the beings of the invisible world are supposed to visit us, they are
immediately connected in the mind with the unknown Infinite; whether
the faith be in the heart or in the imagination; whether they bubble
up from the earth, like the Witches in Macbeth, taking shape at will,
or self-dissolving into air, and no less marvellous, foreknowing
thoughts ere formed in man; or like the Ghost in Hamlet, an
unsubstantial shadow, having the functions of life, motion, will,
and speech; a fearful mystery invests them with a spell not to be
withstood; the bewildered imagination follows like a child, leaving
the finite world for one unknown, till it aches in darkness,
trackless, endless.

Perhaps, as being nearest in station to the unsearchable Author of
all things, the highest example of this would be found in the
Angelic Nature. If it be objected, that the poets have not always so
represented it, it rests with them to show cause why they have not.
Milton, no doubt, could have assigned a sufficient reason in _the
time chosen for his poem_,--that of the creation of the first man,
when his intercourse with the highest order of created beings was not
only essential to the plan of the poem, but according with the express
will of the Creator: hence, he might have considered it no violation
of the _then_ relation between man and angels to assign even the
epithet _affable_ to the archangel Raphael; for man was then
sinless, and in all points save knowledge a fit object of regard, and
certainly a fit pupil to his heavenly instructor. But, suppose the
poet, throughout his work, (as in the process of his story he was
forced to do near the end,)--suppose he had chosen, assuming the
philosopher, to assign to Adam the _altered relation of one of his
fallen posterity_, how could he have endured a holy spiritual
presence? To be consistent, Adam must have been dumb with awe,