ef that the universe has
secrets not known to the common herd, and panted, as the hart for the
water-springs, for the fountains that lie hid and far away amidst the
broad wilderness of trackless science? The music of the fountain is
heard in the soul WITHIN, till the steps, deceived and erring, rove away
from its waters, and the wanderer dies in the mighty desert. Think you
that none who have cherished the hope have found the truth, or that the
yearning after the Ineffable Knowledge was given to us utterly in vain?
No! Every desire in human hearts is but a glimpse of things that exist,
alike distant and divine. No! in the world there have been from age to
age some brighter and happier spirits who have attained to the air in
which the beings above mankind move and breathe. Zanoni, great though
he be, stands not alone. He has had his predecessors, and long lines of
successors may be yet to come."

"And will you tell me," said Glyndon, "that in yourself I behold one
of that mighty few over whom Zanoni has no superiority in power and
wisdom?"

"In me," answered the stranger, "you see one from whom Zanoni himself
learned some of his loftiest secrets. On these shores, on this spot,
have I stood in ages that your chroniclers but feebly reach. The
Phoenician, the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman, the Lombard, I have seen
them all!--leaves gay and glittering on the trunk of the universal life,
scattered in due season and again renewed; till, indeed, the same race
that gave its glory to the ancient world bestowed a second youth upon
the new. For the pure Greeks, the Hellenes, whose origin has bewildered
your dreaming scholars, were of the same great family as the Norman
tribe, born to be the lords of the universe, and in no land on earth
destined to become the hewers of wood. Even the dim traditions of the
learned, which bring the sons of Hellas from the vast and undetermined
territories of Northern Thrace, to be the victors of the pastoral
Pelasgi, and the founders of the line of demi-gods; which assign to a
population bronzed beneath the suns of the West, the blue-eyed Minerva
and the yellow-haired Achilles (physical characteristics of the North);
which introduce, amongst a pastoral people, warlike aristocracies and
limited monarchies, the feudalism of the classic time,--even these might
serve you to trace back the primeval settlements of the Hellenes to the
same region whence, in later times, the Norman warriors broke on
the dull