. I will speak, as the ancestral
Lucifer before me: _he_ rebelled because of his glory, _I_ because of
my obscurity; _he_ from the ambition of pride, and _I_ from its
discontent."

And while the star was thus communing with himself, the upward heavens
were parted as by a long river of light, and adown that stream swiftly,
and without sound, sped the archangel visitor of the stars. His 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 splendour, 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
under the jewelled robes of the eastern kings."

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

"Lo!" he said, "ages have passed, and each year thou hast appointed me
to the same ignoble charge. Release me, I pray