Mosses from an Old Manse, and other stories

xchange. Its interior is a spacious hall, with a pavement of white marble. Overhead is a lofty dome, supported by long rows of pillars of fantastic a

ting its marble floor with beautiful or grotesque designs; so that its inmates breathe, as it were, a visionary atmosphere, and tread upon the fantasies of poetic minds. These peculiarities, combining a wilder mixture of styles than even an American architect usually recognizes as allowable - Grecian, Gothic, Oriental, and nondescript -

their lives; if not in their waking moments, then by the universal passport of a dream. At my last visit I wandered thither una

cried I, with but a dim

osition which the Bourse, the Rialto, and the Exchange do in the commercial world. All who have affairs in that mys

ble hall,"

the inhabitants of earth may hold converse with those of the moon; and beneath our feet are gloomy cells, which communic

of AEsop; the dark presence of Dante; the wild Ariosto; Rabelais's smile of deep-wrought mirth, the profound, pathetic humor of Cervantes; the all-glorious Shakespeare; Spenser, meet guest for an allegoric structure; the severe divinity of Milton; and Bunyan, moul

ius," remarked my companion, "each century has erec

suppose, Oblivion comes with her huge broom and sweeps them all from the m

enborg," said he. "Were ever two men o

nge vivacity is imparted to the scene by the magic dance of this fountain, with its endless transformations, in which the imaginative beholder may discern what form he will. The water is supposed by some to flow from the same source as

this water?" I inq

ake it their constant beverage - or, at least, have the credit of doi

at these water-d

, inward eyes; yet it required but a trifle to summon up mirth, peeping out from the very midst of grave and lofty musings. Some strode about, or leaned against the pillars of the hall, alone and in silence; their faces wore a rapt expression, as if sweet music were in the air around them, or as if their inmost souls were ab

attraction towards these men, as if the sympathy of feeling, if not of genius, had united me to their order - my friend mentioned several of their names.

l, "we have done with this techy, wayward, shy, proud unreasonable set of laurel-ga

far as my experience goes, men of genius are fairly gifted with the social qualities; and in this age there appears to be a fellow-feeling among them which had not heretofore been develope

pretty much as we honest citizens are in the Hall of Fantasy. We gaze at him as if

a class of men whom we may daily meet on 'Change. Yet what poe

seemed the record of some actual experience in life. Their eyes had the shrewd, calculating glance which detects so quickly and so surely all that it concerns a man of business to know about the characters and purpo

built, as if by magic, in the heart of pathless forests; and of streets to be laid out where now the sea was tossing; and of mighty rivers to be stayed in their courses in order to turn the machinery of a cotton-mill. It was only by an effort, and s

erous to listen to such dreamers as

d mortar, and its purple atmosphere for unsophisticated sunshine. But the poet knows

rther, "we see another order of dreamers, peculiarly

n morals as well as physics; for instance, here was the model of a railroad through the air and a tunnel under the sea. Here was a machine - stolen, I believe - for the distillation of heat from moonshine; and another for the condensation of morning mist into square blo

"for most of our sunshine com

will secure a constant supply for domestic use;

ent dye to ladies' dresses, in the gorgeous clouds of sunset. There were at least fifty kinds of perpetual motion, one of which was applicable to the wits of newspaper editors and writers of every description. Profes

ew there are who do not occasionally gain admittance on such a score, either in abstracted musings, or momentary thoughts, or bright anticipations, or vivid remembrances; for even the actual becomes ideal, whether in hope or memory, and beguiles the dreamer into the Hall of Fantasy. Some unfortunates ma

support him even to the threshold of his chamber. The exile passes through the Hall of Fantasy to revisit his native soil. The burden of years rolls down from the old man's shoulders the moment that the door uncloses. Mourners leave their heavy sorrows at the entrance, and here rejoin the lost ones whose faces would else be seen no more, until thought shall have become the only fact. It may be s

, "who might set up a strong claim to be recko

n this hall until the lingering generations of his fellow-men come up with him. He can find no othe

all," rejoined I. "The white sunshine of actual life is necessary in order to test them. I a

aid my friend. "You are at least a democrat; and methinks no scan

ver landmarks of fact may be set up along the stream, there is a law of nature that impels it thither. And let it be so; for here the wise head and capacious heart may do their work; and what is good and true becomes gradually hardened into fact, while error melts away and

ment. Many of then had got possession of some crystal fragment of truth, the brightness of which so dazzled them that they could see nothing else in the wide universe. Here were men whose faith had embodied itself in the form of a potato; and others w

till the wiser spirit would recognize the struggle of the race after a better and purer life than had yet been realized on earth. My faith revived even while I rejected all their schemes. It could not be that the world should continue forever what it has been; a soil where Happiness is so rare a flower and Virtue so often a blighted fruit; a battle-field where the good principle, with its shield flung above its head, can hardly save itself amid the rush of adverse influences. In the enthusias

y, "let us hasten hence, or I shall be tempted to make

"Here is one theory that swallow

ound an elderly man of plain, honest, trustworthy aspect. With an earnestness that betokened the si

Miller himself

earthly perfection of mankind, and are forming schemes which imply that the immortal spirit will be connected with a physical nature for innumerable ages of futurit

l some great moral shall have been evolved. A riddle is propounded. Where is the solution? The sphinx did not slay herself until her riddle had been guessed. Will it not be so with the world?

catastrophe; or not impossibly, the whole drama, in which we are involuntary actors, may have been performed for the instruction of another set of spectators. I cannot perceive that our own comprehension of it is at

has faults enough, in all conscience,

riend. "The happiest of us has bee

tantly that we submit to be transplanted, even for a higher cultivation in heaven. I query whether the destruction of the earth w

his song. The reformers, one and all, demanded a few thousand years to test their theories, after which the universe might go to wreck. A mechanician, who was busied with an improvement of the steam-engine, asked merely time to perfect his model. A miser insisted that the world's destruction would be a personal wrong to himself, unless he should first be permitted to add a specified sum to his enormous heap of gold. A little boy m

and personal ends, I really desired our old mot

ood cheer; the magnificence of mountains, and seas, and cataracts, and the softer charm of rural scenery; even the fast-falling snow and the gray atmosphere through which it descends - all these and innumerable other enjoyable things of earth must perish with her. Then the country frolics; the homely humor; the broad, open-mouthed roar of laughter, in which body and soul conjoin so hea

earth, imbued with a scent of fresh

on my own account," continued I, "but I hate to think that th

which, though we call them shadowy and visionary, are scarcely more so than those that surround us in actual life. Doubt not then that man's disembodied spirit may recreate time and the world fo

t, round, solid self to endure interminably, and still to be peopled with the kindly race of man, whom I uphold to be much better than he thinks himself. Nevertheless, I conf

looking at his watch. "But come; it is the dinn

lptured pillars and at the transformations of the gleaming fountain, and almost desired that the whole of life might be spent in that visionary scene where the actual world, with its hard angles, should never rub against me, and only be viewed through the medium of pictured windows. But for those who waste all their days in the Hall