Yet he says in another place, with equal wit and sublimity, “Every obtaining of a desire hath a _show_ of advancement, as motion in a circle hath a _show_ of progression.” Perhaps our movement may be _spiral_? and every revolution may bring us nearer and nearer to some divine centre in which we may be absorbed at last? 56. He refers in this following passage to that theory of the angelic existences which we see expressed in ancient symbolic Art, first by variation of colour only, and later, by variety of expression and form. He says,—“We find, as far as credit is to be given to the celestial hierarchy of that supposed Dionysius, the senator of Athens, that the first place or degree is given to the Angels of Love, which are called Seraphim; the second to the Angels of Light, which are termed Cherubim; and the third, and so following, to Thrones, Principalities, and the rest (which are all angels of power and ministry); so as the angels of knowledge and illumination are placed before the angels of office and domination.” —But the Angels of LOVE are first and over all. In other words, we have here in due order of precedence, 1. LOVE, 2. KNOWLEDGE, 3. POWER,—the angelic Trinity, which, in unity, is our idea of GOD. [Illustration] CHATEAUBRIAND. (“MEMOIRES D’OUTRE TOMBE.” 1851.) 57. Chateaubriand tells us that when his mother and sisters urged him to marry, he resisted strongly—he thought it too early; he says, with a peculiar naïveté, “Je ne me sentais aucune qualité de mari: toutes mes illusions étaient vivantes, rien n’était épuisé en moi, l’énergie même de mon existence avait doublé par mes courses,” &c. So then the “_existence épuisé_” is to be kept for the wife! “_la vie usée_”—“_la jeunesse abusée_,” is good enough to make a husband! Chateaubriand, who in many passages of his book piques himself on his morality, seems quite unconscious that he has here given utterance to a sentiment the most profoundly immoral, the most fatal to both sexes, that even his immoral age had ever the effrontery to set forth. 58. “Il paraît qu’on n’apprend pas à mourir en tuant les autres.” Nor do we learn to suffer by inflicting pain: nothing so patient as pity. 59. “Le cynisme des mœurs ramène dans la société, en annihilant le sens moral, une sorte de barbares; ces barbares de la civilisation, propres à détruire comme les Goths, n’ont pas la puissance de fonder comme eux; ceux-ci étaient les énormes enfants d’une nature vierge; ceux-là sont les avortons monstrueux d’une nature dépravée.”