William had heard so much about experiments that it is not surprising he should have been for making some himself. It was well indeed for his family that the speculative mind, which lay covered rather than concealed under the elder Daniel's ruminating manners, and quiet contented course of life, was not quickened by his acquaintance with the schoolmaster into an experimental and dangerous activity, instead of being satisfied with theoretical dreams. For Guy had found a book in that little collection which might have produced more serious consequences to the father than the imitation of Gargantua had done to the son. This book was the Exposition of Eirenæus Philalethes upon Sir George Ripley's Hermetico-Poetical works. Daniel had formerly set as little value upon it as upon Rabelais. He knew indeed what its purport was, thus much he had gathered from it: but although it professed to contain “the plainest and most excellent discoveries of the most hidden secrets of the Ancient Philosophers that were ever yet published,” it was to him as unintelligible as the mysteries of Pantagruelism. He could make nothing of the work that was to ascend in _Bus_ and _Nubi_ from the Moon up to the Sun, though the Expositor had expounded that this was in _Nubibus_; nor of the Lake which was to be boiled with the ashes of Hermes's Tree, night and day without ceasing, till the Heavenly Nature should ascend and the Earthly descend: nor of the Crow's bill, the White Dove, the Sparkling Cherubim, and the Soul of the Green Lion. But he took those cautions simply and honestly as cautions, which were in fact the lures whereby so many infatuated persons had been drawn on to their own undoing. The author had said that his work was not written for the information of the illiterate, and illiterate Daniel knew himself to be. “Our writings,” says the dark Expositor, “shall prove as a curious edged knife; to some they shall carve out dainties, and to others it shall serve only to cut their fingers. Yet we are not to be blamed; for we do seriously profess to any that shall attempt the work, that he attempts the highest piece of Philosophy that is in Nature; and though we write in English, yet our matter will be as hard as Greek to some, who will think they understand us well, when they misconstrue our meaning most perversely; for is it imaginable that they who are fools in Nature should be wise in our Books, which are testimonies unto Nature?” And again, “make sure of thy true matter, which is no small thing to know; and though we have named it yet we have done it so cunningly, that thou mayest sooner stumble at our Books than at any thou ever didst read in thy life.—Be not deceived either with receipt or discourse; for we verily do not intend to deceive you; but if you will be deceived, be deceived!—Our way which is an easy way, and in which no man may err,—our broad way, our _linear_ way, we have vowed never to