s vast
limbs floated in the liquid lustre, and his outspread wings, each plume
the glory of a sun, bore him noiselessly along; but thick clouds veiled
his lustre from the eyes of mortals, and while above all was bathed in
the serenity of his splendor, tempest and storm broke below over the
children of the earth:

"He bowed the heavens and came down, and darkness was under his feet."

And the stillness on the faces of the stars became yet more still, and
the awfulness was humbled into awe. Right above their thrones paused
the course of the archangel; and his wings stretched from east to west,
overshadowing with the shadow of light the immensity of space. Then
forth in the shining stillness, rolled the dread music of his voice:
and, fulfilling the heraldry of god, to each star he appointed the duty
and the charge, and each star bowed his head yet lower as he heard the
fiat, while his throne rocked and trembled at the majesty of the
word. But at last, when each of the brighter stars had, in succession,
received the mandate, and the viceroyalty over the nations of the earth,
the purple and diadems of kings--the archangel addressed the lesser star
as he sat apart from his fellows.

"Behold," said the archangel, "the rude tribes of the north, the
fishermen of the river that flows beneath, and the hunters of the
forests, that darken the mountain-tops with verdure! these be thy
charge, and their destinies thy care. Nor deem thou, O star of the
sullen beams, that thy duties are less glorious than the duties of thy
brethren; for the peasant is not less to thy master and mine than the
monarch; nor doth the doom of empires rest more upon the sovereign than
on the herd. The passions and the heart are the dominion of the stars--a
mighty realm; nor less mighty beneath the hide that garbs the shepherd,
than the jewelled robes of eastern kings."

Then the star lifted his pale front from his breast, and answered the
archangel:

"Lo!" he said, "ages have past, and each year thou hast appointed me to
the same ignoble charge. Release me, I pray thee, from the duties that I
scorn; or, if thou wilt that the lowlier race of men be my charge, give
unto me the charge not of many, but of one, and suffer me to breathe
into him the desire that spurns the valleys of life, and ascends its
steeps. If the humble are given to me, let there be amongst them one
whom I may lead on the mission that shall abase the proud; for, behold,
O Appointer of th