We can readily understand that some who are unacquainted with lunatics, would describe these portraitures as the result of insanity or hallucination; but those who are more conversant with persons of unsound mind will doubt whether any ordinary insane persons ever see or describe things which they have never met with. One or two, certainly, have wonderful flights of imagination, but these have been highly educated men of extensive reading, &c. In mania, when visions are seen, some person or other whose description has been read by the lunatic, or who has really been observed, appears--or something which the individual has seen depicted, or otherwise been told of, presents itself, or there is a strange jumble of reality and possibility--just as in dreams, comical, grotesque, or horrible combinations are common, and cause us no surprise. There is, however, too much consistency in the method in which angels are depicted, to enable us to believe that their form was decided by any lunatic or dreamer. We scarcely can form an idea whether the Egyptians had a definite belief in angels, as the word is understood by moderns. With them, as it was with the Greeks, it is most probable that all beings which Jews and Christians alike would call angels, were designated "gods" or "demigods." Be this as it may, we find that the Mizraim had deities who wore wings. A round disc, apparently intended to represent the sun, two erected serpents to support it, and a long broad pinion on each side of the body, was symbolic of "the Supreme." The same may be said to be true of Assyria and Persia--only that in the symbolism of the two last, the serpents did not, generally, appear. In plate 30a, of Wilkinson's _Ancient Egyptians, 2d series_, a human figure is represented as winged, and before him is a five-rayed star. In plate 35 of the same book, Isis is represented as a nude woman, winged; the position of one pinion being such that it serves to conceal the body from the waist almost to the knees. In plate 36, "Athor" is depicted as being attended by a human-headed bird. On the other hand, in plate 39, where the gods are instructing the king in the use of the bow, the former are bird-headed men without wings. Whilst in plate 44, the soul of a dying man is represented as a human-headed bird with wings, arms, and legs. In plates 52, 53 of the same work, we notice specimens of winged serpents. In plate 63, Isis again appears as a wing bearer, and in this figure we find, as we ought to do, that the feathers of the pinions are attached to the arms of the goddess.