FAIRY FAVOURS.--A VISION OF FAIRY LAND.

(_For the Mirror._)

Once--whether in a dream, a waking vision, a poetical hallucination, or
in sober reality, I know not--_once_ was I favoured with a distinct
and glorious vision of the Faries' Land! I found myself in a country
more enchantingly beautiful than the warm, romantic dream of the poet
has ever yet conceived:--therein bloomed trees, and plants, and flowers,
in beauty and luxuriance never to fade; therein was the soft air
strongly imbued with the ambrosial odour of the orient rose; but ever as
a gentle breeze enfolded me, it seemed on its refreshing wings to bear
the heavenly fragrance of unknown flowers. The sky was of an effulgent
azure, altogether indescribable--but under the influence of stealing
twilight, insensibly was it darkening, though the yet undimmed colours
of sunset were inexpressibly varied and vivid. Radiant and exquisitely
beautiful beings, fair miniatures of mortals, inhabited this
charming region, wherein was assembled all that had power to inebriate
the soul with pure and rapturous felicity, and imbue it with an
intense perception of its immortality and blessedness. Now stole the
faint, delicious sound of very distant bells--clear, silvery, and
sweet--upon mine ear, as the tones of a well-touched harp: sad were
they--luxuriously sad; and their unearthly melody infused into my bosom
a repose unknown to mortality. As I listened with awe and rapture to
that delicate minstrelsy, I seemed to become all soul; tears--far indeed
from tears of sorrow--suffused my wondering eyes, and my heart, in
the delirium of gratitude, raised itself in solemn thanksgivings to
its Creator.