All the souls, then, that are dwelling in the four lower of the heavenly regions are clad in this mind-body, and freely exercise all mental powers; but these powers are creative in a way that down here we can hardly realise. On earth a painter, a sculptor, a musician, dreams dreams of exquisite beauty, creating their visions by the powers of the mind, but when they seek to embody them in the coarse materials of earth they fall far short of the mental creation. The marble is too resistant for perfect form, the pigments too muddy for perfect colour. In heaven, all they think is at once reproduced in form, for the rare and subtle matter of the heaven-world is mindstuff,' the medium in which the mind normally works when free from passion, and it takes shape with every mental impulse. Each man, therefore, in a very real sense, makes his own heaven, and the beauty of his surroundings is indefinitely increased, according to the wealth and energy of his mind. As the soul develops its powers, its heaven grows more and more subtle and exquisite; all the limitations in heaven are self-created, and its heaven expands and deepens with the expansion and deepening of the soul. While the soul is weak and selfish, narrow and ill-developed, its heaven shares these pettinesses, but it is always the best that is in the soul, however poor that best may be. Here, as everywhere else, God is not mocked; and whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.' In the heaven-world all earth's higher experiences are assimilated, and the thoughts, aspirations, and efforts of the earth-life are worked up into the powers and faculties of the soul; hence the more of these it takes with it the more it grows and develops. Schemes of beneficence for which power and skill to accomplish were lacking in the past life are there worked out in thought, and the power and skill are developed as faculties of the soul, to be put into use in a future life on earth; the clever and earnest student develops to be reborn as a genius, the devotee to be reborn as a saint. Round each soul also throng those it loved in life, and every image of the loved ones that live in the heart becomes a living companion of the soul in the heavenly places. And here again comes in limitation, but now in those who enter into the soul's paradise. Exactly in proportion to the development of the soul in a man's friends is the reality of their presence in his heaven. He, as it were, makes the outward image of his friend, but the soul of his friend vitalises the image in proportion to its own growth and expansion. The illusions of earth, though lessened, are not escaped from in the lower heavens, though contact is more real and more immediate. For it must never be forgotten that these heavens are part of a great evolutionary scheme, and until man has found the real self his own unreality makes him subject to illusions. Let us take the heavens in order.

Seventh or lowest region.-Here are the souls whose noblest

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part on earth was love for family and friends, narrow but sincere, and sometimes unselfish-souls but little developed, little influenced by religious emotion, or the higher aspects of human life. They lead but a very slightly progressive life, but enjoy all the bliss their narrow capacity is able to receive, the highest happiness they are able to imagine.

Sixth region.-Here may be observed souls of every religious faith, steeped in religious ecstasy, worshipping God under the forms their piety sought on earth, losing themselves in the rapture of devotion, in communion with the objects they adore. For the Divine Love they sought meets each under the form that was worshipped, and no soul feels itself amid strangers in its heavenly bliss; the Hindu finds his God under the beloved form of Shri Krishna, the Christian his under that of the Christ. For the roads taken by devotion are many, but the goal of all is one. Very beautiful are some of the family groups in this region gathered round the living and loving image of the God worshipped on earth in the family circle, the Divine veiling Itself as the child Christ or as Bala Krishna, to meet the ideal of the loving and still child-like souls.

Fifth region. The souls that are found in this region have added to their faith works in abundance, and during their earth-life performed much worship by labour for their fellows. At every step the observer meets those who showed love to God by love to man, and who are reaping the reward of their good deeds by increasing powers of usefulness and increasing wisdom in their direction. These will yield many of the great philanthropists of yet unborn centuries, who will be born on earth with innate dower of unselfish love and of power to achieve.

Fourth region.-Most various perhaps of all the heavens are the inhabitants of this, for here all the powers of more advanced souls find their active exercise. Here we see souls into whose heavenly visions enter great teachers of the race, even those greatest ones who were worshipped as divine as well as learned from as masters. Here they instruct as pupils the souls that on earth sought them as teachers, and swift is the progress made by the eager souls who drink in the heavenly wisdom. As teachers and light-bringers shall they go back to earth, born with the birthmark of the teacher's high office on them. In this heaven also are found the kings of art and literature, so growing in their loftier power that they shall be reborn with genius as a birthright. And others who failed, though greatly aspiring, are here transmuting longings into power, and searchers into Nature are learning her hidden secrets, to return as great 'discoverers' to earth. But time would fail me to tell of all the wonders and the beauties of these lower heavens, the marvels of their living colours, the ineffable harmony of their melodious sounds.

