d its deeply luminous eyes first upon
me, and then upon the Angel who accompanied my flight.

"What seekest thou?" it asked in a voice like the murmuring of the wind
among flowers.

"Music!" I answered. "Sing me thy melodies--fill me with harmonies
divine and unreachable--and I will strive to be worthy of thy
teachings!"

The young Shape smiled and drew closer towards me.

"Thy wish is granted, Sister Spirit!" it replied. "The pity I shall
feel for thy fate when thou art again pent in clay, shall be taught
thee in minor music--thou shalt possess the secret of unwritten sound,
and I will sing to thee and bring thee comfort. On Earth, call but my
name--Aeon! and thou shalt behold me. For thy longing voice is known to
the Children of Music, and hath oft shaken the vibrating light wherein
they dwell. Fear not! As long as thou dost love me, I am thine." And
parting slowly, still smiling, the lovely vision, with its small
radiant hands ever wandering among the starry strings of its cloud-like
lyre, floated onward.

Suddenly a clear voice said "Welcome!" and looking up I saw my first
friend, Azul. I smiled in glad recognition--I would have spoken--but
lo! a wide immensity of blazing glory broke like many-coloured
lightning around me--so dazzling, so overpowering, that I instinctively
drew back and paused--I felt I could go no further.

"Here," said my guardian gently--"here ends thy journey. Would that it
were possible, poor Spirit, for thee to pass this boundary! But that
may not be--as yet. In the meanwhile thou mayest gaze for a brief space
upon the majestic sphere which mortals dream of as Heaven. Behold and
see how fair is the incorruptible perfection of God's World!"

I looked and trembled--I should have sunk yet further backward, had not
Azul and my Angel-guide held me with their light yet forcible clasp. My
heart fails me now as I try to write of that tremendous, that sublime
scene--the Centre of the Universe--the Cause of all Creation. How
unlike Heaven such as we in our ignorance have tried to depict! though
it is far better we should have a mistaken idea than none at all. What
I beheld was a circle, so huge that no mortal measurements could
compass it--a wide Ring composed of seven colours, rainbow-like, but
flashing with perpetual motion and brilliancy, as though a thousand
million suns were for ever being woven into it to feed its transcendent
lustre. From every part of this Ring darted long broad shafts o