Once--whether in a dream, a waking vision, a poetical hallucination, or in sober reality, I know not--_once_ was I favoured with a distinct and glorious vision of the Faries' Land! I found myself in a country more enchantingly beautiful than the warm, romantic dream of the poet has ever yet conceived:--therein bloomed trees, and plants, and flowers, in beauty and luxuriance never to fade; therein was the soft air strongly imbued with the ambrosial odour of the orient rose; but ever as a gentle breeze enfolded me, it seemed on its refreshing wings to bear the heavenly fragrance of unknown flowers. The sky was of an effulgent azure, altogether indescribable--but under the influence of stealing twilight, insensibly was it darkening, though the yet undimmed colours of sunset were inexpressibly varied and vivid. Radiant and exquisitely beautiful beings, fair miniatures of mortals, inhabited this charming region, wherein was assembled all that had power to inebriate the soul with pure and rapturous felicity, and imbue it with an intense perception of its immortality and blessedness. Now stole the faint, delicious sound of very distant bells--clear, silvery, and sweet--upon mine ear, as the tones of a well-touched harp: sad were they--luxuriously sad; and their unearthly melody infused into my bosom a repose unknown to mortality. As I listened with awe and rapture to that delicate minstrelsy, I seemed to become all soul; tears--far indeed from tears of sorrow--suffused my wondering eyes, and my heart, in the delirium of gratitude, raised itself in solemn thanksgivings to its Creator.