the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any
favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into
parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears
the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul. But it is certain
that it must tally with what is best in nature. It must not be inferior
in tone to the already known works of the artist who sculptures the
globes of the firmament, and writes the moral law. It must be fresher
than rainbows, stabler than mountains, agreeing with flowers, with
tides, and the rising and setting of autumnal stars. Melodious poets
shall be hoarse as street ballads, when once the penetrating key-note
of nature and spirit is sounded,--the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat
which makes the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood,
and the sap of trees.

In this mood, we hear the rumor that the seer has arrived, and his
tale is told. But there is no beauty, no heaven: for angels, goblins.
The sad muse loves night and death, and the pit. His Inferno is
mesmeric. His spiritual world bears the same relation to the
generosities and joys of truth, of which human souls have already made
us cognizant, as a man's bad dreams bear to his ideal life. It is
indeed very like, in its endless power of lurid pictures, to the
phenomena of dreaming, which nightly turns many an honest gentleman,
benevolent but dyspeptic, into a wretch, skulking like a dog about the
outer yards and kennels of creation. When he mounts into the heavens,
I do not hear its language. A man should not tell me that he has walked
among the angels; his proof is, that his eloquence makes me one. Shall
the archangels be less majestic and sweet than the figures that have
actually walked the earth? These angels that Swedenborg paints give
us no very high idea of their discipline and culture; they are all
country parsons; their heaven is a _fete champetre_, and evangelical