"What," I asked, "was that impulse which urged me to go to the Blue Mountain? Shall I find there anything supernatural?"
"Anything supernatural? What is there above Nature, or outside of it?"
"But nothing is without cause; and for an emotion so strong as I experienced, on the sight of those mountains, there must have been one."
"Very likely! if you go after it, you will find it. You probably expect to find some beautiful enchantress keeping her court on the mountain-top, and a suite of fairies."
I started, for, absurd as it may seem, that very idea, half-formed, undeveloped from very shame at my superstition, had rested in my mind.
"And," said I, at a loss what to say, "are there no such things possible?"
"All things are possible to the imagination."
"To create?"
"Most certainly! Is not creation the act of bringing into existence? and does not your Hamlet exist as immortally as your Shakspeare? The only true existence, is it not that of the Idea? Have you not seen the pines transfigured?"
"And if I imagined a race of fairies inhabiting the Blue Mountain, should I find them?"