were, ye were fated to be deceived. Ye had not souls
of faith, and daring fitted for the destinies at which ye aimed! Yet
Paracelsus--modest Paracelsus--had an arrogance that soared higher than
all our knowledge. Ho, ho!--he thought he could make a race of men from
chemistry; he arrogated to himself the Divine gift,--the breath of life.
(Paracelsus, 'De Nat. Rer.,' lib. i.)

"He would have made men, and, after all, confessed that they could be but
pygmies! My art is to make men above mankind. But you are impatient of
my digressions. Forgive me. All these men (they were great dreamers, as
you desire to be) were intimate friends of mine. But they are dead and
rotten. They talked of spirits,--but they dreaded to be in other company
than that of men. Like orators whom I have heard, when I stood by the
Pnyx of Athens, blazing with words like comets in the assembly, and
extinguishing their ardour like holiday rockets when they were in the
field. Ho, ho! Demosthenes, my hero-coward, how nimble were thy heels
at Chaeronea! And thou art impatient still! Boy, I could tell thee such
truths of the past as would make thee the luminary of schools. But thou
lustest only for the shadows of the future. Thou shalt have thy wish.
But the mind must be first exercised and trained. Go to thy room, and
sleep; fast austerely, read no books; meditate, imagine, dream, bewilder
thyself if thou wilt. Thought shapes out its own chaos at last. Before
midnight, seek me again!"

CHAPTER 4.IV.

It is fit that we who endeavour to rise to an elevation so
sublime, should study first to leave behind carnal affections,
the frailty of the senses, the passions that belong to matter;
secondly, to learn by what means we may ascend to the climax of
pure intellect, united with the powers above, without which never
can we gain the lore of secret things, nor the magic that effects
true wonders.--Tritemius "On Secret Things and Secret Spirits."

It wanted still many minutes of midnight, and Glyndon was once more in
the apartment of the mystic. He had rigidly observed the fast ordained
to him; and in the rapt and intense reveries into which his excited
fancy had plunged him, he was not only insensible to the wants of the
flesh,--he felt above them.

Mejnour, seated beside his disciple, thus addressed him:--

"Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man's natural tendency
is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowle