health and beauty--their movements are music--their glances are
light--they cannot err in their laws or judgments, for their
existence is love. Thrones, principalities, and powers are among
them, yet all are equal. Each one has a different duty to perform,
yet all their labours are lofty. But what a fate is ours on this low
earth! For, from the cradle to the grave, we are watched by these
spiritual spectators--watched with unflinching interest,
unhesitating regard. O Angelic Spirits, what is there in the poor
and shabby spectacle of human life to attract your mighty
Intelligences? Sorrow, sin, pride, shame, ambition, failure,
obstinacy, ignorance, selfishness, forgetfulness--enough to make ye
veil your radiant faces in unpierceable clouds to hide forever the
sight of so much crime and misery. Yet if there be the faintest,
feeblest effort in our souls to answer to the call of your voices,
to rise above the earth by force of the same will that pervades your
destinies, how the sound of great rejoicing permeates those wide
continents ye inhabit, like a wave of thunderous music; and ye are
glad, Blessed Spirits!--glad with a gladness beyond that of your own
lives, to feel and to know that some vestige, however fragile, is
spared from the general wreck of selfish and unbelieving Humanity.
Truly we work under the shadow of a "cloud of Witnesses." Disperse,
disperse, O dense yet brilliant multitudes! turn away from me your
burning, truthful, immutable eyes, filled with that look of divine,
perpetual regret and pity! Lo, how unworthy am I to behold your
glory! and yet I must see and know and love you all, while the mad
blind world rushes on to its own destruction, and none can avert its
doom.'"

Here Amy threw down the book with a sort of contempt, and said to
me: