But I, who belong not to the race of kings, and whose limbs can bound not to the rapture of war, nor scale the eyries of the eagle and the haunts of the swift stag; whose hand cannot string the harp, and whose voice is harsh in the song,--_I_ have neither honour nor command, and men bow not the head as I pass along; yet do I feel within me the consciousness of a great power that should rule my species--not obey.

My eye pierces the secret hearts of men.

I see their thoughts ere their lips proclaim them; and I scorn, while I see, the weakness and the vices which I never shared.

I laugh at the madness of the warrior; I mock within my soul at the tyranny of kings.
Surely there is something in man's nature more fitted to command, more worthy of renown, than the sinews of the arm, or the swiftness of the feet, or the accident of birth!" As Morven, the son of Osslah, thus mused within himself, still looking at the heavens, the solitary man beheld a star suddenly shooting from its place, and speeding through the silent air, till it suddenly paused right over the midnight river, and facing the inmate of the pile of stones.
As he gazed upon the star, strange thoughts grew slowly over him.

He drank, as it were, from its solemn aspect the spirit of a great design.
A dark cloud rapidly passing over the earth snatched the star from his sight, but left to his awakened mind the thoughts and the dim scheme that had come to him as he gazed.
When the sun arose, one of his brethren relieved him of his charge over the herd, and he went away, but not to his father's home.