St. Mark’s Eve,’ to which reference is also made, was written several years subsequently, and as may be gathered from its tone, under circumstances of peculiar loneliness.  It was while a solitary occupant of his lodgings, a stranger in a foreign city, that he felt the inspiration of precious memories, and improved his lonely hours by this exquisite production.  ‘I am alone,’ he writes, ’in my chamber; but these themes have taken such hold upon me that I can not sleep.  The room in which I sit is just fitted to foster such a state of mind.  The walls are hung with tapestry, the figures of which are faded and look like unsubstantial shapes melting away from sight....  The murmur of voices and the peal of remote laughter no longer reach the ear.  The clock from the church, in which so many of the former inhabitants of this house lie buried, has chimed the awful hour of midnight.’  It was a fitting time to yield to the power of that undying affection which abode with him under all changes, and the serene presence of one snatched from him years ago must at such times have invested him as with a spell.  Thus he writes: 

’Even the doctrines of departed spirits returning to visit the scenes and beings which were dear to them during the body’s existence, though it has been debased by the absurd superstitions of the vulgar, in itself is awfully solemn and sublime....  Raise it above the frivolous purposes to which it has been applied; strip it of the gloom and horror with which it has been surrounded; and there is none of the whole circle of visionary creeds that could more delightfully elevate the imagination or more tenderly affect the heart....  What could be more consoling than the idea that the souls of those we once loved were permitted to return and watch over our welfare?—­that affectionate and guardian spirits sat by our pillows while we slept, keeping a vigil over our most helpless hours?—­that beauty and innocence which had languished in the tomb yet smiled unseen around us, revealing themselves in those blest dreams wherein they live over again the hours of past endearments?....  There are departed beings that I have loved as I never shall love again in this world—­that have loved me as I never again shall be loved.  If such beings do ever retain in their blessed spheres the attachments they felt on earth; if they take an interest in the poor concerns of transient mortality, and are permitted to hold communion with those they have loved on earth, I feel as if now, at this deep hour of night, in this silence and solitude, I could receive their visitation with the most solemn but unalloyed delight.’

The use of the plural in the above extract obviated that publicity of his especial bereavement which would have arisen from a reference to one, and it is to be explained by the deaths of three persons to whom he sustained the most endearing though varied relations of which man is capable:  his mother,