I am ten times crowned Lord and Emperor; I
sit a hundred times enthroned in confirmed, obese old Majesty. Challenge
me who will--challenge me who dare! Among those myriad worlds upon which
I nightly pore, I may have my Peers and Compeers and Fellow-denizens ...
but _here_ I am Sole; Earth acknowledges my ancient sway and hereditary
sceptre: for though she draws me, not yet, not yet, am I hers, but she
is mine. It seems to me not less than a million million aeons since
other beings, more or less resembling me, walked impudently in the open
sunlight on this planet, which is rightly mine--I can indeed no longer
picture to myself, nor even credit, that such a state of things--so
fantastic, so far-fetched, so infinitely droll--could have existed:
though, at bottom, I suppose, I know that it must have been really so.
Up to ten years ago, in fact, I used frequently to dream that there were
others. I would see them walk in the streets like ghosts, and be
troubled, and start awake: but never now could such a thing, I think,
occur to me in sleep: for the wildness of the circumstance would
certainly strike my consciousness, and immediately I should know that
the dream was a dream.
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