"THE CASTLE: A PARABLE.

"On the top of a high cliff, forming part of the base of a great mountain,
stood a lofty castle. When or how it was built, no man knew; nor could any
one pretend to understand its architecture. Every one who looked upon it
felt that it was lordly and noble; and where one part seemed not to agree
with another, the wise and modest dared not to call them incongruous, but
presumed that the whole might be constructed on some higher principle of
architecture than they yet understood. What helped them to this conclusion
was, that no one had ever seen the whole of the edifice; that, even of the
portion best known, some part or other was always wrapped in thick folds
of mist from the mountain; and that, when the sun shone upon this mist,
the parts of the building that appeared through the vaporous veil were
strangely glorified in their indistinctness, so that they seemed to belong
to some aerial abode in the land of the sunset; and the beholders could
hardly tell whether they had ever seen them before, or whether they were
now for the first time partially revealed.

"Nor, although it was inhabited, could certain information be procured as
to its internal construction. Those who dwelt in it often discovered rooms
they had never entered before--yea, once or twice,--whole suites of
apartments, of which only dim legends had been handed down from former
times. Some of them expected to find, one day, secret places, filled with
treasures of wondrous jewels; amongst which they hoped to light upon
Solomon's ring, which had for ages disappeared from the earth, but which
had controlled the spirits, and the possession of which made a man simply
what a man should be, the king of the world. Now and then, a narrow,
winding stair, hitherto untrodden, would bring them forth on a new turret,
whence new prospects of the circumjacent country were spread out before