ere
these, words? Were they symbols of some hidden virtue in the liquid?
Were there intelligences to whom these could speak, and thus reveal a
wondrous history? And then, again, with what an intense eagerness have
I gazed on the lurid smoke that arose from some smelting mass, now
fancying that the vapor was about to assume form and substance, and bow
imagining that it lingered lazily, as though waiting for some cabalistic
word of mine to give it life and being? How heartily did I censure
the folly that had ranked alchemy amongst the absurdities of human
invention! Why, rather, had not its facts been treasured and its
discoveries recorded, so that in some future age a great intelligence
arising might classify and arrange them, showing at least what were
practicable and what were only evasive. Alchemists were, certainly,
men of pure lives, self-denying and humble. They made their art no
stepping-stone to worldly advancement or success; they sought no favor
from princes, nor any popularity from the people; but, retired and
estranged from all the pleasures of the world, followed their one
pursuit, unnoticed and unfriended. How cruel, therefore, to drag them
forth from their lonely cells, and expose them to the gaping crowd as
devil worshippers! How inhuman to denounce men whose only crimes were
lives of solitude and study! The last words of Peter von Vordt, burned
for a wizard, at Haarlem, in 1306, were, "Had they left this poor head
a little longer on my shoulders, it would have done more for human
happiness than all this bonfire!"

How rash and presumptuous is it, besides, to set down any fixed limits
to man's knowledge! Is not every age an advance upon its predecessors,
and are not the commonest acts of our present civilization perfect
miracles as compared with the usages of our ancestors? But why do I
linger on this theme, which I only introduced to illustrate the temper
of my boyish days? As I grew older, books of chivalry and romance took
possession of my mind, and my passion grew for lives of adventure. Of
all kinds of existence, none seemed to me so enviable as that of those
men who, regarding life as a vast ocean, hoisted sail, and set forth,
not knowing nor caring whither, but trusting to their own manly spirit
for extrication out of whatever difficulties might beset them. What a
narrow thing, after all, was our modern civilization, with all its forms
and conventionalities, with its gradations of rank and its orde