You may say what you please, but it does the mind good to think of nothing at times; to let the impressions of passing events glide through the soul, and titillate the imagination, but to "leave no trace behind." Oh yes! this fairy dancing on the sands of life's dull shore, is very pleasant occupation for a summer morn, and eke a summer eve. It is poetical, to say the least of it; and day-dreams may sometimes prove not less agreeable than those mysterious scenes of night, when the soul quits her corporeal shackles, and roams in pure fancy through the world of thought, seeing sights of beauty, and scenes of paradisaical splendour, which the dull organs of bodily vision can never attain unto. Why! the happiest portion of my life is that which I have passed in the land of dreams: one third of my existence has been spent there--and I have friends, and well-known faces, and peaceful valleys, and bright streams, and strains of ethereal music, which are still and ever vivid in my waking mind, but at night call me to themselves, and wrap me in a state of enjoyment which certainly this poor weak body of mind never could be capable of experiencing. I have positively new, altogether new and unheard-of ideas--I do not mean irrational ones, nor those phantasmagoric combinations that haunt the diseased brains of some wretched mortals--but reasonable, possible, natural ideas of form and substance, which I am persuaded have their types in some corner or other of the universe, and which it may perhaps be hereafter my too happy destiny to witness, and to dwell amongst for ever and for aye. I would not exchange my dreams for all the realities of----
"_Monsieur! veut-il déjeuner au salon?_" said the slip-shod _garçon_ of the hotel, tapping me on the shoulder. "The company have all taken their seats, and I have kept a chair for Monsieur. Does Monsieur prefer Burgundy or claret? The _vin ordinaire_ is not sufferable: _au reste_, here is the _carte_, and Monsieur has only to choose."
"'Tis a reality, my friend, that I was not then exactly thinking of--but breakfast I must, and will. But just tell me, for a minute, where these people come from, that I see down in the Place there, at that corner--the old gentleman in nankeen, with the green shade over his eyes, and the fat little dame by his side; and those young ladies at the door of the large hotel opposite, and the spruce _militaire_ there at the window, and that knot of men in long brown surtouts, one of whom is gesticulating so vehemently."