eachers. He, whose knowledge
had but yesterday culminated in the assurance that it was impossible to
know anything, could now assert with positive conviction, that the human
soul could exist apart from the matter it had animated. He had thus
gained that fixed footing outside the earth which Archimedes had
demanded to enable him to move it; and he should soon be able to exert
his power over departed souls, whose nature he now understood as well
as--ay, and better than--Serapion. Korinna's obedient spirit would help
him, and when once he should succeed in commanding the souls of the
dead, as their master, and in keeping them at hand among the living, a
new era of happiness would begin, not only for him and his father, but
for every one who had lost one dear to him by death.

But here Melissa interrupted his eager and confident speech. She had
listened with increasing uneasiness to the youth who, as she knew, had
been cheated. At first she thought it would be cruel to destroy his
bright illusions. He should at least in this be happy, till the anguish
of having thoughtlessly betrayed his brother to ruin should be a thing
of the past! But when she perceived that he purposed involving his
father in the Magian's snares by calling up his mother's Manes, she
could no longer be silent, and she broke out with indignant warning:
"Leave my father alone, Philip! For all you saw at the Magian's was mere
trickery."

"Gently, child," said the philosopher, in a superior tone. "I was of
exactly the same opinion till after sundown yesterday. You know that the
tendency of the school of philosophy to which I belong insists, above
all, on a suspension of judgment; but if there is one thing which may be
asserted with any dogmatic certainty--"

But Melissa would hear no more. She briefly but clearly explained to him
who the maiden was whose hand he had held by the lake, and whom he had
seen again at Serapion's house; and as she went on his interruptions
became fewer. She did her utmost, with growing zeal, to destroy his
luckless dream; but when the blood faded altogether from his colorless
cheeks, and he clasped his hand over his brow as if to control some
physical suffering, she recovered her self-command; the beautiful fear
of a woman's heart of ever giving useless pain, made her withhold from
Philip what remained to be told of Agatha's meeting with Alexander.

But, without this further revelation, Philip sat staring at the ground
as if h