next to the inconceivable Giver of life.

Could we stand in the presence of one of these holy beings, (if to
stand were possible,) what of the Sublime in this lower world would so
shake us? Though his beauty were such as never mortal dreamed of,
it would be as nothing,--swallowed up as darkness,--in the awful,
spiritual brightness of the messenger of God. Even as the soldiers
in Scripture, at the sepulchre of the Saviour, we should fall before
him,--we should "become," like them, "as dead men."

But though Milton does not unveil the "face like lightning"; and
though the angel Raphael is made to hold converse with man, and the
"severe in youthful beauty" gives even the individual impress to
Zephon, and Michael and Abdiel are set apart in their prowess; there
is not one he names that does not breathe of Heaven, that is not
encompassed with the glory of the Infinite. And why the reader is not
overwhelmed in their supposed presence is because he is a beholder
_through_ Adam,--through him also a listener; but whenever he is
made, by the poet's spell, to forget Adam, and to see, as it were in
his own person, the embattled hosts....

If we dwell upon Form _alone_, though it should be of surpassing
beauty, the idea would not rise above that of man, for this is
conceivable of man: but the moment the angelic nature is touched, we
have the higher ideas of supernal intelligence and perfect holiness,
to which all the charms and graces of mere form immediately
become subordinate, and, though the beauty remain, its agency is
comparatively negative under the overpowering transcendence of a
celestial spirit.