t to spot by the utterance of
a charmed formula. But men who, for ages, had passed their lives in
attempting all the effects that can astonish and awe the vulgar, could
not but learn some secrets which all the more sober wisdom of modern
times would search ineffectually to solve or to revive. And many of
such arts, acquired mechanically (their invention often the work of a
chemical accident), those who attained to them could not always explain,
not account for the phenomena they created, so that the mightiness of
their own deceptions deceived themselves; and they often believed they
were the masters of the Nature to which they were, in reality, but
erratic and wild disciples. Of such was the student in that grim cavern.
He was, in some measure, the dupe, partly of his own bewildered wisdom,
partly of the fervour of an imagination exceedingly high-wrought and
enthusiastic. His own gorgeous vanity intoxicated him: and, if it be an
historical truth that the kings of the ancient world, blinded by their
own power, had moments in which they believed themselves more than
men, it is not incredible that sages, elevated even above kings, should
conceive a frenzy as weak, or, it may be, as sublime: and imagine that
they did not claim in vain the awful dignity with which the faith of the
multitude invested their faculties and gifts.

But, though the accident of birth, which excluded him from all field for
energy and ambition, had thus directed the powerful mind of Almamen to
contemplation and study, nature had never intended passions so fierce
for the calm, though visionary, pursuits to which he was addicted.
Amidst scrolls and seers, he had pined for action and glory; and,
baffled in all wholesome egress, by the universal exclusion which, in
every land, and from every faith, met the religion he belonged to, the
faculties within him ran riot, producing gigantic but baseless schemes,
which, as one after the other crumbled away, left behind feelings of
dark misanthropy and intense revenge.

Perhaps, had his religion been prosperous and powerful, he might have
been a sceptic; persecution and affliction made him a fanatic. Yet, true
to that prominent characteristic of the old Hebrew race, which made them
look to a Messiah only as a warrior and a prince, and which taught them
to associate all their hopes and schemes with worldly victories and
power, Almamen desired rather to advance, than to obey, his religion. He
cared little for its