I looked down into that, and lo! the opposite chasm was distinctly visible through it. At last, however, up ladders of rock, assisted by the shepherd's banisters of roughly-spun rope, round corners where you trusted yourself to the young oak or the sapling til, and hung for a moment over a depth that it makes my blood run cold to recollect, now creeping along this side of the isthmus, now working like worms along that, we stood under the shadow of the great Cidrão itself. Here, on a little platform of turf, my friend sat down, weary and sick at heart, while I resolved, with a good courage, still to follow my guide. On we went the path was a ledge of about eighteen inches, a steep precipice above, a steep precipice below, all bare rock,-no twining root or friendly twig to give the hand a firm, nor even an imaginary hold. Just then the northern gale swept a mass of clouds into the abyss, and it seemed as if we were walking along the edge of the world. I began to feel a little uncomfortable, when my guide, by way of consoling me, wrenched a large rock from its place, and hurled it downwards into the clouds. I lost it in that soft bed; but half a minute afterwards its crash came up from beneath, echoed from crag to crag, and seeming as if it came from another world. Oh, I shall never forget that moment! My brain seemed to turn round, my limbs to have no power of support, and I felt that horrible desire of leaping after the rock, the descent of which I had just

D

witnessed. That was my only panic, and I thought it would have been my first and last.

THEODORA. This, and cases like this, are the most undoubted instances where the influence of external nature has a visible and physical effect. The great question is, to what immediate cause are we to attribute it ?

SOPHRON. If you ask my opinion, I have long believed it to be the immediate effect of temptation. The name, panic, proves that the spirits who were supposed to haunt wild and lonely scenery, were also supposed to be gifted with an extraordinary influence over the mind; just as in Gothic lore fairies were gifted with the same power of depriving their unwelcome visitants of reason. Now that the evil spirits by which we are surrounded should delight in making GOD'S works, which in themselves are very good, occasions of the misery of man, is extremely likely in itself, and consonant with all analogy. We do not remember, or we will not believe, that the presence of Christians must make an inroad on the powers of darkness; that they cannot exercise the same influence over mankind in such regions, as in wild and lonely mountains, which Holy Church can scarcely be said to have vindicated; almost inaccessible to men,-intended, to the end of the world, to be none of his, to whomever else they may be given. By general consent there is an intrinsic connexion between night and evil. All nations have then thought wicked spirits

to have most power:-at nightfall it is, that, by universal agreement of mankind, appearances from the other world do almost always occur; and every one must have felt how inimitably true is Shakspere,

"Good things of day begin to droop and drouse,

While night's fell agents to their prey do rouse.'

It is from a natural horror of the dark that children will cry in it; and the nearer that men approach to a state of nature, the more do they shrink from it as from an evil thing. You may get over your dislike to it, and so you may to any other ill object; but from the beginning of the world, allegorically and physically, it has been connected with the idea of sin. A deed of darkness, and powers of darkness, carry their meaning in their face. Now, it is in its solitude, its negative of life and action, its separation of man from man, its individualizing human beings, by keeping each from aiding or being aided by his brother, —all the features, in short, in which night is evil, that it resembles the lonely scenes of which we speak. True; there is a brighter side to the picture. Angels may delight in solitudes unstained by sin; and peaks like those of Chimboraço and Himalaya may be, could we only hear it, vocal with the songs of the just made perfect. But still it is a solemn thought that the doom has been once spoken, which, till the regeneration of the heavens and earth by fire, must remain in

some sense in force: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake." The Church, we know, has a power of reversing this curse; but till she has blest, it remains and must remain. The sorest temptations which the history of the Church can recount, have taken place in the desert; also, I grant you, some of the most glorious victories. We must expect the one, we may hope for the other.

PISTUS. It seems to me that it is very difficult to carry on such speculations without falling into one of two dangers: pantheism or materialism. A pantheist will grant all you have been saying; he, too, will speak of the ministry of angels, and, perhaps, the assaults of less happy spirits; but then his angels will be the sweet whisper of the wind, the bright contrasts of light and shade, the dewy forest, or the glorious landscape; while his ill spirits are but the natural effects of gloomy valleys and frowning rocks; of barren wastes and desolate sands. This doctrine we all reject with horror. But, then, is it not to materialize our notions of the blessed angels, to imagine them to take delight in earthly beauty, they who have so glorious a Land of their own? And, again, is it not to undervalue the strength of our ghostly enemies, to imagine them desirous of,-or standing in need of,-physical advantages of situation?

SOPHRON. I think not. Think only of the analogy between the revelation that we have of heaven, and the nature, as we know it, of this earth. In the first place, none can deny, that after

the resurrection and the final judgment, the just made perfect will not be, as angels, simply spiritual essences, but be endowed, as when on earth, with material bodies. Now material beings necessarily presuppose a material locality: material sight would be simply useless unless there were material substances to see, material hearing unless there were material sounds to hear. This obviates one great objection to what I am saying; that the whole apocalyptic description is only the lowering of heavenly ideas to earthly minds. If a merely spiritual state were being described, doubtless it would so be; but when (to say the least) much that is material must be mixed up with it, the argument vanishes, Consider, again, the remarkable terms in which the abode of the elect is mentioned, after the final doom: "a new heaven and a new earth." And lest any one should think that this is a merely casual expression of S. John, (granting that such things might be,) S. Peter also, and Isaiah, speak of "new heavens and a new earth." If, now, there were no analogy between the old and the new, between the first and the second earth, to what purpose this particular and thrice repeated expression? And most remarkably is it said, “there was no more sea. There is therefore so strong a resemblance between the two earths, that the absence of the sea in the second is thought a point worthy of note. Therefore, all the varieties of natural beauty besides this, it may be pre