AND BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. 187 



seasons ; that the sun listened to his dictates, and passed from tropic 

 to tropic by his direction ; that the clouds, at his call, poured out 

 their waters ; that the Nile overflowed at his command ; that he re- 

 strained the fury of the dog-star, and mitigated the fervour of the 

 crab. 



Let us follow him into the world to which he had been gradually 

 allured and restored, by the elegance of the manners, and the charms 

 of the conversation, of Nekayah and her favourite. We here find 

 him mingling in the gay tumult of life, and dividing his hours by 

 a succession of amusements ; and as realities rise up in greater- 

 variety and combination around him, we find the conviction of his 

 authority over the skies fade gradually from his mind; though such 

 was the dangerous prevalence of the primitive and long-cherished 

 power his fancy exerted, that a temporary return to silence and 

 himself brought back the fallacies his imagination had created, in 

 nearly their pristine force and vigour. " If I am accidentally left 

 alone for a few hours," said he, " my inveterate persuasion rushes 

 upon my soul, and my thoughts are chained down by some irresis- 

 tible violence ; but they are soon disentangled by the prince's con- 

 versation, and instantaneously released at the entrance of Pekuah. 

 I am like a man habitually afraid of spectres, who is set at ease by 

 a lamp, and wonders at the dread which harassed him in the dark ; 

 yet, if his lamp be extinguished, feels again the terrors which he 

 knows that, when it is light, he shall feel no more." 



Long-continued study commonly produces fancies as perverted as 

 those which possessed the astronomer of Cairo, to which I have just 

 alluded. Independent of the bodily disorders which act upon the 

 mental constitution of the" student, from his sedentary life, the 

 mind, like the constantly strung bow, will, sooner or later, lose its 

 elasticity, and, at length, break. It is true that the prevalence of 

 imagination to which over-much study gives rise, is, during the 

 last half century, much diminished, owing to the vast progress 

 which all branches of natural philosophy have made during this pe- 

 riod. We have now no searchers after the philosopher's stone. 

 Alchemy is but a dream of the sciences of past days, and its devotees 

 are known no more. The occult sciences, necromancy and witch- 

 craft, number none of the students of the nineteenth century 



