"See them through the fog steaming up from the shores of their
Phlegethon!" he cried, warming into eloquence; "see the horrid
troop, afar from the crystal walls!--if indeed ye stand on those
heights of glory, and course not around them with the dogs!--hear
them howl and bark as they scour along! Gaze at them more earnestly
as they draw nigher; see upon the dog heads of them the signs and
symbols of rank and authority which they wore when they walked
erect, men--ay, women too, among men and women! see the crown
jewels flash over the hanging ears, the tiara tower thrice circled
over the hungry eyes! see the plumes and the coronets, the hoods
and the veils!"
Here, unhappily for his eloquence, he slid off into the catalogue
of women's finery given by the prophet Isaiah, at the close of
which he naturally found the oratorical impulse gone, and had to sit
down in the mud of an anticlimax. Presently, however, he recovered
himself, and, spreading his wings, once more swung himself aloft
into the empyrean of an eloquence, which, whatever else it might
or might not be, was at least genuine.
"Could they but surmount those walls, whose inherent radiance is
the artillery of their defence, those walls high uplifted, whose
lowest foundations are such stones as make the glory of earthly
crowns; could they overleap those gates of pearl, and enter the
golden streets, what think ye they would do there? Think ye they
would rage hither and thither at will, making horrid havoc amongst
the white robed inhabitants of the sinless capital? Nay, verily;
for, in the gold transparent as glass, they would see their own
vile forms in truth telling reflex, and, turning in agony, would
rush yelling back, out again into the darkness--the outer darkness
--to go round and round the city again and for evermore, tenfold
tortured henceforth with the memory of their visioned selves.
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