branches, reaching as far as the eye could go,
were all of yellow molten gold, and the whole
bathed in a rich effulgence, half yellow, half
pink! This prepared me fur the cloud of angels
dressed in floating clouds or vapour (not, surely,
muslin?), who glided out from among the golden
trees. But alas! it did not prepare me for HER,
who, after the divine creatures had performed
some motions and groupings of their own—
exquisitely graceful— came tripping down from the
very end of the glade: the Fairy Queen herself,
with a glittering silver wand in her hand, dressed
in blue vapour shot with silver, the surpassing
lovely Queen Morgana herself! At that
moment I felt a feeling— I can only liken to a sort
of wrench— at my heart; and oh! from that
moment I was an undone m——, boy I mean. A
divinity, surely, hired secretly from somewhere
up in the regions we heard of on Sundays
(was this sinful?), merely to come down for a
short span and then return! Her arms, not
purely arms, rather the imperfect development
of wings; not flesh, but a kind of divine pink
essence, illuminated from within! And those
— those— supports on which she floated, now
hither, now thither, of ambrosial pink, and
also illuminated from within! Oh! if feet (for I
could not wholly shut out the idea) they must be
called, were they not spiritualised limbs? It was
not walking, but floating. What motions! What
curves! What flying in and out among her
subjects! As I said, from that moment I was a
gone m—— , boy I mean.

How obsequious, servile almost, were the
fairies to her slightest wish— as, indeed, was very
fitting. How they spread out like a human fan,
like a human star; how they floated and drifted
to the sides, and left the divine visitant in the
centre— as, indeed, was only fitting. How gracious
she was in her dominion— how charmingly soft
and even winning in her commands, for one
gifted with such awful powers! Then when the
dancing set in, and ravishing music played, and
she floated and swam and rose and sank, all in
the air, the element natural to her, my
bewildered senses became enthralled, until, at last,
two dark terrible screens came together on each
side, joined in the middle, and the golden vale
and the golden trees, steeped and bathed in
liquid light, were shut out from view. Alas! so
too was the ambrosial fairy queen.

The procession came on now, the soldiers with
the monstrous heads, some rueful, some idiotic,
with halberds on their shoulders, tramping in to
a comic march, and last the testy king— was he
named Grumgrowdowski the First?— all filling
the house with peals of convulsive laughter.
The little heads were rolling about as if filled
with mercury; the Contemporary Boy, who had
before shown a tendency to acute spasms of
mirth, now fell into a sort of agony of laughter,
and dropped back suffering much. Honest
John Plusher was roaring loudly, as his peculiar
manner was; but I— I believe to their wonder—
remained unmoved. The spectacle of the idiotic,
or even rueful beefeater, did not affect me; I
gazed at the antics of the beefeaters stolidly,
steadily, stupidly, and mournfully. I had a load
of lead upon my heart— I felt a wistful aching
that this poor grimacing could not satisfy. I
was thinking of her, longing for her to return.
And so the comic procession was re-formed, and
danced off as they had danced on, the testy king
last of all, performing what I suppose was
conceived an exquisitely funny dance by himself, for
he was called on to do it again, with frantic
screams. I never even smiled. I was longing
for him to be done, and was delighted when he
skipped away to the side with a stupid jump
and became lost to view— for I was looking
anxiously for her to reappear. Now, surely she
would come again. But no!— it was an Open
Country, with a mill and a bridge, with a miller,
and a procession of men carrying sacks. The
miller, and his men also, had heads all knobbed
and pink, like a particular growth of potato,
known, I believe, as the kidney. Everything
they did was welcomed with screams, especially
when the miller himself tumbled into the stream.
But in this merriment I could not join.

I was getting unutterably low-spirited. Even
the Contemporary Boy, now well-nigh rolling
under the seat in hysterical convulsion, for a
moment looked at me strangely and seriously.
Honest John Plusher whispered, "What's up,
Jack?" but I put him back impatiently, for,
at that moment, crossing the bridge, was a
figure meant to be that of an aged crone
disguised in a sort of domino and hood, but
whom I, with a marvellous instinct, recognised
as the exquisite ambrosial creature from above.
This marvellous instinct was in some degree
assisted by a glimpse of a glittering raiment, as
it were, of liquid silver, hidden underneath;
but I knew her at once. For the time I felt an
inexpressible relief, and when, for the purpose
of requiting the miller's daughter's humanity,
she ultimately revealed herself in all her true
celestial essence (as I said before, not mere flesh,
surely, but something in the nature of manna,
or of pale pink sugar illuminated from within),
I gave way to my feelings in a torrent of delight.
Short-lived happiness! She presently passed
away, and then came the stupid comic thing
igain, and the beefeaters, and fresh palace
inferiors, and then a dark place, with many people
huddled together, and then she appeared again out
of the ground, bearing her silver wand, and looking
— as it was plain to be seen she was— an angel
among earthy and earthly creatures. Then she
began to speak, to declaim in the language of her
own celestial country— waving her wand— then
the back opened. Then cascades of molten silver
began to flow, and gigantic ferns to open, and
glorified women to ascend slowly, and light to be
turned on in streams and floods, and I to be
generally dazzled, bewildered, and suffering from a
sense of exquisite oppression! Then, pillars began
to be revealed, pillars that revolved and glistened,
and more ferns to open, and angels to ascend in