, girt around by a company of centurions, with the crimson tunic* hoisted on a spear, followed by the alalagmos† of the Roman legions.

'Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's "Antiquities of Rome," Coleridge, then standing by, described to me a set of plates from that artist, called his " Dreams," and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of these (I describe only from memory of Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood mighty engines and machinery, wheels, cables, catapults, etc, expressive of enormous power put forth, or resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase; and upon this, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little farther, and you perceive them reaching an abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who should reach the extremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi, at least you suppose that his labours must now in some way terminate. . But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs, still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, by

* "The crimson tunic," the signal which announced a day of battle.

† "Alalagmos," a word expressing collectively the gathering of the Roman war cries, "Alala! alala!" this time standing on the very brink of the abyss Once again elevate your eye, and a still mora aerial flight of stairs is descried; and there, again, the delirious Piranesi, busy on his aspiring labours: and so on, until the unfinished stairs and the hopeless Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self-production did my architecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage of the malady, the splendours of my dreams were chiefly architectural; and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as never yet was beheld by the waking eye, unless in the clouda. From a great modern poet I cite the part of a passage which describes, as an appearance actually beheld, what in many of its circumstances I saw frequently in my deep:-

"The appearance, simultaneously disclosed, Was of a mighty city - boldly say A wilderness of building, sinking far And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth, Far sinking into splendour without end! Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold, With alabaster domes and silver spires, And blazing terrace upon terrace, high Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright, In avenues disposed; there towers begirt With battlements that on their restless fronts Bore stars - illumination of all gems! By earthly nature had the effect been wrought Upon the dark materials of the storm

Now pacified, on them, and on the coves, And mountain steeps and summits, whereunto The vapours had receded - taking there Their station under a cerulean sky."

'The sublime circumstance - that on their restless fronts bore stars - might have been copied from my own architectural dreams, so often did it occur. We hear it reported of Dryden, and in later times of Fuseli, that they ate raw meat for the sake of obtaining splendid dreams. How much better, for such a purpose, to have eaten opium, which yet I do not remember that any poet is recorded to have done, except the dramatist Shadwell; and in ancient days Homer is, I think rightly, reported to have known the virtues of opium as a - i.e. as an anodyne.

'To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes and silvery expanses of water; these haunted me so much, that I feared lest some dropsical state or tendency of the brain might thus be making itself (to use a metaphysical term) objective, and that the sentient organ might be projecting itself as its own object. For two months I suffered greatly in my head - a part of my bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of weakness (physically, I mean,) that I used to say of it as the last Lord Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, or any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by my own folly.

'The waters gradually changed their character, from translucent lakes, shining like mirrors, they became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous change - which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll, through many months, promised an abiding torment; and in fact, it never left me, though occurring more or less intermittently. Hitherto the human face had often mixed with my dreams, but not despotically, nor with any special power of tormenting. But now that affec-tion, which I have called the tyranny of the human face, began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life (the searching for Ann amongst fluctuating crowds) might be answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human face began to reveal itself, the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens; faces imploring, wrathful, despairing; faces that surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations; infinite was my agitation; my mind was tossed, as it seemed upon the billowy ocean, and weltered upon the weltering waves.

'May, 1818. - A certain Malay mendicant has been a fearful enemy for months. Every night, through his means, I have been transported into Asiatic scenery. I know not whether others share in my feelings on this point; but I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China, among Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to others. Southern Asia, in general, is the seat of awful images and associations. As the cradle of the human race, if on no other ground, it would have a dim, reverential feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere, can affect him in a way that he is affected by the ancient monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Hindostan. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things - of their institutions, histories, above all, of their mythologies, etc. - is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be awed by the sanctity of the Ganges, or by the very name of the Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that South-Eastern Asia is, and has been for thousands of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life, the great officina gentium. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires, also, into which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental names or images. In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, by the barrier of utter abhorrence placed between myself and them, by counter-sympathies deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner live with lunatics, with vermin, with crocodiles or snakes. All this, and much more than I can say, the reader must enter into, before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights, I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Hindostan. From kindred feelings I soon brought Egypt and her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Seeva lay in wait for me came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. Thousands of years I lived, and was buried in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles, and was laid, confounded with all unutterable abortions, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.

'Some slight abstraction I thus attempt of my Oriental dreams, which filled me always with such amazement at the monstrous scenery, that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarcera-tion brooded a killing sense of eternity and infinity. Into these dreams only it was, with one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terror. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles, especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as was always the case in my dreams) for centuries. Sometimes I escaped, and found myself in Chinese houses. All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc, soon became instinct with life; the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into ten thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. So often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that many times my dream was broken up in the very same way; I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke; it was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside, come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. No experience was so awful to me, and at the same time so pathetic, as this abrupt transition from the darkness of the infinite to the gaudy summer air of highest noon; and from the unutterable abortions of miscreated gigantic vermin to the sight of infancy, and innocent human natures.' - Confessions of an English Opium Eater.