n time?--who is there
in youth that has not nourished the belief that the universe has
secrets not known to the common herd, and panted, as the hart for the
water-springs, for the fountains that he hid and far away amidst the
broad wilderness of trackless science? The music of the fountain is
heard in the soul within till the steps, deceived and erring, rove away
from its waters, and the wanderer dies in the mighty desert. Think you
that none who have cherished the hope have found the truth, or that the
yearning after the Ineffable Knowledge was given to us utterly in vain?
No. Every desire in human hearts is but a glimpse of things that exist,
alike distant and divine. No! in the world there have been, from age to
age, some brighter and happier spirits who have won to the air in which
the beings above mankind move and breathe. Zicci, great though he be,
stands not alone; he has his predecessors, his contemporary rivals, and
long lines of successors are yet to come!"

"And will you tell me," said Glyndon, "that in yourself I behold one of
that mighty few over whom Zicci has no superiority in power and wisdom?"

"In me," answered the stranger, "you see one from whom Zicci himself
learned many of his loftiest secrets. Before his birth my wisdom was!
On these shores, on this spot, have I stood in ages that your chronicles
but feebly reach. The Phoenician, the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman, the
Lombard,--I have seen them all!--leaves gay and glittering on the trunk
of the universal life--scattered in due season and again renewed; till,
indeed, the same race that gave its glory to the ancient world bestowed
a second youth on the new. For the pure Greeks--the Hellenes, whose
origin has bewildered your dreaming scholars--were of the same great
family as the Norman tribe, born to be the lords of the universe, and
in no land on earth destined to be the hewers of wood. Even the dim
traditions of the learned that bring the sons of Hellas from the vast
and undetermined territories of Northern Thrace, to be the victors of
the pastoral Pelasgi, and the founders of the line of demi-gods, might
serve you to trace back their primeval settlements to the same region
whence, in later times, the Norman warriors broke on the dull and savage
hordes of the Celt, and became the Greeks of the Christian world. But
this interests you not, and you are wise in your indifference. Not
in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul