London to John O 1 Groat's. 



99 



call the steep flights of this faith pleasant and poetical 

 diversions of a fervid imagination, but they are winged 

 with the pinions that angels lift when they soar ; pinions 

 less etherial than theirs, but formed and plumed to 

 beat upward on the Milky Way to their Source, instead 

 of swimming in the thinly-starred cerulean, in which 

 spirits, never touched with the down or dust of human 

 attributes, descend and ascend on their missions to the 

 earth. Who can have the heart to handle harshly 

 these beautiful faiths? to say, this hope may go up, 

 but this must go down to the darkness of annihilation! 

 Was it irreverent in the pious singing master of a New 

 England village, when he said, that often, while re- 

 turning home late on bright winter nights, he had 

 dropped the reins upon his horse's neck, and sung Old 

 Hundred from the stars, set as notes to that holy tune, 

 when they first sang together in the morning of the 

 creation ? What spiritual good or Christian end would 

 be gained, to break up the charm and cheer of this his 

 belief? or to dispel that other confidence, which so 

 helped him to bear earth's trials, that one day he should 

 join all the spirits of the just made perfect, and all the 

 high angels in heaven, and, on the plane of that golden 

 gamut, they should sing together their hymns of joy 

 and praise, in that same, good old tune, from those same 

 star-notes, which a thousand centuries should not deflect 

 . H 2 



