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Extract from Letter iii.

Knowest thou that of late I have sometimes asked myself, “Is there no guilt in the knowledge that has so divided us from our race?” It is true that the higher we ascend the more hateful seem to us the vices of the short-lived creepers of the earth,—­the more the sense of the goodness of the All-good penetrates and suffuses us, and the more immediately does our happiness seem to emanate from him.  But, on the other hand, how many virtues must lie dead in those who live in the world of death, and refuse to die!  Is not this sublime egotism, this state of abstraction and reverie,—­this self-wrapped and self-dependent majesty of existence, a resignation of that nobility which incorporates our own welfare, our joys, our hopes, our fears with others?  To live on in no dread of foes, undegraded by infirmity, secure through the cares, and free from the disease of flesh, is a spectacle that captivates our pride.  And yet dost thou not more admire him who dies for another?  Since I have loved her, Mejnour, it seems almost cowardice to elude the grave which devours the hearts that wrap us in their folds.  I feel it,—­the earth grows upon my spirit.  Thou wert right; eternal age, serene and passionless, is a happier boon than eternal youth, with its yearnings and desires.  Until we can be all spirit, the tranquillity of solitude must be indifference.

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Extracts from Letter iv.

I have received thy communication.  What! is it so?  Has thy pupil disappointed thee?  Alas, poor pupil!  But—­

....

(Here follow comments on those passages in Glyndon’s life already known to the reader, or about to be made so, with earnest adjurations to Mejnour to watch yet over the fate of his scholar.)

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But I cherish the same desire, with a warmer heart.  My pupil! how the terrors that shall encompass thine ordeal warn me from the task!  Once more I will seek the Son of Light.

....

Yes; Adon-Ai, long deaf to my call, at last has descended to my vision, and left behind him the glory of his presence in the shape of Hope.  Oh, not impossible, Viola,—­not impossible, that we yet may be united, soul with soul!

Extract from Letter V.—­(Many months after the last.)

Mejnour, awake from thine apathy,—­rejoice!  A new soul will be born to the world,—­a new soul that shall call me father.  Ah, if they for whom exist all the occupations and resources of human life,—­if they can thrill with exquisite emotion at the thought of hailing again their own childhood in the faces of their children; if in that birth they are born once more into the holy Innocence which is the first state of existence; if they can feel that on man devolves almost an angel’s duty, when he has a life to guide from the cradle, and a soul to nurture for the heaven,—­what to me must be the rapture to welcome an inheritor of all