On ordinary occasions the Son sits at a mystic table, and four and twenty elders, clothed in white, with crowns of gold on their heads, sit upon thrones by his side. Close by stands his living chariot, the wheels of which emit fire. When the Expected of the Nations deigns to vouchsafe a perfect vision of himself to the elect, they fall down before him as if dead; but he stretches forth his right hand and says to them: "Rise, ye blessed of my Father! Look upon me. I am the First and the Last!"
We feel as if this performance must lose much of its impressiveness by repetition.
As an example of the supernaturalness of this heaven, it may be mentioned that the raiment of the holy elders is made white in the blood of the Lamb. That it is a modern production we observe from the fact that, in spite of the remarkable arbitrariness which prevails, its author has not escaped the influence of the spirit of his day, for even in this heaven we hear of laws of nature. We are told of the blessed that they desire to comprehend the laws which explain the easy flight of heavy bodies through the ether. This is a sort of anticipation of the standpoint in Byron's Cain.
From the artistic point of view it is interesting to observe the kind of imagery by means of which Chateaubriand, when he is neither borrowing from the Revelation of St. John nor from Milton, attempts to give an idea of the glories of heaven. When Dante makes the same attempt, he has recourse to visions, to the glories of that mystic rose which the Gothic cathedral builders feebly endeavoured to imitate; but Chateaubriand, the man of modern ideas and of much experience as far as the outward world is concerned, has recourse to impressions of travel. The arcades of heaven are compared to the gardens of Babylon, to the pillars of Palmyra in the sands of the desert. When the blessed spirits are hastening through the created world we are told of the scene that displays itself to them: "Thus present themselves to the eye of the traveller the great plains of India, the fertile valleys of Delhi and Kashmir, shores covered with pearls and fragrant with ambergris, where the tranquil waves lay themselves to rest beneath the blossoming cinnamon trees." Such imagery is somewhat too realistic for the spiritual theme. We shrink from representing all these archangels to ourselves in Indian surroundings. But it is in such ways that nature revenges herself upon the man who believes he can set her aside or can produce something superior to her productions. A later author of this same school, De Vigny, who writes as much under the influence of Ossian as of Milton, compares the ether of the firmament to the mists of the Scottish mountains. The indistinct form of Lucifer descried far off in space by the angel Eloa is compared to the waving plaid of some wandering Scotchwoman, seen through the misty clouds falling on the hill-tops. The conjunction of an angel and a plaid strikes us as a curious one.
The scenery which this group of authors considers unquestionably the most beautiful is not the jumbled, potpourri landscape of the German Romanticists; no, what they, in harmony with the spirit of their day, admire is that Paradisaic landscape in which the strictest order prevails—symmetrical, architectural, a sort of dilution of Claude Lorraine. Take, for an example, the commencement of De Vigny's Le Déluge:
La terre était riante et dans sa fleur première;
Le jour avait encor cette même lumière
Qui du ciel embelli couronna les hauturs
Quand Dieu la fit tomber de ses doigts créateurs.
Rien n'avait dans sa forme altéré la nature,
Et des monts réguliers l'immense architecture
S'élevait jusqu' aux cieux par ses degrés égaux
Sans que rien de leur chaîne eût brisé les anneaux.
* * * * * * * *
Et des fleuves aux mers le cours était réglé
Dans un ordre parfait qui n'était pas troublé.
Jamais un voyageur n'aurait, sous le feuillage
Rencontré, loin des flots, l'émail du coquillage,
Et la perle habitait son palais de cristal;
Chaque trésor restait dans l'élément natal,
Sans enfreindre jamais la céleste défense.
This partiality for model, ideal landscape tempts our authors more and more frequently to lay the scenes of their works in heaven.
Chateaubriand continues to be a greater master in the description of earthly than of heavenly surroundings.
The action of De Vigny's earliest poems takes place, in genuine Seraphic style, midway between heaven and earth.
The scene of Victor Hugo's ode, Louis XVII., is the gate of heaven, that of La Vision heaven itself, the heavenly Jerusalem. In La Vision we come upon familiar imagery: