_me_ was speech in this hallowed land _forbidden_!

"Behold!" cried the friendly Fay, after we had traversed for some time
the flowery wilds, "yonder is the City of the Fairies!"

Long indeed had my eyes been fixed upon a great, clear light,
gleaming through a considerable cluster of luxuriantly foliaged trees,
beneath whose spreading branches flitted and reposed numerous aerial
beings, resembling my beautiful guide. Love, joy, innocence, and
everlasting peace were sensibly expressed in their angelic
countenances; and sweet were the words, precious the benisons, wherewith
they welcomed a mortal into the _Grove_ of the _Golden City_! The
glorious light of that city proceeded from the sun shining full upon
the palaces of sapphire-coloured crystal, erected in all styles of
the richest architecture, each symmetrical in itself, and perfect
in design and execution.--Fairy fancy, in sooth, seem to have been
exhausted in supplying models of temples, palaces, castles, porticoes,
colonnades, triumphal arches, &c. &c; for here was displayed every
species of building of which Earth boasts for ornament and defence, in
every order of every civilized nation on its bosom;--whilst orders and
edifices, for which exist no denominations among men, arose and spread
themselves--highly adorned, and richly magnificent--in this singularly
superb and beautiful city. Not upon the model of Thebes, of Babylon, of
Macedon, of Rome, or of Salem, did I, in the excess of astonishment,
gaze--not upon any one of the proud triumphs of Art, ancient or modern;
but rather upon a wild, yet exceedingly lovely, combination of, and
improvement on, the Beautiful of _all_! Gates were there none
to this city, neither closing portals to the habitations thereof;
for rapine and violence were in that delicious land unknown.
Highly-ornamented apertures, in the fashion of porticoes and arcades,