Our rambles came to a close; the visitors went away; I re-entered the house through the sash-window of Forman's study. Margrave threw his hat and staff on the table, and amused himself with examining minutely the tracery on the mantelpiece. Strahan and myself left him thus occupied, and, going into the adjoining library, resumed our task of examining the plans for the new house. I continued to draw outlines and sketches of various alterations, tending to simplify and contract Sir Philip's general design. Margrave soon joined us, and this time took his seat patiently beside our table, watching me use ruler and compass with unwonted attention. "I wish I could draw," he said; "but I can do nothing useful." "Rich men like you," said Strahan, peevishly, "can engage others, and are better employed in rewarding good artists than in making bad drawings themselves." "Yes, I can employ others; and--Fenwick, when you have finished with Strahan I will ask permission to employ you, though without reward; the task I would impose will not take you a minute." He then threw himself back in his chair, and seemed to fall into a doze. The dressing-bell rang; Strahan put away the plans,--indeed, they were now pretty well finished and decided on. Margrave woke up as our host left the room to dress, and drawing me towards another table in the room, placed before me one of his favourite mystic books, and, pointing to an old woodcut, said, "I will ask you to copy this for me; it pretends to be a facsimile of Solomon's famous seal. I have a whimsical desire to have a copy of it. You observe two triangles interlaced and inserted in a circle?--the pentacle, in short. Yes, just so. You need not add the astrological characters: they are the senseless superfluous accessories of the dreamer who wrote the book. But the pentacle itself has an intelligible meaning; it belongs to the only universal language, the language of symbol, in which all races that think--around, and above, and below us--can establish communion of thought. If in the external universe any one constructive principle can be detected, it is the geometrical; and in every part of the world in which magic pretends to a written character, I find that its hieroglyphics are geometrical figures. Is it not laughable that the most positive of all the sciences should thus lend its angles and circles to the use of--what shall I call it?--the ignorance?--ay, that is the word--the ignorance of dealers in magic?" He took up the paper, on which I had hastily described the triangles and the circle, and left the room, chanting the serpent-charmer's song. [1] The following description of a stone at Corfu, celebrated as an antidote to the venom of the serpent's bite, was given to me by an eminent scholar and legal functionary in that island:-- DESCRIPTION of THE BLUESTONE.--This stone is of an oval shape 1 2/10 in. long, 7/10 broad, 3/10 thick, and, having been broken formerly, is now set in gold.