mentary glance at the starry
heavens we can conceive the infinite multitude of that glorious host of
unknown orbs.

In such a retrospect the terrified sinner shrinks back into himself, and
finding there no stay by which to cling, must feel shrinking into
infinite nothingness; while the devout soul raises its thoughts to the
Almighty, yielding itself up to Him in childlike trust, and praying,
"Thy will be done in me!"

But this man had not the childlike mind, neither did he tremble like the
sinner; his thoughts were still the self-praising thoughts in which he
had fallen asleep. His path, he believed, must lead straight heavenward,
and Mercy, the promised Mercy, would open to him the gates.

And, in his dream, the Soul followed the Angel of Death, though not
without first casting one wistful glance at the couch where lay, in its
white shroud, the lifeless image of clay, still, as it were, bearing the
impress of the soul's own individuality. And now they hovered through
the air, now glided along the ground. Was it a vast decorated hall they
were passing through, or a forest? It seemed hard to tell; Nature, it
appeared, was formally set out for show, as in the artificial old French
gardens, and amid its strange, carefully arranged scenes, passed and
repassed troops of men and women, all clad as for a masquerade.

"Such is human life!" said the Angel of Death.

The figures seemed more or less disguised; those who swept by in the
glories of velvet and gold were not all among the noblest or most
dignified-looking, neither were all those who wore the garb of poverty
insignificant or vulgar. It was a strange masquerade! But most strange
it was to see how one and all carefully concealed under their clothing
something they would not have others perceive, but in vain, for each was
bent upon discovering his neighbor's secret, and they tore and snatched
at one another till, now here, now there, some part of an animal was
revealed. In one was found the grinning head of an ape, in another the
cloven foot of a goat, in a third the poison-fang of a snake, in a
fourth the clammy fin of a fish.

All had in them some token of the animal--the animal which is fast
rooted in human nature, and which here was seen struggling to burst
forth. And, however closely a man might hold his garment over it, the
others would never rest till they had rent the hiding veil, and all kept
crying out, "Look here! look now! here he is! there she is!"--and