ch.),--all these, as the showman enchants
some trembling children on a Christmas Eve with his lantern and
phantasmagoria, Mejnour exhibited to his pupil.

....

"And now laugh forever at magic! when these, the very tricks, the very
sports and frivolities of science, were the very acts which men viewed
with abhorrence, and inquisitors and kings rewarded with the rack and
the stake."

"But the alchemist's transmutation of metals--"

"Nature herself is a laboratory in which metals, and all elements, are
forever at change. Easy to make gold,--easier, more commodious, and
cheaper still, to make the pearl, the diamond, and the ruby. Oh, yes;
wise men found sorcery in this too; but they found no sorcery in the
discovery that by the simplest combination of things of every-day use
they could raise a devil that would sweep away thousands of their kind
by the breath of consuming fire. Discover what will destroy life, and
you are a great man!--what will prolong it, and you are an imposter!
Discover some invention in machinery that will make the rich more rich
and the poor more poor, and they will build you a statue! Discover some
mystery in art that will equalise physical disparities, and they will
pull down their own houses to stone you! Ha, ha, my pupil! such is
the world Zanoni still cares for!--you and I will leave this world to
itself. And now that you have seen some few of the effects of science,
begin to learn its grammar."

Mejnour then set before his pupil certain tasks, in which the rest of
the night wore itself away.

CHAPTER 4.V.

Great travell hath the gentle Calidore
And toyle endured...
There on a day,--He chaunst to spy a sort of shepheard groomes,
Playing on pipes and caroling apace.
...He, there besyde
Saw a faire damzell.
--Spenser, "Faerie Queene," cant. ix.

For a considerable period the pupil of Mejnour was now absorbed in
labour dependent on the most vigilant attention, on the most minute and
subtle calculation. Results astonishing and various rewarded his toils
and stimulated his interest. Nor were these studies limited to chemical
discovery,--in which it is permitted me to say that the greatest marvels
upon the organisation of physical life seemed wrought by experiments
of the vivifying influence of heat. Mejnour professed to find a
link between all intellectual beings in the existence of a certain
all-pervading and invisible fluid resembling electricity,