Page:Nightmare Abbey (1818).djvu/26

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
NIGHTMARE ABBEY.
15

but what is not. He dreamed with his eyes open, and saw ghosts dancing round him at noontide. He had been in his youth an enthusiast for liberty, and had hailed the dawn of the French Revolution as the promise of a day that was to banish war and slavery, and every form of vice and misery, from the face of the earth. Because all this was not done, he deduced that nothing was done; and from this deduction, according to his system of logic, he drew a conclusion that worse than nothing was done; that the overthrow of the feudal fortresses of tyranny and superstition was the greatest calamity that had ever befallen mankind; and that their only hope now was to rake the rubbish together, and rebuild it without any of those loop-holes by which the light had originally crept in. To qualify himself for a coadjutor in this laudable task, he