tially obscured it to his vision. Gradually it ascended, wreathed itself over the antiquated fire-place, stole softly up to the ceiling, and wound its enfolding arms quietly about the old clock, till its face and hands became imperceptible in the pale lamp-light. Growing denser as it proceeded, round and round the time-stained walls it noiselessly crept, and continued its quiet circuitous motion, fold within fold, filling up the whole intermediate space between them and the chair of the young rector, and shutting out every familiar object in his desolate apartment, till he was hemmed in by an impervious atmosphere. Closer and closer the walls of his prison-house were pressing upon him at each moment; his breath came thicker and heavier at every inspiration; a sense of oppression, of suffocation, was upon him; yet had he no power of motion, no ability to seek relief.
How long he thus lay bound, manacled, speechless, he knew not. He heard no sound; even the tempest seemed to have ceased its moaning; and he asked himself, “Must I thus die?—is there no hand to aid?” There was a pause, during which it seemed as if thought itself were checked in its flow, and then there was observable a slight undulation in the dense mass; it trembled, it wavered, it parted in the midst—moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, but steadily, and falling back on either side, shaped itself gradually into graceful columns. First the base appeared, then rose the shaft, and then the finished capital. Moving thence gently upward, it threw its graceful mist-wreaths into noble Gothic arches. The marble pavement noiselessly spread itself beneath his feet, and he sat before the high altar of a great cathedral. Upon it stood seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst a golden censer. Soft moonlight, tinged with the rainbow dyes of the stained glass through which it passed, rested on the surrounding objects. There was a silence, so deep, so solemn, that it pervaded his whole being; and then the strains of the organ, soft, distant, as if amid the spheres, rolled through the high arches, which, as they grew deeper and louder, trembled beneath the vibrations.
Awe-struck, he listened, and then voices, as of unseen angels, mingled in the deep swell, and the “Stabat Mater” poured its holy
