SPECULATIVE FANCIES. 157 



live, even on the condition of torpid intervals, for ten or 

 twelve ages, having in each a few years of active life. 



What changes in the face of nature, art, science, manners, 

 tastes, and fashions would such persons behold ; and how, in 

 all these matters, would each succeeding period enlarge upon 

 the tale of wonder told by its predecessor ! 



Only imagine a courtier, a lord in waiting on King George 

 the Third or his consort Charlotte, awakened from a nap of 

 only fifty years, to fill the like office in the court of our 

 Sovereign Lady. Yerily, upon opening his eyes on the strange 

 things around, they would be stretched beyond power of re- 

 closing. Suppose him called on to attend the Queen in one 

 of her frequent " progresses " well might such a sleeper 

 awakened rub those distended eyes, and doubt his wakefulness, 

 on beholding his royal mistress step into what appears to his 

 bewildered sight some palace of enchantment, wherein she, 

 and he, her astonished satellite, are forthwith whirled along ; 

 by what? surely, he believes, by some obedient slave, 

 invisible, of lamp or ring ; for how can he have dreamt, in his 

 dreamless slumber,, of the slave of the kettle that giant 

 genius, Steam, which had arisen, while he slept, at the bidding 

 of the magician, Science, to make a button, to compound a 

 pill, and to transport a sovereign? 



Or suppose an individual of the present day, thrown by 

 mesmeric or ethereal influence into a deep, dead, bond fide 

 slumber, for the remaining half of this nineteenth century, who 



