insect meshed in the web in which thou hast entangled
limbs and wings! Thou hast not only inhaled the elixir, thou hast
conjured the spectre; of all the tribes of the space, no foe is so
malignant to man,--and thou hast lifted the veil from thy gaze. I cannot
restore to thee the happy dimness of thy vision. Know, at least, that
all of us--the highest and the wisest--who have, in sober truth, passed
beyond the threshold, have had, as our first fearful task, to master and
subdue its grisly and appalling guardian. Know that thou CANST deliver
thyself from those livid eyes,--know that, while they haunt, they cannot
harm, if thou resistest the thoughts to which they tempt, and the horror
they engender. DREAD THEM MOST WHEN THOU BEHOLDEST THEM NOT. And thus,
son of the worm, we part! All that I can tell thee to encourage, yet to
warn and to guide, I have told thee in these lines. Not from me, from
thyself has come the gloomy trial from which I yet trust thou wilt
emerge into peace. Type of the knowledge that I serve, I withhold no
lesson from the pure aspirant; I am a dark enigma to the general seeker.
As man's only indestructible possession is his memory, so it is not in
mine art to crumble into matter the immaterial thoughts that have sprung
up within thy breast. The tyro might shatter this castle to the dust,
and topple down the mountain to the plain. The master has no power to
say, 'Exist no more,' to one THOUGHT that his knowledge has inspired.
Thou mayst change the thoughts into new forms; thou mayst rarefy and
sublimate it into a finer spirit,--but thou canst not annihilate that
which has no home but in the memory, no substance but the idea. EVERY
THOUGHT IS A SOUL! Vainly, therefore, would I or thou undo the past,
or restore to thee the gay blindness of thy youth. Thou must endure the
influence of the elixir thou hast inhaled; thou must wrestle with the
spectre thou hast invoked!"

The letter fell from Glyndon's hand. A sort of stupor succeeded to the
various emotions which had chased each other in the perusal,--a stupor
resembling that which follows the sudden destruction of any ardent and
long-nursed hope in the human heart, whether it be of love, of avarice,
of ambition. The loftier world for which he had so thirsted, sacrificed,
and toiled, was closed upon him "forever," and by his own faults of
rashness and presumption. But Glyndon's was not of that nature which
submits long to condemn itself. His indignation bega