lightning and thunder, and all the glowing armories of the sky,
innumerable degrees higher than I had been with him before, whence I
could scarcely descry the earth, which looked no wider than a croft.
After permitting me to rest a short space, he again lifted me up a
million of miles, until I could see the sun far below us; we rushed
through the milky way and past the Pleiades, and many other exceedingly
large stars, till we caught a distant view of other worlds. At length,
by dint of journeying, we reached the confines of the awful eternity, and
were in sight of the two palaces of the mighty king Death, which stand
one on the right hand and the other on the left, and are at a great
distance from each other, as there is an immense void between them. I
enquired whether we should go to see the right hand palace, because it
did not appear to me to resemble the other which I had seen before. "You
will probably see," he replied, "sometime, still more of the difference
which is between the one palace and the other; but at present it is
necessary for us to sail another course." Whereupon we turned away from
the little world, and having arrived over the intervening gap, we let
ourselves down to the country of Eternity, between the two palaces, into
the horrible void; an enormous country it was, exceedingly deep and
dark--without order and without inhabitants--now hot, now cold--sometimes
silent, sometimes noisy, with the sound caused by cataracts of water
tumbling upon the flames and extinguishing them; which cataracts,
however, did not long continue, for presently might be seen a puff of
fire bursting out and consuming the water. There was here no course, nor
whole, nothing living, nothing shapely; but a giddy discord and an
amazing darkness which would have blinded me for ever, if my companion
had not again displayed his heavenly garment of splendour. By the light
which it cast I could see the country of Oblivion, and the edges of the
wilds of Destruction in front, on the left hand; and on the right the
lowest skirts apparently of the walls of Glory. "Behold the great gulf
between Abraham and Dives," said my guide, "which is termed the place of
Chaos. It is the region of the elements which God created first; it is
the place wherein are the seeds of every living thing, from which the
Almighty word made your world and all that therein is--water, fire, air,
earth, animals, fishes and creeping things, winged birds, and hu