USK: MY EARLIEST MEMORIES 27 



gavenny mountains pleased and interested me as in child- 

 hood, 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 in- 

 side. 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 hatchment 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 night- 

 mare 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. 



I may here add another illustration of how vividly these 

 scenes of my childhood remain in my memory. My father 

 was very fond of Cowper's poems, and often used to read 

 them aloud to us children. Two of these especially impressed 



