"With wings expanded wide, ourselves we'll rear,
And fly incumbent on the dusky air.
Hell! thy new lord receive!
Heaven cannot envy me an empire here."
(_Both fly to dry land._)

You remember the lines in Milton--

"Then with expanded wings he steers his flight,
Aloft incumbent on the dusky air"--

and the other sublimities of the description--all here destroyed by the
monstrous absurdity of making Lucifer paint his own projected flight. He
then asks "the rest of the devils," "Are you on _beds of down_?" On beds
of down our grandsires lay--but think of eider-ducks in heaven. Moloch
says his say from the Miltonic Satan, with a slight new reading.

"Better to _rule_ in hell than serve in heaven."

And Beelzebub approves the dictum.

"Moloch, in that all are resolved, like thee.
The means are unprepared; but 'tis not fit,
Our dark divan in public view should sit;
Or what we plot against the Thunderer,
_The ignoble_ CROWD OF VULGAR DEVILS _hear_!"

Lucifer adopts this disdainful suggestion, and, great magician as he is,
exclaims--

"A golden palace let be raised on high,
To imitate--no, to outshine the sky!
All mines are ours, and gold above the rest;
Let this be done, and _quick as 'twas exprest_."

"A palace rises, where sit as in council, LUCIFER, Asmoday, Moloch,
Belial, Beelzebub, and SATAN." Who _he_ may be, deuce take us if we can
tell. Up to the very moment of his making his appearance, we in our simple
faith had believed Lucifer and Satan to be one devil--nay, the devil. We
were taken quite aback by this unexplained phenomenon of Satan's acting
the part of his own tail. In this capacity he makes but one speech--but it
is the speech of the evening. One seldom hears such eloquence. Moloch
having proposed battle, the mysterious stranger rises to second the
motion.

"_Satan._ I agree
With this brave vote; and if in Hell there be
_Ten more such spirits_, heaven is our own again.
We venture nothing, and may all obtain.
Yet, who can hope but well, since our success
Makes foes secure, and makes our dangers less?
_Seraph and Cherub, careless of their charge
And wanton, in full ease now live at large;
Unguarded leave the passes of the sky,
And all dissolved in hallelujahs lie._"

In the "grand consult," as recorded by Milton, Beelzebub, after proposing
the "perilous attempt," asks,

"But, first, whom we shall se