gels is too beautiful
to be laid aside. Their actual and present existence can be disproved
neither by analogy, philosophy, or theology, nor can it be questioned
without casting a doubt also upon the whole system of our religion.
This religion, by many a fanciful skeptic, has been called barren and
gloomy; but setting aside all the legends of the Jews, and confining
ourselves entirely to the generally received Scriptures, there will be
found sufficient food for an imagination warm as that of Homer,
Apelles, Phidias, or Praxiteles. It is astonishing that such rich
materials for poetry should for so many centuries have been so little
regarded, appropriated, or even perceived.

[Footnote 1: Historie des Oracles.]

The story of Zophiel, though accompanied by many notes, is simple and
easily followed. Reduced to prose, and a child, or a common novel
reader, would peruse it with satisfaction. It is in six cantos, and is
supposed to occupy the time of nine months: from the blooming of roses
at Ecbatana to the coming in of spices at Babylon. Of this time the
greater part is supposed to elapse between the second and third canto,
where Zophiel thus speaks to Egla of Phraerion:

Yet still she bloomed--uninjured, innocent--
Though now for seven sweet moons by Zophiel watched and wooed.

The king of Medea, introduced in the second canto, is an ideal
personage; but the history of that country, near the time of the
second captivity, is very confused, and more than one young prince
resembling Sardius, might have reigned and died without a record. So
much of the main story however as relates to human life is based upon
sacred or profane history; and we have sufficient authority for the
legend of an angel's passion for one of the fair daughters of our own
world. It was a custom in the early ages to style heroes, to raise to
the rank of demigods, men who were distinguished for great abilities,
qualities or actions. Above such men the angels who are supposed to
have visited the earth were but one grade exalted, and they were
capable of participating in human pains and pleasures. Zophiel is
described as one of those who fell with Lucifer, not from ambition or
turbulence, but from friendship and excessive admiration of the chief
disturber of the tranquillity of heaven: as he declares, when thwarted
by his betrayer, in the fourth canto:

Though the first seraph formed, how could I tell
The ways of guile? What marvels I