he rose to his feet; and, unslinging his stony trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his stony lips—­sounding once, and yet once again; proclamation that, in thy ears, oh baby! must have spoken from the battlements of death.  Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and aboriginal silence.  The choir had ceased to sing.  The hoofs of our horses, the rattling of our harness, alarmed the graves no more.  By horror the bas-relief had been unlocked into life.  By horror we, that were so full of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery fore-legs rising in mid air to their everlasting gallop, were frozen to a bas-relief.  Then a third time the trumpet sounded; the seals were taken off all pulses; life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their channels again; again the choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from the muffling of storms and darkness; again the thunderings of our horses carried temptation into the graves.  One cry burst from our lips as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed it empty before us—­“Whither has the infant fled?—­is the young child caught up to God?” Lo! afar off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to the clouds:  and on a level with their summits, at height insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest alabaster.  On its eastern face was trembling a crimson glory.  Whence came that?  Was it from the reddening dawn that now streamed through the windows?  Was it from the crimson robes of the martyrs that were painted on the windows?  Was it from the bloody bas-reliefs of earth?  Whencesoever it were—­there, within that crimson radiance, suddenly appeared a female head, and then a female figure.  It was the child—­now grown up to woman’s height.  Clinging to the horns of the altar, there she stood—­sinking, rising, trembling, fainting—­raving, despairing; and behind the volume of incense that, night and day, streamed upwards from the altar, was seen the fiery font, and dimly was descried the outline of the dreadful being that should baptize her with the baptism of death.  But by her side was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with wings; that wept and pleaded for her; that prayed when she could not; that fought with heaven by tears for her deliverance; which also, as he raised his immortal countenance from his wings, I saw, by the glory in his eye, that he had won at last.

[Footnote 1:  Campo Santo.—­It is probable that most of my readers will be acquainted with the history of the Campo Santo at Pisa—­composed of earth brought from Jerusalem for a bed of sanctity, as the highest prize which the noble piety of crusaders could ask or imagine.  There is another Campo Santo at Naples, formed, however, (I presume,) on the example given by Pisa.  Possibly the idea may have been more extensively copied.  To readers who are unacquainted with England, or who (being English) are yet unacquainted with the cathedral cities of England, it may be right to mention that the graves within-side the cathedrals often form a flat pavement over which carriages and horses might roll; and perhaps a boyish remembrance of one particular cathedral, across which I had seen passengers walk and burdens carried, may have assisted my dream.]