I ced upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing of a dream the ht, that you shall hear of. I had been reading the "Loves of the Angels," ao bed with my head full of speculations, suggested by that extraordinary legend. It had given birth to innumerable jectures, and, I remember, the last waking thought, which I gave expression to on my pillow, was a sort of wonder, "what could e of it."
I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could scarcely make out -- but to some celestial region. It was not the real heaveher -- not the dht Bible heaven -- but a kind of fairyland heaven, about which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, without presumption.
Methought -- what wild things dreams are! -- I resent -- at what would you imagine? -- at an angels gossiping.
Whe came, or how it came, or who bid it e, or whether it came purely of its own head, her you nor I know -- but there lay, sure enough, ed in its little cloudy swaddling bands -- a Child-Angel.
Sun-threads -- filmy beams -- ran through the celestial napery of what seemed its princely cradle. All the winged orders hovered round, watg when the new-born should open its yet closed eyes, which, when it did, first one, and theher -- with a solicitude and apprehensio not such as, stained with fear, dims the expanding eye-lids of mortal infants, but as if to explore its path in those its uary palaces -- what ainguishable titter that time spared not celestial visages! Nor wahere to my seeming -- O the inexplicable simpleness of dreams ! -- bowls of that cheeriar,
-- which mortals caudle call below --
Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants, -- stri in years, as it might seem, -- so dexterous were those heavenly attendants to terfeit kindly similitudes of earth, to greet, with terrestrial child-rites the young present, which earth had made to heaven.
Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full symphony as those by which the spheres are tutored, but, as loudest instruments oh speak oftentimes, muffled, so to aodate their sound the better to the weak ears of the imperfect-born. And, with the noise of those subdued soundings, the A sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments of pinions -- but forthwith flagged and was recovered into the arms of those full-winged angels. And a wo was to see how, as years went round in heaven -- a year in dreams is as a day -- tinually its white shoulders put forth buds of wings, but, wanting the perfegeliutriment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, and fell fluttering -- still caught by angel hands -- for ever to put forth shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its birth was not of the unmixed vigour of heaven.
And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was to be called Ge-Urania, because its produ was of earth and heaven.
And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adoption into immortal palaces: but it was to know weakness, and reliance, and the shadow of human imbecility, and it went with a lame gait, but in its goings it exceeded all mortal children in grad swiftness. Then pity first sprang up in angelis, and yearnings (like the human) touched them at the sight of the immortal lame one.
And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences, with pain and strife to their natures (not grief), put back their bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal minds, schooling them to degrees and slower processes, so to adapt their lessons to the gradual ill