If danger, and pain, And death you despise, On—for again Into light you shall rise; Rise into light With that Secret Divine, Now shrouded from sight By the Veils of the Shrine! But if—— Here the letters faded away into a dead blank, more awfully intelligible than the most eloquent words. A new hope now flashed across me. The dream of the Garden, which had been for some time almost forgotten, returned to my mind. “Am I then,” I exclaimed, “in the path to the promised mystery? and shall the great secret of Eternal Life _indeed_ be mine?” “Yes!” seemed to answer, out of the air, that spirit‐voice, which still was heard crowning the choir with its single sweetness. I hailed the omen with transport. Love and Immortality, both beckoning me onward—who could give a thought to fear, with two such bright hopes in view? Having invoked and blessed that unknown enchantress, whose steps had led me to this abode of mystery and knowledge, I plunged into the chasm. Instead of that vague, spectral twilight which had at first met my eye, I now found, as I entered, a thick darkness, which, though far less horrible, was, at this moment, still more disconcerting, as my lamp, which had been, for some time, almost useless, was fast expiring. Resolved, however, to make the most of its last gleam, I hastened, with rapid step, through this gloomy region, which seemed wider and more open to the air than any that I had yet passed. Nor was it long before the appearance of a bright blaze in the distance announced to me that my first great Trial was at hand. As I drew nearer, the flames burst high and wide on all sides;—and the spectacle that now presented itself was such as might have appalled even hearts more habituated to dangers than mine. There lay before me, extending completely across my path, a thicket, or grove of the most combustible trees of Egypt—tamarind, pine, and Arabian balm. Around their stems and branches were coiled serpents of fire, which, twisting themselves rapidly from bough to bough, spread their own wild‐ fire as they went, and involved tree after tree in one general blaze. It was, indeed, rapid as the burning of those reed‐beds of Ethiopia, whose light brightens, at night, the distant cataracts of the Nile. Through the middle of this blazing grove, I perceived, my only pathway lay. There was not a moment to be lost—the conflagration gained rapidly on either side, and already the narrowing path between was strewed with fire. Casting away my now useless lamp, and holding my robe as some protection over my head, with a tremor, I own, in every limb, I ventured through the blaze.