upon the form of a young man, tall and exceeding fair; his raiments were whiter sevenfold than snow, the brightness of his face darkened the sun, his wavy, golden locks rested on his brow in two shining coronal wreaths.  “Come with me, thou mortal being,” he exclaimed, when he had drawn near.  “Who art thou, Lord?” said I.  “I am the Angel of the realms of the North,” answered he, “guardian of Britain and its queen.  I am one of the princes who stand below the throne of the Lamb, receiving his commands to protect the Gospel against all its enemies in Hell, in Rome and in France, in Constantinople, in Africa and in India, and wherever else they may be, devising plans for its destruction.  I am the Angel who saved thee beneath the Castle of Belial, and who showed thee the vanity and madness of all the earth, the City of Destruction and the splendor of Emmanuel’s City; and again have I come at his bidding to show thee greater things, because thou art seeking to make good use of what thou hast seen erstwhile.”  “How can it be, Lord,” asked I, “that your glorious highness, guardian of kings and kingdoms, does condescend to associate with carrion such as I?” “Ah,” said he, “in our sight a beggar’s virtue is more than a king’s majesty.  What if I am greater than all the kings of earth, and supreme to many of the countless lords of heaven?  Yet, since our eternal Sovereign vouchsafed to take upon Himself such unutterable humiliation—­put on one of your bodies, lived in your midst, and died to save you, how dare I deem it otherwise than too sublime for my office to serve thee and the meanest of men, who are so high in my Master’s favor?  Hence, spirit, cast off thine earthy mould!” he cried, gazing upwards:  and at the word, I beheld him fall free of all bodily form, and snatch me up to the vault of heaven, through the region of thunder and lightning, and all the glowing armouries of the empyrean; higher, immeasureably higher than I had previously been with him, and where the earth appeared scarcely wider than a stack-yard.  Having allowed me to rest awhile, he hurried me upwards a myriad miles, until the sun appeared far beneath us; through the milky way, past Pleiades, and many other stars of appalling magnitude, catching a distant glimpse of other worlds.  And after journeying for a long time, we come at last to the confines of the great eternity, in sight of the two courts of the vauntful King of Death—­one to the right, the other to the left, but very far apart from one another as there lay an immense void between them.  I asked whether I might go and see the court on my right hand, for I observed that this was not at all like the other I had previously seen.  “Thou shalt perchance,” said he, “see, somewhile, more of the difference there is between them.  But now we must proceed in another direction.”  At that we turned away from the little world, and across the intervening space we let ourselves descend into the Eternal Realm between the two courts, into the formless void, a