id he, after a pause, "how, and by what arts would you so
awaken the imaginative faculty?"

"Ask not until the time comes for the trial," answered Liebhur.

"But can you awaken it in all?--the dull, the unideal, as in the musing
and exalted?"

"No! but the dull and unideal will not go through the necessary ordeal.
Few besides those for whom fate casts her great parts in life's drama,
ever come to that point when I can teach them the Future."

"Do you mean that your chief votaries are among the great? Pardon me,
I should have thought the most superstitious are to be found among the
most ignorant and lowly."

"Yes; but they consult only what imposes on their credulity, without
demanding stern and severe sacrifice of time and enjoyment, as I do. The
daring, the resolute, the scheming with their souls intent upon great
objects and high dreams-those are the men who despise the charms of the
moment, who are covetous of piercing the far future, who know how much
of their hitherward career has been brightened, not by genius or nature,
but some strange confluence of events, some mysterious agency of fate.
The great are always fortunate, and therefore mostly seekers into the
decrees of fortune."

So great is the influence which enthusiasm, right or wrong, always
exercises over us, that even the hard and acute Radclyffe-who had
entered the room with the most profound contempt for the pretensions of
the soothsayer, and partly from a wish to find materials for ridiculing
a folly of the day, partly, it may be from the desire to examine which
belonged to his nature--began to consider in his own mind whether he
should yield to his curiosity, now strongly excited, and pledge himself
to the preliminary penance the diviner had ordained.

The soothsayer continued:--

"The stars, and the clime, and the changing moon have power over us--why
not? Do they not have influence over the rest of nature? But we can only
unravel their more august and hidden secrets, by giving full wing to
the creative spirit which first taught us their elementary nature, and
which, when released from earth, will have full range to wander over
their brilliant fields. Know in one word, the Imagination and the Soul
are one, one indivisible and the same; on that truth rests all my lore."

"And if I followed your precepts, what other preliminaries would you
enjoin?"

"Not until thou engagest to perform them, will I tell thee more."

"I engage!"

"And swear?