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Nor were these my only visions. The raising of ghosts or devils

was a promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the

fulfilment of which I most eagerly sought; and if my incantations

were always unsuccessful, I attributed the failure rather to my

own inexperience and mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity

in my instructors. And thus for a time I was occupied by exploded

systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory

theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of

multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and

childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of

my ideas.