It was the Spirit of Love; the best beloved of the Eternal; the guardian essence of the whole angelic hosts; angels and archangels, heirarchs and seraphs, alike acknowledged him, and bowed before his sway, as the representative of the Supreme. And on he floated in his indescribable beauty, and every court of heaven sent forth increased effulgence as he passed. He neared the veil, and bowed down before it, and then he spake, and his low soft tone penetrated the farthest limit of that immeasurable space.
“Create him, oh, Father!” he prayed; “create him to love, and be beloved! What if he err? what if he sin? Thou wilt pardon him; for thy love is greater than his sin!”
A burst of bewildering glory flashed through the veil upon him, as he knelt, and darted its dazzling rays through the thousand ranks of heaven at the same moment. It was the assenting sign of the Eternal; and again the Omnific Word went forth: “Let us make man!” and millions and millions of voices swelled the glad chorus, that another and yet mightier creation should bear witness to the loving mercy of their God. And Truth, and Justice, and Peace joined in the thrilling strain, for the Spirit of Love had touched them with his quivering breath, and they felt his words were true. Man might still err, but created in love, the immortal spirit breathed into the shell of clay; the angelic hosts gave vent to the full song of rejoicing; for the Spirit of Love hovered over the new-born world, as over theirs, endowed by the measureless compassion of the Eternal to purify and pardon.
Idalie.
THE STORY OF A PICTURE.
No place is more calculated to call forth all the vagaries of the imagination than an old half-ruined castle, surrounded by wood and mount, hoar from many centuries, and lying in such deep seclusion, as to be unseen by the mere casual traveller. On such a spot, completely circled by a branch of the Cevennes, in the ancient district of Auvergne, it was once my hap to light. Trees of such gigantic growth, that they appeared bending beneath the weight of ages, frowning rocks, and overgrown brushwood formed so close a fortification, that the building might have been passed and repassed within a mile of its vicinity undiscovered.
It was a gothic chateau of the olden time, just sufficiently ruinous to give it the interest of age, yet containing costly tapestried chambers, panelled halls, long rambling galleries, secret rooms, and those deep dark dungeons, where many a brave man has languished and died unknown, save by his ruthless captor, all still in sufficient preservation to fill the mind with visions of the past as with the breathing realities of the present. There was a small chapel in the building, which had once been evidently richly adorned, but whose shrines and hangings were now all crumbling to decay. It was a melancholy visionary place, yet infused with a charm impossible to be resisted, and day after day my wanderings turned to the chateau; contented at first with rambling over chamber, hall, and gallery, imagination feasting on the thoughts of what had been the life, the stir, the pageantry, where all was now the solitude of silence and neglect. There were still some pictures hanging from the walls, but seemingly so resigned to the cobweb and the dust, that I had heeded them little, till one day the sun gleaming upon an antique frame, unobserved before, attracted me to the picture it enshrined, and in a moment heart, mind, and fancy were irresistibly enchained.
To attempt description of that face, to say why it haunted me for days and nights, as something almost unearthly, would be a hopeless task; yet turn from it as I would, or seek amusement in other objects, still it rose before me, pale, shadowy, yet so lovely, baffling every effort to dismiss it from my mind. Stars and braids of diamonds seemed still literally to glisten in the long jetty tresses, falling as a veil around her. Hands small, thin, and delicately white were crossed upon her bosom; the large dark eyes were raised, and the pale lips parted as in prayer; she seemed standing near an ancient altar; but every other object in the picture time had rendered wholly indistinct.