churches, with painted images in the panes, glided past, and the
midnight-bell struck, and the dead arose from the graves. There, under
the bending elder tree, sat the mother, and swathed her newly-born
child; old, sunken knights' castles rose again from the marshy ground;
the drawbridge fell, and they saw into the empty halls, adorned with
images, where, under the gloomy stairs of the gallery, the
death-proclaiming white woman came with a rattling bunch of keys. The
basilisk brooded in the deep cellar; the monster bred from a cock's
egg, invulnerable by every weapon, but not from the sight of its own
horrible form: at the sight of its own image, it bursts like the steel
that one breaks with the blow of a stout staff. And to everything that
appeared, from the golden chalice of the altar-table, once the
drinking-cup of evil spirits, to the nodding head on the gallows-hill,
the old crone hummed her songs; and the crickets chirped, and the
raven croaked from the opposite neighbour's house, and the
winding-sheet rolled from the candle. Through the whole spectral world
sounded, "death! death!"

"Go with me to life and truth," cried the second form, the youth who
was beautiful as a cherub. A flame shone from his brow--a cherub's
sword glittered in his hand. "I am _Knowledge_," said he: "my world is
greater--its aim is truth."

And there was a brightness all around; the spectral images paled; it
did not extend over the world they had seen. Superstition's lantern
had only exhibited _magic-lantern_ images on the old ruined wall, and
the wind had driven wet misty vapours past in figures.

"I will give thee a rich recompense. Truth in the created--truth in
God!"

And through the stagnant lake, where before the misty spectral figures
rose, whilst the bells sounded from the sunken castle, the light fell
down on a swaying vegetable world. One drop of the marsh water, raised
against the rays of light, became a living world, with creatures in
strange forms, fighting and revelling--a world in a drop of water. And
the sharp sword of Knowledge cleft the deep vault, and shone therein,
where the basilisk killed, and the animal's body was dissolved in a
death-bringing vapour: its claw extended from the fermenting
wine-cask; its eyes were air, that burnt when the fresh wind touched
it.

And there resided a powerful force in the sword; _so_ powerful, that
the grain of gold was beaten to a flat surface, thin as the covering
of mist that