The valley between these palaces was laid out in lawns, parks and gardens, adorned with flowers, statues, fountains, lakes, and picturesque walks and arbors. These things are common enough on earth; but here each of them exceeded the corresponding earthly form in all the elements of artistic beauty, as much as the most precious diamond in the world exceeds the commonest pebble on the sea-shore. This was the heaven of a society of angels, all belonging to the tribe of Benjamin, and all interiorly united by similar thoughts and affections. Now for the first time I learned that all angels were once men upon our earth or some other; that the physical universe is the indestructible basis of the spiritual; and that all things first receive root and form and substance in the former, to rise and expand indefinitely, in the latter. The earth is the footstool of the Lord, and is established for ever. I now noticed that I had on different garments from those I had worn in the world of spirits, and much more beautiful. “These garments are given you,” said my father, “to adapt you to the sphere which you have entered. We are clothed here imperceptibly to ourselves, as the trees and flowers in the natural world are clothed with forms and colors by a generous nature. All our external things arise spontaneously around us, without our thought or care or labor, being perfect correspondences and mirrors of the things within us.” “Here is the home of your brother,” said he; and we stood before a palace of marvelous splendor. Twelve steps of lustrous pearl led up to a grand piazza covered with a dazzling arch and supported by twelve columns of gold. We entered the spacious hall, and before I had time to observe its beauties, a youthful spirit advanced, strongly resembling my father; and with a face full of light and love, and a voice overflowing with kindness, welcomed me to that little spot, as he called it, of the Lord’s spiritual kingdom. “You shall see me as I used to be,” he said “and then you will know me better.” Thereupon he underwent the same series of spiritual changes by which my father revealed himself to me as the poor old leper of the wilderness. He returned into the states and forms of his boyhood, as a full-blown rose might shut, leaf after leaf, contracting itself slowly into a beautiful bud again. He was the same little Samuel who sported with my sisters and myself in our garden in Bethany, and whose withdrawal from us had left so dark a cloud on the sunny places of our childhood. Reassuming his angelic form while I gazed at him with admiration and joy, he pointed to a chamber, the half-open door of which was one superb crystal. From it there issued a beautiful female form, clad in a silk robe of lustrous white. Her face was radiant with smiles and beauty, and a single rose was in her hair. The extreme gentleness and gracefulness of her movements, her manners, her tones, revealed the pure soul of this bright angel.