"Royal Society," what "Academy of Sciences" on earth, could approach it in excellence? And what delights must attend such companionship! How pleasant would it be, to behold the sages of past time assembled thus together in high converse! How interesting to see the eyes of Milton, no longer blind, flashing with his lofty soul, and to hear Shakespeare's voice, in soft response, uttering bright thoughts in the pure spirit's-tongue,—the mind's own language! How charming would it be, to witness a meeting of Dante and his revered Virgil, and to behold them visiting together those scenes of the eternal world—or others more real than they—which the former in his great poem has in so striking a manner pictured them as doing! How interesting to behold Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton conversing together on the high truths of science; and now, in their more advanced state of wisdom, considering not merely the outward system of the universe, not only the fact that world revolves round world by the power of gravitation,—but inquiring together into the secret soul of that mighty power,—seeking to know the essential nature of that attraction which holds particles and worlds together,—and tracing it through nature up to spirit; and through spirit up to God, the sole Source of all activity and life!—to God, who is ever pouring out from Himself that stream of attractive love, which conjoins the souls of His creatures to each other and then to Himself—and which thence, perchance, produces that attraction of cohesion and gravitation, which knits together particles into beautiful globes, and then binds all to the Sun itself, God's representative in the material creation. Or again,—to come down to later times,
