He turned in fear towards the opposite extremity—­and behold! there came swiftly, from the gloom above, similar shadows, which swept hurriedly along the gallery to the right, as if borne involuntarily adown the sides of some invisible stream; and the faces of these spectres were more distinct than those that emerged from the opposite passage; and on some was joy, and on others sorrow—­some were vivid with expectation and hope, some unutterably dejected by awe and horror.  And so they passed, swift and constantly on, till the eyes of the gazer grew dizzy and blinded with the whirl of an ever-varying succession of things impelled by a power apparently not their own.

Arbaces turned away, and, in the recess of the hall, he saw the mighty form of a giantess seated upon a pile of skulls, and her hands were busy upon a pale and shadowy woof; and he saw that the woof communicated with the numberless wheels, as if it guided the machinery of their movements.  He thought his feet, by some secret agency, were impelled towards the female, and that he was borne onwards till he stood before her, face to face.  The countenance of the giantess was solemn and hushed, and beautifully serene.  It was as the face of some colossal sculpture of his own ancestral sphinx.  No passion—­no human emotion, disturbed its brooding and unwrinkled brow:  there was neither sadness, nor joy, nor memory, nor hope:  it was free from all with which the wild human heart can sympathize.  The mystery of mysteries rested on its beauty—­it awed, but terrified not:  it was the Incarnation of the sublime.  And Arbaces felt the voice leave his lips, without an impulse of his own; and the voice asked: 

‘Who art thou, and what is thy task?’

‘I am That which thou hast acknowledged,’ answered, without desisting from its work, the mighty phantom.  ’My name is nature!  These are the wheels of the world, and my hand guides them for the life of all things.’

‘And what,’ said the voice of Arbaces, ’are these galleries, that strangely and fitfully illumined, stretch on either hand into the abyss of gloom?’

‘That,’ answered the giant-mother, ’which thou beholdest to the left, is the gallery of the Unborn.  The shadows that flit onward and upward into the world, are the souls that pass from the long eternity of being to their destined pilgrimage on earth.  That which thou beholdest to thy right, wherein the shadows descending from above sweep on, equally unknown and dim, is the gallery of the Dead!’

’And wherefore, said the voice of Arbaces, ’yon wandering lights, that so wildly break the darkness; but only break, not reveal?’

’Dark fool of the human sciences! dreamer of the stars, and would-be decipherer of the heart and origin of things! those lights are but the glimmerings of such knowledge as is vouchsafed to Nature to work her way, to trace enough of the past and future to give providence to her designs.  Judge, then, puppet as thou art, what lights are reserved for thee!’