idea of necromancy, as touching on the province of evil spirits; but he was so well mystified as to suppose all that passed was regularly connected with the art of taking bees.  In this respect, he and the Indians equally resembled one of those familiar pictures, in which we daily see men, in masses, contributing to their own deception and subjection, while they fondly but blindly imagine that they are not only inventors, but masters.  This trade of mastery, after all, is the property of a very few minds; and no precaution of the prudent, no forethought of the wary, nor any expedient of charters, constitutions, or restrictions, will prevent the few from placing their feet on the neck of the many.  We may revive the fable of King Log and King Stork, as often, and in as many forms as we will; it will ever be the fable of King Log and King Stork.  We are no admirers of political aristocracies, as a thousand paragraphs from our pen will prove; and, as for monarchs, we have long thought they best enact their parts, when most responsible to opinion; but we cannot deceive ourselves on the subject of the atrocities that are daily committed by those who are ever ready to assume the places of both, making their fellow-creatures in masses their dupes, and using those that they affect to serve.

Ben Boden was now a sort of “gouvernement provisoire” among the wondering savages who surrounded him.  He had got them to believe in necromancy—­a very considerable step toward the exercise of despotic power.  It is true, he hardly knew, himself, what was to be done next; but he saw quite distinctly that he was in a dilemma, and must manage to get out of it by some means or other.  If he could only succeed in this instance, as well as he had succeeded in his former essay in the black art, all might be well, and Margery be carried in triumph into the settlements.  Margery, pro haec vice, was his goddess of liberty, and he asked for no higher reward, than to be permitted to live the remainder of his days in the sunshine of her smiles.  Liberty! a word that is, just now, in all men’s mouths, but in how few hearts in its purity and truth!  What a melancholy mistake, moreover, to suppose that, could it be enjoyed in that perfection with which the imaginations of men love to cheat their judgments, it is the great good of life!  One hour spent in humble veneration for the Being that gave it, in common with all of earth, its vacillating and uncertain existence, is of more account than ages passed in its service; and he who fancies that in worshipping liberty, he answers the great end of his existence, hugs a delusion quite as weak, and infinitely more dangerous, than that which now came over the minds of Peter and his countrymen, in reference to the intelligence of the bee.  It is a good thing to possess the defective and qualified freedom, which we term “liberty”; but it is a grave error to set it up as an idol to be worshipped.

“What my brother do next?” demanded Bear’s Meat, who, being a somewhat vulgar-minded savage, was all for striking and wonder-working exhibitions of necromancy.  “P’raps he find some honey now?”