reading the "Loves of the Angels," and went to bed with my head full of speculations, suggested by that extraordinary legend. It had given birth to innumerable conjectures; and, I remember, the last waking thought which I gave expression to on my pillow was a sort of wonder," what could come of

I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could scarcely make out-but to some celestial region. It was not the real heavens neither-not the downright Bible heaven-but a kind of fairy-land heaven, about which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, without presumption.

Methought—what wild things dreams are!-I was presen -at what would you imagine?—at an angel's gossiping.

Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or whether it came purely of its own head, neither you nor I know-but there lay, sure enough, wrapped in its little cloudy swaddling-bands-a child angel.

Sun-threads - filmy beams-ran through the celestial napery of what seemed its princely cradle. All the winged orders hovered round, watching when the new-born should open its yet closed eyes; which, when it did, first one, and then the other-with a solicitude and apprehension, yet not such as, stained with fear, dim the expanding eyelids of mortal infants, but as if to explore its path in those its unhereditary palaces-what an inextinguishable titter that time spared not celestial visages! Nor wanted there to my seeming-oh the inexplicable simpleness of dreams!-bowls of that cheering nectar,

"Which mortals caudle call below."

Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants-stricken in years, as it might seem so dexterous were those heavenly attendants to counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, to greet with terrestrial child-rites the young present which earth had made to heaven.

Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full symphony, as those by which the spheres are tutored, but, as loudest instruments on earth speak oftentimes, muffled; so to accommodate their sound the better to the weak ears of the imperfectborn. And, with the noise of those subdued soundings, the ingelet sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments of pinions-but forthwith flagged and was recovered into the arms of those full-winged angels. And a wonder it was to see how, as years went round in heaven-a year in dreams is as a daycontinually its white shoulders put forth buds of wings, but,

wanting the perfect angelic nutriment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, and fell fluttering-still caught by angel hands--for ever to put forth shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its birth was not of the unmixed vigour of heaven.

And a name was given to the babe angel, and it was to be called Ge-Urania, because its production was of earth and heaven.

And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adoption into immortal palaces: but it was to know weakness and reliance, and the shadow of human imbecility; and it went with a lame gait; but in its goings it exceeded all mortal children in grace and swiftness. Then pity first sprang up in angelic bosoms; and yearnings (like the human) touched them at the sight of the immortal lame one.

And with pain did then first those intuitive essences, with pain and strife to their natures, (not grief,) put back their bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal minds, schooling them to degrees and slower processes, so to adapt their lessons to the gradual illumination (as must needs be) of the half-earthborn; and what intuitive notices they could not repel, (by reason that their nature is, to know all things at once,) the halfheavenly novice, by the better part of its nature, aspired to receive into its understanding; so that humility and aspiration went on even-paced in the instruction of the glorious amphibium.

But, by reason that mature humanity is too gross to breathe the air of that super-subtile region, its portion was, and is, to be a child for ever.

And because the human part of it might not press into the heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption, those full-natured angels tended it by turns in the purlieus of the palace, where were shady groves and rivulets, like this green earth from which it came: so Love, with voluntary humility, waited apon the entertainment of the new-adopted.

And myriads of years rolled round, (in dreams time is nothing,) and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual childhood, and is the tutelar genius of childhood upon earth, and still goes lame and lovely.

By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone-sitting by the grave of the terrestrial Adah, whom the angel Nadir loved, a child; but not the same which I saw in heaven. A mournful hue overcasts its lineaments; nevertheless, a correspondence is between the child by the grave and that celestial orphan whom I saw above; and the dimness of the grief upon the heavenly, is a shadow or emblem of that which stains the

beauty of the terrestrial. And this correspondence is not to be understood but by dreams.

And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read, how that once the angel Nadir, being exiled from his place for mortal passion, upspringing on the wings of parental love, (such power had parental love for a moment to suspend the else irrevocable law,) appeared for a brief instant in his station; and, depositing a wondrous birth, straightway disappeared, and the palaces knew him no more. And this charge was the selfsame babe, who goeth lame and lovely-but Adah sleepeth by the river Pison.

OLD CHINA.

I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china-closet, and next for the picture-gallery. I cannot defend the order of preference, but by saying, that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to mind the first play and the first exhibition that I was taken to; but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagination.

I had no repugnance then--why should I now have?—to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that under the notion of men and women float about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that world before perspective-a china tea cup.

I like to see my old friends-whom distance cannot diminish-figuring up in the air, (so they appear to our optics,) yet on terra firma still-for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue-which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring up beneath their sandals.

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if possible, with still more womanish expressions.

Here is a young and courtly mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver-two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another-for likeness is identity on teacups-is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst

of a flowery mead-a furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream!

Farther on-if far or near can be predicated of their world -see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.

Here a cow and rabbit couchant, and coextensive-so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay.

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Hyson, (which we are oldfashioned enough to drink unmixed still of an afternoon,) some of these speciosa miracula upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent purchase) which we were now for the first time using; and could not help remarking how favourable circumstances had been to us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort--when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget.

"I wish the good old times would come again," she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state"-so she was pleased to ramble on-" in which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, oh! how much ado I had to get you to consent in those times!) we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it.

"Do you remember the brown suit which you made to hang upon you till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbare-and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late-and when the old bookseller, with some grumbling, opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures-and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome-and when you presented it to me-and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating you called it) -and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till day

break-was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or car those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit-your old corbeau-for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen-or sixteen shillings was it?-a great affair we thought it then-which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now.

"When you came home with twenty apologies for laying ut a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, which we christened the Lady Blanch;' when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money-and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture-was there no pleas ure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you?

"Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holydayholydays, and all other fun, are gone, now we are rich-and the little hand-basket in which I used to deposite our day's fare of savoury cold lamb and salad-and how you would pry about at noontide for some decent house, where we might go in, and produce our store-only paying for the ale that you must call for-and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-cloth-and wish for such another honest hostess as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a fishing-and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us—but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and would eat our plain food savourily, scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall? Now when we go out a day's pleasuring, which if seldom moreover, we ride part of the way-and go into a fine inn, and order the best of dinners, never debating the expensewhich, after all, never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage and a precarious welcome.

66

You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Woodwhen we squeezed out our shillings apiece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery-where you