II] USK : MY EARLIEST MEMORIES 27 



wooden one. We also visited the ruined castle, ascended 

 the winding stair, and walked round the top wall, and every- 

 thing seemed to me exactly as I knew it of old, and neither 

 smaller nor larger than my memory had so long pictured 

 it. The view of the Abergavenny mountains pleased and 

 interested me as in childhood, and the clear-flowing Usk 

 seemed just as broad and as pleasant to the eye as my 

 memory had always pictured it. 



There is one other fact connected with my mental nature 

 which may be worth noticing here. This is an often-repeated 

 dream, which occurred at this period of my life, and, so far 

 as I can recall, then only. I seemed first to hear a distant 

 beating or flapping sound, as of some creature with huge wings ; 

 the sound came nearer and nearer, till at last a deep thud was 

 heard and the flapping ceased. I then seemed to feel that 

 the creature was clinging with its wings outspread against the 

 wall of the house just outside my window, and I waited in a 

 kind of fearful expectation that it would come inside. I 

 usually awoke then, and all being still, went to sleep again. 



I think I can trace the origin of this dream. At a very 

 early period of these recollections I was shown on the outside 

 of a house, at or near Usk, a hatchment or funeral escutcheon 

 — the coat-of-arms on a black lozenge-shaped ground often 

 put up on the house of a deceased person of rank or of 

 ancient lineage. At the time I only saw an unmeaning 

 jumble of strange dragon-like forms surrounded with black, 

 and I was told that it was there because somebody was dead ; 

 and when this curious dream came I at once associated it 

 with the hatchment, and directly I heard the distant flapping 

 of wings, I used to say to myself (in my dream), "The hatch- 

 ment is coming ; I hope it will not get in." So far as I can 

 remember, this was the only dream — at all events, the only 

 vivid and impressive one — I had while living at Usk, and it 

 came so often, and so exactly in the same form, as to become 

 quite familiar to me. It was, in fact, the form my childish 

 nightmare took at that period, and though I was always 

 afraid of it, it was not nearly so distressing as many of the 

 nightmares I have had since. 



