_American._--“Emperor, the hand-writing of destroying Fate is on your wall. The hands of hundred of millions will pull it down. God will send light, by the invading influence of the ‘outside barbarians’ of the far West, to scatter the darkness from your land. Your dynasty is doomed.”
The spectre of Confucius nods confirmation, and disappears.
The _voyageurs_ pass out, and soar into the air.
Intense cimmerian darkness now seems to prevail everywhere, and the aerialists see themselves, as it were from a distance, flying as illumined transparent shapes through it. Afar off, and in another land, there is seen a small luminous spot on the horizon.
The speed of thought brings them to its full view. They swoop down; and pause in riveted contemplation of the sublime pile.
What a house, built by supposed hands! It is a structure from masses of the purest crystal; a mile long; two-thirds of a mile broad; a half-mile high to its eaves. A steeple, itself of a mile’s height and of beautiful proportions, towers with a superb aplomb a mile and a half above its front base. It is radiant with a whitish internal illumination, that shoots its apex of light upward to the dark empyrean. Over a central point of the temple, a third distance from its rear, a lofty dome uplifts in grand majesty its imposing symmetry, and from which hangs pendent within, a vast globular light resembling and sacred to the sun, permeating and illuming with its golden rays the mighty mass. The double-tinted splendor of the _tout ensemble_, thrilled with rapture even an immortal soul! Above the dome, and from a staff like the lightning’s streak, floated a tri-colored _oriflamme_--a rainbow flag.
“One tint was of the sunbeam’s dyes, “One the blue depth of seraph’s eyes, “One, the pure spirit’s veil of white “Had robed in radiance of its light; “The three so mingled did beseem “The texture of a heavenly dream.”
The occasion is a holy period to a people in southern Asia, of whom tens of thousands throng the columned interior. The flying visitors enter. Their eyes are instantly attracted upward to the high-vaulted ceiling, appearing like a slightly concaved sky, and of a deep cerulean hue, studded with stars (mystic phenomenon!) as if in deference to night.