mness,--the mystery
of the great Babylon--the dimness of the sealed eye and soul; but do
not let us confuse these with the glorious mystery of the things which
the "angels desire to look into," or with the dimness which, even
before the clear eye and open soul, still rests on sealed pages of the
eternal volume.

25. On some isolated mountain at day-break,[17] when the night mists
first rise from off the plain, watch their white and lakelike fields,
as they float in level bays, and winding gulfs, about the islanded
summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder
and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch
when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the foam
of their undulating surface parts, and passes away, and down under
their depths the glittering city and green pastures lie like Atlantis,
between the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling
every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the
wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests
and ridges of the dark hills shorten their grey shadows upon the
plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists
rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the
winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent with the
morning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose
leagues of massy undulation will melt back, back into that robe of
material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear
again above in the serene heaven like a wild, bright, impossible
dream, foundationless, and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in
the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep lake below. Wait yet a
little longer, and you shall see those mists gather themselves into
white towers, and stand like fortresses along the promontories, massy
and motionless, only piled, with every instant, higher and higher into
the sky, and casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the
pale blue of the horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of
narrow, dark, pointed vapours, which will cover the sky, inch by inch,
with their grey network, and take the light off the landscape with an
eclipse which will stop the singing of the birds, and the motion of
the leaves, together;--and then you will see horizontal bars of black
shadow forming under them, and lurid wreaths create themselves, you
know not how, among