body that which is only as a divine dream, in the passing of
a blissful sleep.

Gardens of delight extend round the radiant Jerusalem. A
river flows from the throne of the Almighty, watering the
Celestial Eden with floods of pure love and of the wisdom of
God. The mystic wave divides into streams which entwine
themselves, separate, rejoin, and part again, giving
nourishment to the immortal vine, to the lily that is like
unto the Bride, and to all the flowers which perfume the
couch of the Spouse. The Tree of Life shoots up on the Hill
of Incense; and, but a little farther, that of Knowledge
spreads on all sides its deep-planted roots and its
innumerable branches, carrying hidden in the golden leafage
the secrets of the Godhead, the occult laws of Nature, the
truths of morality and of the intellect, the immutable
principles of good and of evil. The learning which
intoxicates _us_ is the common food of the Elect; for in the
empire of Sovereign Intelligence the fruit of science no
longer brings death. Often do the two great ancestors of the
human race come and shed such tears as the Just can still
let flow in the shadow of the wondrous Tree.

The light which lightens these abodes of bliss is compact of
the rose of morning, of the flame of noon, of the purple of
even; yet no star appears on the glowing horizon. No sun
rises and no sun goes down on the country where nothing
ends, where nothing begins. But an ineffable clearness,
showering from all sides like a tender dew, maintains the
unbroken[36] daylight in a delectable eternity.

Of course any one who is so minded may belittle this as classically
cold; even as to some extent _neo_-classically bedizened; as more like,
let us say, Moore's _Epicurean_ than like our greater "prose-poets" of
the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. The presence in
Chateaubriand of this dose of the style that was passing, and that he
helped to make pass, has been admitted already: but I confess I think it
is only a dose. Those who care to look up the matter for themselves
might, if they do not choose to read the whole, turn to the admirable
picture of camp-life on the Lower Rhine at the opening of Book VI. as a
short contrast, while the story is full of others. Nor should one forget
to add that Chateaubriand can, when he chooses, be epigrammatic a