est emotions that He Himself bestows upon thee?
THOU wouldst have entered into thy dream-world and lived in it and died
in it, if by so doing thou couldst have drawn one of thy creatures back
to the love of thee; and wilt thou not receive the Christ?"

I bowed my head, and a flood of joy rushed through me.

"I believe--I believe and I love!" I murmured. "Desert me not, O
radiant Angel! I feel and know that all these wonders must soon pass
away from my sight; but wilt thou also go?"

The Angel smiled and touched me.

"I am thy guardian," it said. "I have been with thee always. I can
never leave thee so long as thy soul seeks spiritual things. Asleep or
awake on the Earth, wherever thou art, I also am. There have been times
when I have warned thee and thou wouldst not listen, when I have tried
to draw thee onward and thou wouldst not come; but now I fear no more
thy disobedience, for thy restlessness is past. Come with me; it is
permitted thee to see far off the vision of the Last Circle."

The glorious figure raised me gently by the hand, and we floated on and
on, higher and higher, past little circles which my guide told me were
all solar systems, though they looked nothing but slender garlands of
fire, so rapidly did they revolve and so swiftly did we pass them.
Higher and higher we went, till even to my untiring spirit the way
seemed long. Beautiful creatures in human shape, but as delicate as
gossamer, passed us every now and then, some in bands of twos and
threes, some alone; and the higher we soared the more dazzlingly lovely
these inhabitants of the air seemed to be.

"They are all born of the Great Circle," my guardian Angel explained to
me: "and to them is given the power of communicating high thought or
inspiration. Among them are the Spirits of Music, of Poesy, of
Prophecy, and of all Art ever known in all worlds. The success of their
teaching depends on how much purity and unselfishness there is in the
soul to which they whisper their divine messages--messages as brief as
telegrams which must be listened to with entire attention and acted
upon at once, or the lesson is lost and may never come again."

Just then I saw a Shape coming towards me as of a lovely fair-haired
child, who seemed to be playing softly on a strange glittering
instrument like a broken cloud strung through with sunbeams. Heedless
of consequences, I caught at its misty robe in a wild effort to detain
it. It obeyed my touch, and turne