still
struggling into light, through the glorious delusions of alchemy and
mysticism, imagined that, even in simple practical operations, there
were peculiar virtues in virgin gold and certain precious stones. A link
in the process upon which Adam was engaged failed him; his ingenuity was
baffled, his work stood still; and in poring again and again over the
learned manuscripts--alas! now lost--in which certain German doctors
had sought to explain the pregnant hints of Roger Bacon, he found
it inculcated that the axle of a certain wheel must be composed of a
diamond. Now, in truth, it so happened that Adam's contrivance, which
(even without the appliances which were added in illustration of the
theory) was infinitely more complicated than modern research has found
necessary, did not even require the wheel in question, much less the
absent diamond; it happened, also, that his understanding, which, though
so obtuse in common life, was in these matters astonishingly clear,
could not trace any mathematical operations by which the diamond axle
would in the least correct the difficulty that had suddenly started up;
and yet the accursed diamond began to haunt him,--the German authority
was so positive on the point, and that authority had in many respects
been accurate. Nor was this all,--the diamond was to be no vulgar
diamond; it was to be endowed, by talismanic skill, with certain
properties and virtues; it was to be for a certain number of hours
exposed to the rays of the full moon; it was to be washed in a primitive
and wondrous elixir, the making of which consumed no little of the
finest gold. This diamond was to be to the machine what the soul is to
the body,--a glorious, all-pervading, mysterious principle of activity
and life. Such were the dreams that obscured the cradle of infant
science! And Adam, with all his reasoning powers, big lore in the hard
truths of mathematics, was but one of the giant children of the dawn.
The magnificent phrases and solemn promises of the mystic Germans got
firm hold of his fancy. Night and day, waking or sleeping, the diamond,
basking in the silence of the full moon, sparkled before his eyes.
Meanwhile all was at a stand. In the very last steps of his discovery he
was arrested. Then suddenly looking round for vulgar moneys to purchase
the precious gem, and the materials for the soluble elixir, he saw that
MONEY had been at work around him,--that he had been sleeping softly
and faring sum