The Real History of the Rosicrucians (with the Fama and Confessio Fraternitatis)

To organise these efforts and direct them to proper objects, he projected a society composed of the noble, the enlightened, and the learned— which he hoped to see moving, as under the influence of one soul, towards the redressing of public evils. Under this hope it was that he travelled so much : seeking everywhere, no doubt, for the coadjutors and instruments of his

designs. These designs he presented originally in the shape of a Rosicrucian society ; and in this particular project he intermingled some features that were at variance with its gravity and really elevated purposes. Young as he was at that time, Andrea knew that men of various tempers and characters could not be brought to co-operate steadily for any object so purely disinterested as the elevation of human nature : he therefore addressed them through the common foible of their age, by holding out promises of occult knowledge which should invest its possessor with authority over the powers of Nature, should lengthen his life, or raise him from the dust of poverty to wealth and high station. In an age of Theosophy, Oabbalism, and Alchemy, he knew that the popular ear would be caught by an account, issuing nobody knew whence, of a great society that professed to be the depository of Oriental mysteries, and to have lasted two centuries. Many would seek to connect themselves with such a society : from these candidates he might gradually select the members of the real society which he projected. The pretensions of the ostensible society were indeed illusions ; but before they could be detected as such by the new proselytes, those proselytes would become connected with himself, and (as he hoped) moulded to nobler aspirations. On this view of Andrea's real intentions, we understand at once the ground of the contradictory language which he held about astrology and the transmutation of metals : his satirical works show that he looked through the follies of his age with a penetrating eye. He speaks with toleration then of these follies — as an exoteric concession to the age ; he condemns them in his own esoteric character as a religious philosopher. Wishing to conciliate prejudices, he does not'forbear to bait his scheme with these

delusions : but he is careful to let us know that they are with his society mere vapspya or collateral pursuits, the direct and main one being true philosophy and religion." I fully concede the almost overwhelming force of some of the arguments I have enumerated, but, as a partisan of no particular theory, it is my duty to set before my readers a plain statement of certain grave difficulties. I. The " Chymical Marriage " is sailed a ludibrium by its author, and Professor Buhle describes it as a comic romance, but those of my readers who are acquainted with alchemical allegories will discern in this singular narrative by a prepared student or artist who was supernaturally and magically elected to participate in the accomplishment of the magnum opus, many matters of grave and occult significance. They will recognise that the comic episodes are part of a serious design, and that the work as a whole is in strict accordance with the general traditions of alchemy. They will question the good faith of the author in the application of a manifestly incongruous epithet. Perhaps they will appear to be wise above what is written, but the position is not really unreasonable, for the passage in which reference is made by Andreas to the " Nuptiae Chymicse " is calculated to raise suspicion. He was a shrewd and keen observer ; he had gauged the passions and the crazes of his period ; he was fully aware that the rage for alchemy blinded the eyes and drained the purses of thousands of credulous individuals, who were at the mercy of the most wretched impostors, and that no pretence was too shallow and no recipe too worthless to find believers. He could not be ignorant that a work like the " Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz " was eminently liable to impose upon every class of theosophists. When, therefore, he sup-

poses, and, by implication, expresses, astonishment that his so-called ludibrium became the object of earnest investigation and of high esteem, I freely confess that I, for one, cannot interpret him seriously ; in other words, that I reject the statement. This, however, is only the initial difficulty. The same passage of the " Vita ab ipso Conscripta " contains another piece of incredible information, namely that Andreas wrote the "Nuptiae Chymicse" before he was sixteen. This story gives evidence of an acquaintance with the practice and purposes of alchemy which was absolutely impossible to the most precocious lad. Moreover, the boldness of its conception and the power which is displayed in its execution, setting aside the debateable question of its occult philosophical character, are things utterly transcending the cacoethes scribendi of a youngster barely attained to the age of puberty. I appeal to the discrimination of my readers whether the curious and ingenious perplexities propounded at the supper on the third day are in any way suggestive of " the light fire in the veins of a boy." The romance supposed to have been written in 1602-3 did not see the light till 1616, when it appeared in the full tide of the Rosicrucian controversy. Why did it remain in manuscript for the space of thirteen years at a period when everything treating of alchemy was devoured with unexampled avidity 1 The " Chymical Marriage," in its original draft, may have been penned at the age of fifteen, but it must have been subjected to a searching revision, though I confess that it betrays no trace of subsequent manipulation. These grave difficulties are enhanced by a fact which is wholly unknown to mostEosicrucian critics, and which was certainly not to be expected in the jest of a schoolboy, namely, that the barbarous enigmatical writings

