My Dear Friend--I have all my life been strangely susceptible of pleasing impressions from public spectacles where great crowds are assembled.This, perhaps, you will say, is but another way of confessing, that, like the common vulgar, I am fond of sights and shows.It may be so, but it is not from the pageants that I derive my enjoyment.A multitude, in fact, is to me as it were a strain of music, which, with an irresistible and magical influence, calls up from the unknown abyss of the feelings new combinations of fancy, which, though vague and obscure, as those nebulae of light that astronomers have supposed to be the rudiments of unformed stars, afterwards become distinct and brilliant acquisitions.In a crowd, I am like the somnambulist in the highest degree of the luminous crisis, when it is said a new world is unfolded to his contemplation, wherein all things have an intimate affinity with the state of man, and yet bear no resemblance to the objects that address themselves to his corporeal faculties.This delightful experience, as it may be called, I have enjoyed this evening, to an exquisite degree, at the funeral of theking; but, although the whole succession of incidents is indelibly imprinted on my recollection, I am still so much affected by the emotion excited, as to be incapable of conveying to you any intelligible description of what I saw.It was indeed a scene witnessed through the medium of the feelings, and the effect partakes of the nature of a dream.
I was within the walls of an ancient castle,"So old as if they had for ever stood, So strong as if they would for ever stand,"and it was almost midnight.The towers, like the vast spectres of departed ages, raised their embattled heads to the skies, monumental witnesses of the strength and antiquity of a great monarchy.A prodigious multitude filled the courts of that venerable edifice, surrounding on all sides a dark embossed structure, the sarcophagus, as it seemed to me at the moment, of the heroism of chivalry.
