Zanoni — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

truth, these races and tribes differ more widely, each from each, than the Calmuc from the Greek, — differ in attributes and powers. In the drop of water you see how the animalcule vary, how vast and terrible are some of those monster mites as compared with others. Equally so with the inhabitants of the atmosphere: some of surpassing wisdom, some of horrible malignity; some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as messengers between earth and heaven. He who would establish intercourse with these varying beings resembles the traveller who would penetrate into unknown lands. He is exposed to strange dangers and unconjectured terrors. That intercourse once gained, I cannot secure you from the chances to which your journey is exposed. I cannot direct you to paths free from the wanderings of the deadliest foes. You must alone, and of yourself, face and hazard all. But if you are so enamoured of life as to care only to live on, no matter for what ends, recruiting the nerves and veins with the alchemist’s vivifying elixir, why seek these dangers from the intermediate tribes? Because the very elixir that pours a more glorious life into the frame, so sharpens the senses that those larve of the air become to you audible and apparent; so that, unless trained by degrees to endure the phantoms and subdue their malice, a life thus gifted would be the most awful doom man could bring upon himself. Hence it is, that though the elixir be compounded of the simplest herbs, his frame only is prepared to receive it who has gone through the subtlest trials. Nay, some, scared and daunted into the most intolerable horror by the sights that burst upon their eyes at the first draught, have found the potion less powerful to save than the agony and travail of Nature to destroy. ‘Ilo the unprepared the elixir is thus but the

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deadliest poison. Amidst the dwellers of the threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her tribe, — one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does your courage falter? ” “Nay; your words but kindle it.” “Follow me, then, and submit to the initiatory labors.” With that, Mejnour led him into the interior chamber, and proceeded to explain to him certain chemical operations which, though extremely simple in themselves, Glyndon soon perceived were capable of very extraordinary results, “In the remoter times,” said Mejnour, smiling, “ our brotherhood were often compelled to recur to delusions to protect: realities; and, as dexterous mechanicians or expert chemists, they obtained the name of sorcerers. Observe how easy to construct is the Spectre Lion that attended the renowned Leonardo da Vinci! ” And Glyndon beheld with delighted surprise the simple means by which the wildest cheats of the imagination can be formed. The magical landscapes in which Baptista Porta rejoiced; the apparent change of the seasons with which Albertus Magnus startled the Earl of Holland; nay, even those more dread delusions of the Ghost and Image with which the necromancers of Heraclea woke the conscience of the conqueror of Platea,1— all these, as the showman enchants some trembling children on a Christmas Eve with his lantern and i ii vasa exhibited to his PBR v el now sera pres 4 sind} ae fee the very tricks, the very sports and frivolities of science,

1 Pausanias, — see Plutarch.

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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 impostor! 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 equalize 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.

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CHAPTER YV.

Great travell has 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.