allow
your Genius the slightest approach to inspiration, and I can admit no
verisimility in a reverie which is fixed on a foundation you now allow to
be so weak. But see, the twilight is beginning to appear in the orient
sky, and there are some dark clouds on the horizon opposite to the crater
of Vesuvius, the lower edges of which transmit a bright light, showing
the sun is already risen in the country beneath them. I would say that
they may serve as an image of the hopes of immortality derived from
revelation; for we are sure from the light reflected in those clouds that
the lands below us are in the brightest sunshine, but we are entirely
ignorant of the surface and the scenery; so, by revelation, the light of
an imperishable and glorious world is disclosed to us; but it is in
eternity, and its objects cannot be seen by mortal eye or imaged by
mortal imagination.

_Phil_.--I am not so well read in the Scriptures as I hope I shall be at
no very distant time; but I believe the pleasures of heaven are mentioned
more distinctly than you allow in the sacred writings. I think I
remember that the saints are said to be crowned with palms and amaranths,
and that they are described as perpetually hymning and praising God.

_Amb_.--This is evidently only metaphorical; music is the sensual
pleasure which approaches nearest to an intellectual one, and probably
may represent the delight resulting from the perception of the harmony of
things and of truth seen in God. The palm as an evergreen tree and the
amaranth a perdurable flower are emblems of immortality. If I am allowed
to give a metaphorical allusion to the future state of the blest, I
should image it by the orange grove in that sheltered glen, on which the
sun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are at the same
time loaded with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers. Such
objects may well portray a state in which hope and fruition become one
eternal feeling.

_Onu_.--This glorious sunrise seems to have made you both poetical.
Though with the darkest and most gloomy mind of the party I cannot help
feeling its influence, I cannot help believing with you that the night of
death will be succeeded by a bright morning; but, as in the scene below
us, the objects are nearly the same as they were last evening, with more
of brightness and brilliancy, with a fairer prospect in the east and more
mist in the west, so I cannot help believing that our new state o