Dreams of the Old World. HITE yet undisciplined by philosophy, and untaught by a wide observation, that is to us the most absolute reality with which our senses are immediately conversant. Such is the condition of childhood and of rustic ignorance. But even after the child has become a man, and the rustic has ceased to be a rustic through information gained from books, early impressions and prejudices leave their traces behind, affecting our sentiments and feelings when they no longer control our judgments. Hence, in our ordinary and daily life, the world in which we immediately live is to us the most real world. It may be some rural district, or some village or city in which we have hitherto lived, and here the objects and persons that have been familiar to us from our birth, make up for us the substantial forms of being. The |