All nature is constantly changing and progressing. The bards who sang upon the earth centuries ago--Homer, Virgil, the Greek and Roman, the Celtic and Saxon writers of old--have passed beyond the spirit sphere which I inhabit to a spirit planet still more refined, and have left behind only the records of their strange experience. The eighteenth century cannot walk side by side with the third or fourth century more readily in the spirit world than on earth. The character of the spirit literature of the present day is essentially scientific and explorative. We have in our world, as you have in yours, intrepid travellers--learned men, who make voyages to almost inaccessible planets--and they return even as those of earth, with sketches and graphic outlines of the strange sights they have witnessed; and those less venturesome who remain at home are as anxious as your citizens might be to hear accounts of wonderful regions that have been visited. And such books of travel are sought eagerly. We have but few works on theology; the nature and essence of God is discussed with us, but not so elaborately as with you. Spirits who have passed into a second life have so nearly approached the mystery of a Divine Being that they do not desire to debate the subject. A large proportion of our writers are devoted to what you would here term transcendental thought, a kind of literature which lies between poetry and music, which awakens a feeling of ecstasy, and gives, as it were, wings to the soul. The poets who sang upon earth during the last century, of whom Shelly, Keats, and Byron are an English type, and Halleck, Pierrepont, Dana, and Willis the American representatives, are among the most inspired and far-reaching of our present writers of poetry and song. Our literature has one great advantage over that of earth, in that our separate nationalities become merged in one grand unit. We do not need translators, as we have adopted a universal written language. There are some writers who still retain, as I have said, the modes adopted on earth, but those who have been resident any length of time in the spirit sphere employ the plan of writing by signs, which are understood and acknowledged by every nationality. I should like, in closing, to introduce an extract from an old volume which I found in a library in the city of Spring Garden. It was written by Addison during his sojourn in that city, in the year 1720, and is in the form of a letter, supposed to be written to a friend on earth. In it he essays to portray the expansion of mind he has experienced in his new home through the magnetic influence of thought language: “Behold the far off luminary suspended millions and billions and trillions of miles in space; then turn the eye yonder and see that infinitesimal point of vegetation, earth--a speck, countless multitudes of which heaped and piled together would form but a point compared with that majestic sun!