1830.] 4 Night on Dartmoor. 49 



bordering upon indignation : I would now have given worlds to have 

 recalled their music. I would have prized even the howl of the wild 

 fox, as it would have convinced me that I was not wholly desolate. 



Another dreary hour elapsed, and still all was gloom. The night- 

 mist had now deepened to a fog a thick, clammy, substantial fog 

 beneath whose paralysing influence I felt my respiration impeded, my 

 limbs stiffening to stone. Still I did my best to uphold my courage. 

 In a few minutes, I said, with a forced attempt at a laugh, I shall become 

 ossified, I am evidently freezing upward, and by to-morrow's dawn shall 

 constitute an elegant petrifaction, worthy to be visited and admired by 

 the most fastidious tourist. But this effort to be cheerful served only 

 to increase my sufferings. The fiend of despair was beside me. I felt 

 him tugging at my heart-strings, icing my veins, and peopling the 

 chambers of my brain with the wildest and most fantastic shapes of 

 fear. 



One further attempt I yet resolved to make at my safety. Rising 

 accordingly, though with considerable labour, from my seat, I staggered 

 a few paces onwards, groping my road, as carefully as I could, through 

 the dark. But the effort was abortive. Each step I proceeded plunged 

 me still deeper in the morass. First my ankles, then my knees, were 

 engulphed, and God knows to what extent I should have ultimately 

 sunk, had I not with the little, the very little, strength that was left me, 

 contrived to blunder my way back towards the rock. Here I sat, 

 waiting hour after hour, the dispersing of the fog, and the rising of the 

 moon, but in vain ; the gloom continued unabated, the moon was lost irt 

 heaven, not a star, not even a single tiny star, glimmered in the jet-black 

 firmament. How drearily the time stole on ! I had no spirits to enliven, 

 no fancy to beguile my solitude ; both were sunk in torpor, while a. 

 Vague undefined apprehension of something horrible, just sufficed to keep 

 up a slight thrilling warmth about my heart, though without imparting 

 it to my extremities, which were now stone cold. In this truly dreadful 

 Condition, helpless, frozen, and self-abandoned; alone at the dead of 

 night, listening to the vulture's cry, as anticipating his carrion repast, he! 

 flapped his heavy wings above my head ; with little or no hope of being 

 able to keep life within me till the morning ; in this alarming condition, 

 exhausted alike with pain, vexation, weariness, and hunger, I at length 

 dropped into slumber. 



Yes, I slept, but how wild, how incongruous, how appalling, were the 

 visions of that sleep ! A distempered fancy kept watch over my thoughts, 

 which, deprived of the counteracting energies of health and reason, 

 drifted loose over a troubled sea of horror. Had my dreams merely been, 

 what they but too often are, grotesque, absurd, or farcical ; had I been a 

 bird, a fish, or a wild beast ; had I invited a flock of sheep to a musical 

 party, sat down to cards with a coach-horse, or taken a trip to the moon 

 with Mr. Sadler the aeronaut ; such extravagances would have left but 

 an evanescent impression on my mind ; but to realize, though only in 

 imagination, the most fearful horrors of Eastern romance ; to consort 

 with beings of another world ; to be buffeted by an ocean, and stifled by 

 a tornado ; to be drowned, starved, and parboiled ; to be sent to wan- 

 der among charnel-houses ; and, worst of all, to be compelled to survive 

 the loss of those I most sincerely loved ; the idea was inexpressibly 

 terrific ! 



First, I dreamed that I was pacing', alone, by sunset, over an Arar* 

 M. M. New Series.Voi.. IX. No. 49. H 