We rise to three higher regions, and here we find the home of the souls themselves, freed from all garments of illusion, face to face with Truth. To this high dwelling rises the consciousness of every child of man ere he reincarnates on earth; the vast majority touch its lowest level but for a moment, for the undeveloped soul is but faintly, dreamily self-conscious at that height, almost as the unborn babe in its mother's womb. None the less is that embryonic creature the soul itself, and into it, as into an undying receptacle, passes everything that is pure and valuable gathered by means of its lower bodies or vehicles during its earthly, astral, and devachanic lives. By these experiences alone it grows, develops, becomes mature, and in that third heaven we may study myriads upon myriads of souls, some temporarily connected with physical bodies, but the great majority without them. They are at all stages of development, from the embryonic to the comparatively mature. The latter spend part. of their heavenly life fully self-conscious in that region, seeing life as it really is, things in their essence, not in their illusory phenomenal aspects.

In the succeeding region are souls highly developed in intellect and in moral character, rapidly maturing towards human perfection. They remember all their past and can see the causes working towards future results; they are in full and close communion with souls of development similar to their own, helping and being helped; during the brief periods of incarnation on earth they are able to guide their physical vehicles and manifest a high, noble, and strong character; self-consciousness has been evolved, never again to be lost, and they are nearly ready for the step which shall unite the higher and lower minds, and make full and free communication possible between the soul and its physical, astral, and mental bodies. This accomplished, the memory of the past can enter the waking physical brain, and the man remembers the long series of his past incarnations.

It skills not to speak of the highest of the heavens, where the souls of masters and initiates have their home. Enough that from that region are poured down upon earth streams of intellectual force and energy of the loftiest kinds. The intellectual life of the world has there its root; thence genius receives its purest inspirations, and blessed are the embodied souls on whom its radiance falls.

Such, poorly and feebly told, are some of the conditions of the life after death as observed and studied by some amongst us who are training themselves for such investigations. Nothing has here been said which may not at a certain stage of development be seen without leaving the physical body, without losing touch of the waking consciousness. Needless also to add that to all such observers-and indeed to many also who are immediately around them-death

becomes a mere incident of small importance, a mere change, that men call death.' Death is but a birth into a wider life, a return from brief exile to the soul's true home, a passing from a prison into the freedom of the outer air. There are states of consciousness in which, to quote Lord Tennyson, Death seems a ludicrous impossibility,' and when these have been experienced, no doubt as to life after death' can ever again arise. For life is then seen to be unbroken, unbreakable, and 'death is swallowed up of life.'

ANNIE BESANT.

1896

LAND PURCHASE IN IRELAND

LAND Purchase in Ireland began its career in the year 1870. Before that time it did not form an article of the creed of either of the political parties of the State. Mr. Bright had advocated the creation of a peasant proprietary in Ireland by means of State aid, just as Mr. John Stuart Mill had advocated the adequate representation of minorities in Parliament. Both suggestions had been listened to somewhat languidly. They were regarded as the hobbies of two distinguished men who ought perhaps to be humoured, if the humouring did not cost too much; and so Birmingham was formed into a three-cornered constituency, the Bright clauses, as they were called, were tacked on to Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill in 1870, and a million sterling was voted by Parliament to work them. The clauses proved a complete failure. At the end of ten years less than one half of the million voted had been utilised, or, in other words, the capital sum employed in carrying out land purchase in an entire decade was not more than a twentieth or thirtieth part of a single year's rental of agricultural Ireland.

The purchase sections of Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Act of 1881 were scarcely more successful. In the four years which succeeded the passing of that measure the advances made under it to tenants for the purchase of their holdings amounted to little more than a quarter of a million sterling.

The plan on which land sales to tenants in Ireland are conducted is this. The tenant agrees to buy and the landlord to sell; the purchase money (or part of it, as the case may be) is advanced to the landlord by the State; the tenant becomes liable to the State for the repayment of it, not in a bulk sum, but by instalments spread over a number of years, which instalments comprise both interest on the sum advanced and a sinking fund in discharge of the principal.

By the Bright clauses of 1870 the State advance was limited to two-thirds, and by the Land Act of 1881 to three-fourths of the purchase money of the holding, and it was repayable by instalments at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum on the amount advanced, which instalments would in thirty-five years pay off both principal and interest.

It may be asked why was it that these provisions were so little