“Yea!—grant me but one trial!”
Ere the archangel could reply, the farthest centre of the heaven was rent as by a thunderbolt; and the divine herald covered his face with his hands, and a voice low and sweet, and mild with the consciousness of unquestionable power, spoke forth to the repining star:
“The time has arrived when thou mayest have thy wish. Below thee, upon yon solitary plain, sits a mortal, gloomy as thyself, who, born under thy influence, may be moulded to thy will.”
The voice ceased, as the voice of a dream. Silence was over the seas of space, and the archangel, once more borne aloft, slowly soared away into the farther heaven, to promulgate the divine bidding to the stars of far-distant worlds.
But the soul of the discontented star exulted within itself; and it said, “I will call forth a king from the valley of the herdsmen, that shall trample on the kings subject to my fellows, and render the charge of the contemned star more glorious than the minions of its favored brethren; thus shall I revenge neglect—thus shall I prove my claim hereafter to the heritage of the great of earth!”
At that time, though the world had rolled on for ages, and the pilgrimage of man had passed through various states of existence, which our dim traditionary knowledge has not preserved, yet the condition of our race in the northern hemisphere was then what we, in our imperfect lore, have conceived to be among the earliest.
FORMING A NEW RELIGION.
By a rude and vast pile of stones, the masonry of arts forgotten, a lonely man sat at midnight, gazing upon the heavens. A storm had just passed from the earth—the clouds had rolled away, and the high stars looked down upon the rapid waters of the Rhine; and no sound save the roar of the waves and the dripping of the rain from the mighty trees, was heard around the ruined pile: the white sheep lay scattered on the plain, and slumber with them. He sat watching over the herd, lest the foes of a neighboring tribe seized them unawares, and thus he communed with himself:
“The king sits upon his throne, and is honored by a warrior race, and the warrior exults in the trophies he has won; the step of the huntsman is bold upon the mountain-top, and his name is sung at night round the pine-fires, by the lips of the bard; and the bard himself hath honor in the hail. But I, who belong not to the race of kings, and whose limbs can bound not to the rapture of war, nor scale the eyries of the eagle and the haunts of the swift stag; whose hand cannot string the harp, and whose voice is harsh in the song; I have neither honor nor command, and men bow not the head as I pass along; yet do I feel within me the consciousness of a great power that should rule my species—not obey. My eye pierces the secret hearts of men—I see their thoughts ere their lips proclaim them; and I scorn, while I see, the weakness and the vices which I never shared. I laugh at the madness of the warrior—I mock within my soul at the tyranny of kings. Surely there is something in man’s nature more fitted to command—more worthy of renoun, than the sinews of the arm, or the swiftness of the feet, or the accident of birth!”