some are wholly indifferent to man, some benign to him, and some dreadly
hostile. In all the regular and prescribed conditions of mortal being,
this magic realm seems as blank and tenantless as yon vacant air. But
when a seeker of powers beyond the rude functions by which man plies the
clockwork that measures his hours, and stops when its chain reaches the
end of its coil, strives to pass over those boundaries at which philosophy
says, 'Knowledge ends,'--then he is like all other travellers in regions
unknown; he must propitiate or brave the tribes that are hostile,--must
depend for his life on the tribes that are friendly. Though your science
discredits the alchemist's dogmas, your learning informs you that all
alchemists were not ignorant impostors; yet those whose discoveries prove
them to have been the nearest allies to your practical knowledge, ever
hint in their mystical works at the reality of that realm which is open to
magic,--ever hint that some means less familiar than furnace and bellows
are essential to him who explores the elixir of life. He who once quaffs
that elixir, obtains in his very veins the bright fluid by which he
transmits the force of his will to agencies dormant in nature, to giants
unseen in the space. And here, as he passes the boundary which divides
his allotted and normal mortality from the regions and races that magic
alone can explore, so, here, he breaks down the safeguard between himself
and the tribes that are hostile. Is it not ever thus between man and man?
Let a race the most gentle and timid and civilized dwell on one side a
river or mountain, and another have home in the region beyond, each, if it
pass not the intervening barrier, may with each live in peace. But if
ambitious adventurers scale the mountain, or cross the river, with design
to subdue and enslave the population they boldly invade, then all the
invaded arise in wrath and defiance,--the neighbours are changed into
foes. And therefore this process--by which a simple though rare material
of nature is made to yield to a mortal the boon of a life which brings,
with its glorious resistance to Time, desires and faculties to subject to