ure, by which he can impose on my imagination
and steal away my reason."

"Reflect well before you decide," said Sir Philip, with a solemnity
that was stern. "If you refuse to be warned and to be armed by me, your
reason and your imagination will alike be subjected to influences
which I can only explain by telling you that there is truth in those
immemorial legends which depose to the existence of magic."

"Magic!"

"There is magic of two kinds,--the dark and evil, appertaining to
witchcraft or necromancy; the pure and beneficent, which is but
philosophy, applied to certain mysteries in Nature remote from the
beaten tracks of science, but which deepened the wisdom of ancient
sages, and can yet unriddle the myths of departed races."

"Sir Philip," I said, with impatient and angry interruption, "if you
think that a jargon of this kind be worthy a man of your acquirements
and station, it is at least a waste of time to address it to me. I am
led to conclude that you desire to make use of me for some purpose which
I have a right to suppose honest and blameless, because all you know of
me is, that I rendered to your relation services which can not lower my
character in your eyes. If your object be, as you have intimated, to aid
you in exposing and disabling man whose antecedents have been those of
guilt, and who threatens with danger the society which receives him,
you must give me proofs that are not reducible to magic; and you must
prepossess me against the person you accuse, not by powders and fumes
that disorder the brain, but by substantial statements, such as justify
one man in condemning another. And, since you have thought fit to
convince me that there are chemical means at your disposal, by which the
imagination can be so affected as to accept, temporarily, illusions for
realities, so I again demand, and now still more decidedly than before,
that while you address yourself to my reason, whether to explain your
object or to vindicate your charges against a man whom I have admitted
to my acquaintance, you will divest yourself of all means and agencies
to warp my judgment so illicit and fraudulent as those which you
own yourself to possess. Let the casket, with all its contents, be
transferred to my hands, and pledge me your word that, in giving that
casket, you reserve to yourself no other means by which chemistry can be
abused to those influences over physical organization, which ignorance
or imposture may ascribe