4()6 The Musing Musician. [OcT. 



had been for ages past performing a minuet with the sun, and appeared 

 at that moment to be waltzing away with the moon ! 



My fingers and my faculties began to rebel. I continued to play, how- 

 ever, though I could perceive the incipient symptoms of daylight just 

 breaking through the window-curtains. I wished a vast number of 

 things the principal and most preposterous of which was, that they 

 would give over. I wished that handsome women were prohibited 

 by Act of Parliament, or that boarding-school beauties, in their eigh- 

 teenth year, were human beings as in that case some small degree of 

 pity might be expected from them. The lamps and candles were burn- 

 ing low I fancied they began to burn blue ! How I wished that, by 

 some necromantic misfortune, there might be no more oil or long-fours 

 in the house ! I ardently longed for the appearance of an apparition or 

 a housebreaker. Jack Sheppard and the Hammersmith ghost came 

 alternately into my mind, and I wished that we had all been born in an 

 earlier era. Hope would not then have been so utterly hopeless. It 

 seemed just possible that the kitchen-chimney might catch fire; what 

 a relief would that have been to the fever under which I was suffering ! 

 I prayed fervently that the mistress of the house might find the fatigue 

 too much for her ; a fainting fit would have administered much con- 

 solation to me particularly if there were no sal volatile to be had. I 

 wished most especially that her husband would get cross and sleepy. 

 And then my imagination would settle again upon those lovely but pro- 

 voking pests those laughing, persevering plagues, who were the real 

 movers of my misery, and whom I heard every instant proposing some 

 new mode of torturing me and prolonging the time. It was clear that, 

 having the persons, they considered themselves entitled to the privileges 

 of angels, and had consequently mistaken time for eternity. I hoped 

 that their brothers and uncles might be desperately alarmed at their 

 stay ; or that Queen Mab might pay a visit to their grandmothers, 

 frightening them with dreams of elopements, and handsome clerks with 

 eighty pounds per annum. 



At last, worn out with incessant exertion, and overpowered with sleep 

 down to my fingers'-ends that continued to touch the keys, though 

 my ears were utterly unconscious of the sounds they produced I fell 

 into a kind of conscious stupor, a waking vision, a delusion of the 

 senses. A film grew over my mind, and obscured its perceptions. My 

 imagination seemed to have been let on a building lease, and fabrics of 

 a most fantastic architecture were every where springing up on its sur- 

 face. I could not help fancying that I had been playing there for many 

 years without once leaving off, and that the company had continued dancing 

 for the same length of time. I endeavoured in vain to recollect at what 

 period I had commenced my performance, but I could not divest 

 my mind of a belief that half a century had elapsed since I began. 

 Glancing at a mirror opposite, to me, I perceived that I looked alarm- 

 ingly old that my whiskers were quite grey, and of more than military 

 dimensions. I observed also that my coat was fearfully unfashionable 

 in its cut, and as shabby as a member of parliament's that has been twice 

 turned. My hat, I conjectured, must be the only part of my apparel 

 that was not worn out. The portion of my dress nearest to the 

 seat, had suffered severely. The very horse-hair was peeping out of the 

 cushion. The dress and appearance of all around me had likewise under- 



