Sun-threads—­filmy beams—­ran through the celestial napery of what seemed its princely cradle.  All the winged orders hovered round, watching when the new-born should open its yet closed eyes; which, when it did, first one, and then the other—­with a solicitude and apprehension, yet not such as, stained with fear, dims the expanding eye-lids of mortal infants, but as if to explore its path in those its unhereditary palaces—­what an inextinguishable titter that time spared not celestial visages!  Nor wanted there to my seeming—­O the inexplicable simpleness of dreams!—­bowls of that cheering nectar,

  —­which mortals caudle call below—­

Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants,—­stricken in years, as it might seem,—­so dexterous were those heavenly attendants to counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, to greet, with terrestrial child-rites the young present, which earth had made to heaven.

Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full symphony as those by which the spheres are tutored; but, as loudest instruments on earth speak oftentimes, muffled; so to accommodate their sound the better to the weak ears of the imperfect-born.  And, with the noise of those subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments of pinions—­but forthwith flagged and was recovered into the arms of those full-winged angels.  And a wonder it was to see how, as years went round in heaven—­a year in dreams is as a day—­continually its white shoulders put forth buds of wings, but, wanting the perfect angelic nutriment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, and fell fluttering—­still caught by angel hands—­for ever to put forth shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its birth was not of the unmixed vigour of heaven.

And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was to be called Ge-Urania, because its production was of earth and heaven.

And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adoption into immortal palaces:  but it was to know weakness, and reliance, and the shadow of human imbecility; and it went with a lame gait; but in its goings it exceeded all mortal children in grace and swiftness.  Then pity first sprang up in angelic bosoms; and yearnings (like the human) touched them at the sight of the immortal lame one.

And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences, with pain and strife to their natures (not grief), put back their bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal minds, schooling them to degrees and slower processes, so to adapt their lessons to the gradual illumination (as must needs be) of the half-earth-born; and what intuitive notices they could not repel (by reason that their nature is, to know all things at once), the half-heavenly novice, by the better part of its nature, aspired to receive into its understanding; so that Humility and Aspiration went on even-paced in the instruction of the glorious Amphibium.

But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross to breathe the air of that super-subtile region, its portion was, and is, to be a child for ever.