The actual, with all its pains and pleasures, is for the time annihilated.

The pressure of thought and the fever of emotion are both removed, and the over-taxed spirit is at rest.

Into his most loving guardianship the great Creator of man, who gave him reason and volition, and the freedom to guide himself, takes his creature, and, while the image of death is upon him, gathers about him the Everlasting Arms.

He suspends, for a time, the diseased voluntary life, that he may, through the involuntary, restore a degree of health, and put the creature he has formed for happiness in a new condition of mental and moral freedom.
Blessed sleep! Who has not felt and acknowledged thy sweet influences?
Who has not wondered at thy power in the tranquil waking, after a night that closed around the spirit in what seemed the darkness of coming despair?
Markland slept; and in his sleep, guided by angels, there came to him the spirits of his wife and children, clothed in the beauty of innocence.

How lovingly they gathered around him! how sweet were their words in his ears! how exquisite the thrill awakened by each tender kiss! Now he was with them in their luxurious home; and now they were wandering, in charmed intercourse, amid its beautiful surroundings.