and revealers of _occulta_ that they posed--especially
Emerson. And they dabbled or trifled with free thought and "immorality,"
crying Goethe up as the Light of Lights, while all their inner souls were
bound in the most Puritanical and petty goody-goodyism. Though there
were traces of grim Scotch humour in Carlyle, my patron saint and master,
Rabelais, or aught like him, had no credit with them.

They _paddled_ in Pantheism, but as regards it, both lacked the
stupendous faith and inspiration of the old adepti, who flung their whole
souls into God; and yet they sneered at Materialism and Science.

I did not then see _all_ of this so clearly as I now do, but I very soon
found that, as in after years it was said that Comteism was Catholicism
without Christianity, so the Carlyle-Emersonian Transcendentalism was
Mysticism without mystery. Nor did I reflect that it was a calling
people from the nightmared slumber of frozen orthodoxy or bigotry to come
and see a marvellous new thing. And when they came, they found out that
this marvellous thing was that they had been _awakened_, "only that and
nothing more"; and _that_ was the great need of the time, and worth more
than any magic or theosophy. But I had expected, in simple ignorant
faith, that the sacred mysteries of some marvellous cabala would be
revealed, and not finding what I wanted (though indeed I discovered much
that was worldly new to me), I returned to the good old ghost-haunted
paths trodden by my ancestors, to dryads and elves and voices from the
stars, and the _archaeus_ formed by the astral spirit (not the modern
Blavatsky affair, by-the-bye), which entyped all things . . . and so went
elving and dreaming on 'mid ruins old.

Be it observed that all this time I really did not know what I knew. Boys
are greatly influenced by their surroundings, and in those days every one
about me never spoke of Transcendentalism or "Germanism," or even
"bookishness," without a sneer. I was borne by a mysterious inner
impulse which I could not resist into this terrible whirlpool of _belles-
lettres_, occulta, facetiae, and philosophy; but I had, God knows, little
cause for pride that I read so much, for it was on every hand in some way
turned against me. If it had only been reading like that of other human
beings, it might have been endured; but I was always seen coming and
going with parchment-bound tomes. Once I implored my father, when I was
thirteen or fourteen, to l