THE BEAUTIFUL LADDER. 
137 
riis is fuller and more sonorous than before, by 
the increase of many generations with lungs as 
powerful and as ardent a disposition to give 
them constant practice. Still, at times, the 
Will-o’-the-wisp leads forth his blazing cohorts 
of vagrant fire-flies, giving just enough illumi¬ 
nation to bush and brake to enable the untutor¬ 
ed imagination to people the whole scene with 
certain creatures who traditionally deal more 
extensively in igneous materials, and who shine 
only to delude their poor dupes to darker recesses 
than envelop the borders of the dismal pond. 
“ But the weird spell of the external has been 
broken, and the veil of horror lifted from the 
scene. The invisible has become visible^ and 
the glory and beauty of the revelation have 
spread such a radiance over the scene that the 
real is put out of view; and, like the breaking 
of morning, though it is the same landscape 
that the dissolving darkness brings back to the 
natural vision, the black pall of shadows which 
filled it with horrid shapings has been dispelled 
by the bright beams of a celestial sunrising. 
Henceforth these gloom-covered scenes of earth 
will be transfigured to the disenthralled mind; 
and dark and repellant as the earthly surround- 
12* 
