how many erring steps have stumbled upon the threshold of the mighty learning, and fancied they had pierced the temple.  Hermes and Albert and Paracelsus, I knew ye all; but, noble as ye 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:—­