The floor of Heaven, like ‘fair crystal, with the sun’s countenance upon it,’ seems to have been suggested by the ‘sea of glass, mingled with fire,’ in Rev. xv. 2, which, in turn, had been anticipated, in some sort, by the Pûitika sea in the Avesta, beside which the Tree of Life grew. The grouping of the saints about the Throne would likewise appear to be an amplification of the description in the Revelation.[162] The Apostles and the Blessed Virgin, we are told, occupy a special place, next to the Lord Himself; the Apostles on His left hand, and next to them the patriarchs and prophets, and on His right the Virgin, and next to her holy maidens, ‘and no great space between,’ a graceful and kindly touch. About them are babes and striplings, and ‘bird-choirs of the heavenly folk’; further on, others of the righteous stand ‘in ranks and lofty coronals about the Throne, circling it in brightness and bliss, their faces all towards God.’ Here we have, in essentials, the Celestial Rose of Dante’s Paradise (canto 31); the bird-choir, and, a little later, the guardian angels that keep flitting to and fro among the several companies of the righteous, remind us of the spirits which flitted in and out of the petals of the Rose like bees. Several other passages are impressed with the author’s ecclesiastical turn of thought. The Throne stands in the south-east, probably because the direction of Jerusalem; reference is made to the nine degrees of Heaven, _i.e._ the Angels, Archangels, and Principalities; Powers, Virtues, and Dominations; Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim; the geographical distribution of the saints in accordance with the four quarters of the world--a distribution distinct from the fourfold division of mankind according to their merits, to which allusion has been made--is probably of the same character. The sevenfold wall surrounding Heaven appears to contain a reference to the seven Heavens; the different colours of these walls may, as suggested, be a reminiscence of the walls of Ecbatana, as described by Herodotus, though it is quite possible that the idea may have occurred to the author spontaneously.