and even luxurious, decidedly gloomy, and aided by the silence, almost
oppressive. Perhaps, however, I ought to have allowed something for
association. My mind had connected peculiar ideas with Mr. Jennings. I
stepped into this perfectly silent room, of a very silent house, with a
peculiar foreboding; and its darkness, and solemn clothing of books, for
except where two narrow looking-glasses were set in the wall, they were
everywhere, helped this somber feeling.

While awaiting Mr. Jennings' arrival, I amused myself by looking into
some of the books with which his shelves were laden. Not among these,
but immediately under them, with their backs upward, on the floor, I
lighted upon a complete set of Swedenborg's "Arcana Caelestia," in the
original Latin, a very fine folio set, bound in the natty livery which
theology affects, pure vellum, namely, gold letters, and carmine edges.
There were paper markers in several of these volumes, I raised and
placed them, one after the other, upon the table, and opening where
these papers were placed, I read in the solemn Latin phraseology, a
series of sentences indicated by a pencilled line at the margin. Of
these I copy here a few, translating them into English.

"When man's interior sight is opened, which is that of his spirit, then
there appear the things of another life, which cannot possibly be made
visible to the bodily sight."...

"By the internal sight it has been granted me to see the things that are
in the other life, more clearly than I see those that are in the world.
From these considerations, it is evident that external vision exists
from interior vision, and this from a vision still more interior, and so
on."...