But for dreams, that lay Mosaic worlds tessellated with flowers and jewels before the blind sleeper, and surround the recumbent living with the figures of the dead in the upright attitude of life, the time would be too long before we are allowed to rejoin our brothers, parents, friends: every year we should become more and more painfully sensible of the desolation made around us by death, if sleep--the ante-chamber of the grave--were not hung by dreams with the busts of those who live in the other world.