388 Novels by the Author of Headlong Hall. [Arrit, 
think!!_ The people read and think!!! The public, the public in general, 
the swinish multitude, the many-headed monster, actually reads and thinks!!! 
Horrible in thought, but in fact most horrible! Science classifies flowers. 
Can it make them bloom where it has placed them in its classification? No. 
Therefore flowers ought not to be classified. This is transcendental logic. 
Ha! in that cylindrical mirror I see three shadowy forms :—dimly I see them 
through the smoked glass of my spectacles. Who art thou?—Mysrery !— 
I hail thee! Who art thou?—Jarcon!—I love thee! Who art thou?— 
Superstition !—I worship thee! Hail, transcendental rrrap !’ 
“Mr. Fax cut short the thread of his eloquence by saying he would trouble 
him for the cream-jug. 
«Mr. Mystic began again, and talked for three hours without intermission, 
except that he paused a moment on the entrance of sandwiches and Madeira. 
His visitors sipped his wine in silence till he had fairly talked himself hoarse. 
Neither Mr. Fax nor Mr. Forester replied to his paradoxes ; for to what end, 
they thought, should they attempt to answer what few would hear, and none 
would understand ? 
“It was now time to retire, and Mr. Mystic showed his guests to the doors 
of their respective apartments, in each of which a gas-light was burning; and 
ascended another flight of stairs to his own dormitory, with a little twinkling 
taper in his hand. Mr. Forester and Mr. Fax stayed a few minutes on the 
landing-place, to have a word of consultation before they parted for the night. 
Mr. Mystic gained the door of his apartment—turned the handle of the lock— 
and had just advanced one step—when the whole interior of the chamber 
became suddenly sheeted with fire: a tremendous explosion followed ; and he 
was precipitated to the foot of the stairs in the smallest conceivable fraction of 
the infinite divisibility of time. 
“ Mr. Forester picked him up, and found him not much hurt ; only a little 
singed, and very much frightened. But the whole interior of the apartment 
continued to blaze. Mr. Forester and Sir Oran Haut-ton ran for water: 
Mr. Fax rang the nearest bell: Mr. Mystic vociferated ‘ Fire with singular 
energy: the servants ran about half-undressed: pails, buckets, and pitchers, 
were in active requisition ; till Sir Oran Haut-ton ascending the stairs with 
the great rain-water-tub, containing oné hundred and eight gallons of water, 
threw the whole contents on the flames with one sweep of his powerful arm. 
“The fire being extinguished, ‘it remained to ascertain its cause. It 
appeared that the gas-tube in Mr. Mystic’s chamber had been left unstopped, 
and the gas evolving without combustion (the apartment being perfectly air- 
tight), had condensed into a mass, which, on the approach of Mr. Mystic’s 
taper, instantly ignited, blowing the transcendentalist down stairs, and setting 
fire to his curtains and furniture. - 
«© Mr. Mystic, as soon as he recovered from his panic, began to bewail the 
catastrophe: not so much, he said, for itself, as because such an event in Cim- 
merian Lodge was an infallible omen of evil—a type and symbol of an ap- 
proaching period of public light—when the smoke of metaphysical mystery, 
and the vapours of ancient superstition, which he had done all that in him lay 
to consolidate in the spirit of man, would explode at the touch of analytical 
reason, leaving nothing but the plain common-sense matter-of-fact of moral 
and political truth—a day that he earnestly hoped he might never live to see. 
“© Certainly,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘ it is a very bad omen for all who make 
it their study to darken the human understanding, when one of the pillars of 
their party is blown up by his own smoke ; but the symbol, as you call it, may 
operate as a warning to the apostles of superstitious chimera and political 
fraud, that it is very possible for smoke to be too thick ; and that, in condensing 
in the human mind the vapours of ignorance and delusion, they are only com- 
pressing a body of inflammable gas, of which the explosion will be fatal in 
precise proportion to its density.’ ” 
Among the practically satirical passages in which Melincourt abounds, 
we must not omit the catastrophe of the Country Bank, whose firm, con- 
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