(albeit all is within the limits of science and matter), then there
are assuredly in this world magicians whom we meet without dreaming
that they are such. Here and there, however rare, there is mortal who
has studied deeply--but

"Softened all and tempered into beauty;
And blended with lone thoughts and wanderings,
The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind
To _love_ the universe."

Such beings do not come before the world, but hide their lights,
knowing well that their magic would defeat itself, and perish if it
were made common. Any person of the average worldly cast who could
work any miracles, however small, would in the end bitterly regret it
if he allowed it to be known. Thus I have read ingenious stories, as
for instance one by HOOD, showing what terrible troubles a man fell
into by being able to make himself invisible. Also another setting
forth the miseries of a successful alchemist. The Algonkin Indians
have a legend of a man who came to grief and death through his power
of making all girls love him. But the magic of which I speak is of a
far more subtle and deeply refined nature, and those who possess it
are alone in life, save when by some rare chance they meet their kind.
Those who are deeply and mysteriously interested in any pursuit for
which the great multitude of all-alike people have no sympathy, who
have peculiar studies and subjects of thought, partake a little of
the nature of the _magus_. Magic, as popularly understood, has no
existence, it is a literal _myth_--for it means nothing but what
amazes or amuses for a short time. No miracle would be one if it
became common. Nature is infinite, therefore its laws cannot be
violated--_ergo_, there is no magic if we mean by that an inexplicable