lighter for soaring away. 'It is the scythe of Time,' said Emanuel, 'but whence does it, haply, catch the reflection?' We looked toward the east, and there hung far in the distance and high in the air a broad dark-glowing land of vapor, which occasionally lightened. 'Is not that Eternity?' said Emanuel. Then fell before us light snow-pearls, like sparks. We looked up and three gold-green birds of paradise poised themselves overhead and swept round incessantly in a little circle, one after the other, and the falling pearls came from their eyes, or were their eyes themselves. High above them stood the full moon in the blue, but on the earth there was still no light, but a blue shadow: for the blue of heaven was a great blue cloud, opened only in one place by the moon, which poured down radiance on the three birds of paradise, and down below on a bright form averted from us.--_You_ were that form, and turned your face toward the East, toward the hanging landscape, as if you would presently see something there. The birds of paradise sprinkled their pearls faster and faster into your eyes; 'They are the tears which our friend must shed,' said Emanuel; and then, too, they fell from your eyes, but more brightly, and lay glittering on the flowery ground. The blue on the earth suddenly grew brighter than the blue in the heavens, and a steep cavern, whose mouth yawned towards Eternity, sank back deeper and deeper through the earth towards the west, down even to America, where the sun shone from below into the opening,--and a stream of evening-red, broad as a grave, shot upward out of the earth, and diffused itself with its evening sheen over the far haze-land of the vapory Eternity like thin flames. Then trembled your outspread arms, then trembled your songs full of blissful longing, then could we and you see perfectly the illuminated Eternity. But it shifted with playing colors under the gaze, we could not retain even in thought what we saw; they were elusive forms and dissolving hues, they seemed near, seemed far, seemed to be in the midst of our thoughts.---Little clouds going up from the earth floated around the glowing Eternity, and each bore a human being, standing upon it and singing, up to that luminous island, which clove itself open toward the earth, with only an endless row of white trees, moulded of light and snow, and instead of blossoms putting forth purple flowers.--And we saw our three shadows lying sublimely projected on the radiant white grove; and on Clotilda's shadow the purple flowers hung down as garlands; an angel hovered round the lovely shadow and smiled upon it tenderly and touched the place of the heart upon it. Then didst thou suddenly tremble, Clotilda, and turn round towards us, fairer than the angel in Eternity; thy whole ground gleamed under the fallen tears and became transparent. And now when thy dropping pearls dissolved the ground into a rising cloud, then didst thou hastily reach thy hand to us, and say,