ambols--suddenly disappearing, and as suddenly bursting into
tenfold brilliancy and power. And while he gazed wonderingly upon the
gallery to the left, thin, mist-like, aerial shapes passed slowly up;
and when they had gained the hall they seemed to rise aloft, and to
vanish, as the smoke vanishes, in the measureless ascent.

He turned in fear towards the opposite extremity--and behold! there came
swiftly, from the gloom above, similar shadows, which swept hurriedly
along the gallery to the right, as if borne involuntarily adown the
sides of some invisible stream; and the faces of these spectres were
more distinct than those that emerged from the opposite passage; and on
some was joy, and on others sorrow--some were vivid with expectation and
hope, some unutterably dejected by awe and horror. And so they passed,
swift and constantly on, till the eyes of the gazer grew dizzy and
blinded with the whirl of an ever-varying succession of things impelled
by a power apparently not their own.

Arbaces turned away, and, in the recess of the hall, he saw the mighty
form of a giantess seated upon a pile of skulls, and her hands were busy
upon a pale and shadowy woof; and he saw that the woof communicated with
the numberless wheels, as if it guided the machinery of their movements.
He thought his feet, by some secret agency, were impelled towards the
female, and that he was borne onwards till he stood before her, face to
face. The countenance of the giantess was solemn and hushed, and
beautifully serene. It was as the face of some colossal sculpture of his
own ancestral sphinx. No passion--no human emotion, disturbed its
brooding and unwrinkled brow: there was neither sadness, nor joy, nor
memory, nor hope: it was free from all with which the wild human heart
can sympathize. The mystery of mysteries rested on its beauty--it awed,
but terrified not: it was the Incarnation of the sublime. And Arbaces
felt the voice leave his lips, without an impulse of his own; and the
voice asked:

'Who art thou, and what is thy task?'

'I am That which thou hast acknowledged,' answered, without desisting
from its work, the mighty phantom. 'My name is NATURE! These are the
wheels of the world, and my hand guides them for the life of all
things.'

'And what,' said the voice of Arbaces, 'are these galleries, that
strangely and fitfully illumined, stretch on either hand into the abyss
of gloom?'

'That,' answered the giant-mother, 'which