ages to almost inaccessible
planets--and they return even as those of earth, with sketches and
graphic outlines of the strange sights they have witnessed; and those
less venturesome who remain at home are as anxious as your citizens might
be to hear accounts of wonderful regions that have been visited. And such
books of travel are sought eagerly.

We have but few works on theology; the nature and essence of God is
discussed with us, but not so elaborately as with you.

Spirits who have passed into a second life have so nearly approached the
mystery of a Divine Being that they do not desire to debate the subject.

A large proportion of our writers are devoted to what you would here term
transcendental thought, a kind of literature which lies between poetry
and music, which awakens a feeling of ecstasy, and gives, as it were,
wings to the soul.

The poets who sang upon earth during the last century, of whom Shelly,
Keats, and Byron are an English type, and Halleck, Pierrepont, Dana, and
Willis the American representatives, are among the most inspired and
far-reaching of our present writers of poetry and song.

Our literature has one great advantage over that of earth, in that our
separate nationalities become merged in one grand unit. We do not need
translators, as we have adopted a universal written language. There are
some writers who still retain, as I have said, the modes adopted on
earth, but those who have been resident any length of time in the spirit
sphere employ the plan of writing by signs, which are understood and
acknowledged by every nationality.

I should like, in closing, to introduce an extract from an old volume
which I found in a library in the city of Spring Garden.

It was written by Addison during his sojourn in that city, in the year
1720, and is in the form of a letter, supposed to be written to a friend
on earth. In it he essays to portray the expansion of mind he has
experienced in his new home through the magnetic influence of thought
language:

"Behold the far off luminary suspended millions and billions and
trillions of miles in space; then turn the eye yonder and see that
infinitesimal point of vegetation, earth--a speck, countless multitudes
of which heaped and piled together would form but a point compared with
that majestic sun!

"Yet behold it move and expand beneath the long fibrous rays which that
effulgent orb sends down through so many billions of miles to the place
of its