which are to be found in several places of " The Hermetick Wedding " are not an unmeaning hoax, but contain a decipherable and deciphered sense. The secretary of an English Rosicrucian Society says that the Supreme Magus of the Metropolitan College can read all three of the enigmas, and that he himself has deciphered two. Their secret is not a tradition, but the meaning dawns upon the student after certain researches. The last point is curious, and, outside the faculty of clairvoyance, the suggested method does not seem probable, but I give it to be taken at its worth, and have no reason to doubt the statement. From these facts and considerations, the conclusion does not seem unreasonable, and may certainly be tolerated by an impartial mind, that in spite of the statement of Andreas, and partly because of that statement, the " Chymical Marriage" is not a ludibrium, that it betrays a serious purpose, and conceals a recondite meaning. II. With this criticism the whole theory practically breaks down. We know that the "Fama Fraternitatis " was published in 1615 as a manifesto of the Bruderscliafft des loUiclien Ordens des Rosen Creutses. We have good reason to suppose that the original draft of the " Chymical Marriage " was tampered with ; we do not know that previous to the year 1615 such a work was in existence as the " Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz." What we know to have existed was simply the "Nuptise Chymicae." Now, supposing the "Fama Fraternitatis" to have emanated from a source independent of Andreas, he would be naturally struck by the resemblance of the mysterious Rosicrucian device to his own armorial bearings, and when in the year 1616 he published his so-called comic romance, this analogy may, not inconceivably, have led him to re-christen

his hero, and to introduce those passages which refer to the Eose Cross. This, of course, is conjectural, but it is to be remarked that so far as can be possibly ascertained, the acknowledged symbol of the Fraternity never was a St Andrew's Cross with four Eoses, but was a Cross of the ordinary shape, with a Eed Eose in the centre, or a Cross rising out of a Eose. There is therefore little real warrant for the identification of the mystical and the heraldic badge. It is on this identification, however, that the Andrean claim is greatly based. III. We find the " Chymical Marriage," like the "Fama" and " Confessio Fraternitatis," crusading against the "vagabond cheaters," "runagates and roguish people," who debased alchemical experiments in the interest of dishonest speculation; yet the one, under a thin veil of fiction, describes the proceedings in the accomplishment of the magnum opus, while the other terms transmutation a great gift of God. These points of resemblance, however, do not necessarily indicate a common authorship, for a general belief in the facts of alchemy was held at that period by many intelligent men, who were well aware, and loud in their condemnation, of the innumerable frauds which disgraced the science. On the other hand, it is plain that the history of C. E.G., as it is contained in the " Fama," is not the history, equally fabulous, of that Knight of the Golden Stone, who is the hero of the " Chymical Marriage."

IV. It is obviously easy to exaggerate the philological argument, or rather the argument from the identity of literary style, in the documents under consideration. This point indeed can only be adequately treated by a German. At present it rests on a single assertion of Arnold, which is uncorroborated by any illustrative facts. I think it will also be plain, even to the casual reader, that the "Chymical Marriage " is a work of " extraordinary talent," as Buhle justly observes, but that the " Fama Fraternitatis " is a work of no particular talent, either inventive or otherwise, while the subsequent "Confession," both in matter and manner, is simply beneath contempt. Yet we are required to believe that the first was produced at the age of fifteen, while the worthless pamphlets are the work of the same writer from seven to thirteen years subsequently. V. The connection of the "Universal Reformation" with the other Rosicrucian manifestoes is so uncertain, that if Andreas could be proved its translator, his connection with the society would still be doubtful. The appearance of the " Fama Fraternitatis " and the " Universal Reformation" in one pamphlet no more proves them to have emanated from a single source, than the publication of the " Confessio " in the same volume as the " Secretioris Philosophise Consideratio " proves Philippus a Gabella to have been the author of that document. The practice of issuing unconnected works within the covers of a single book was common at the period. But the argument which ascribes the " Universal Reformation " to Andreas is entirely conjectural.

VI. There is nothing conclusive in the statement of Professor Besoldt ; it may "have been simply an expression of personal opinion ; those who interpret it otherwise in support of the claim of Andreas, to some extent base their inpretation on the very point which is in question, for unless Andreas were the author of the manifestoes, it is clear that Professor Besoldt is a person of no authority. These difficulties are of themselves sufficient to cast grave doubt upon the Andrean theory, but when we pass to the consideration of the motives which are attributed to the reputed author by the chief supporter of his claims, we find them indefinitely multiplied. Buhle represents him as a young man without experience who imagined that the evils of his country, enormous as they confessedly were, could be eradicated easily. But if, by courtesy, we allow that the " Fama Fraternitatis " was published so early as 1612, then Andreas was twenty-six years of age, when a man of education and travel would be neither inexperienced nor Utopian. What, however, is by implication assumed in this hypothesis is that the Rosicrucian manifestoes were written at the same age as the " Nuptise Chymicae," for which there is not a particle of evidence, and that the object of Andreas' travels was to find " coadjutors and instruments for his designs," which is also wholly unsupported. The scheme which is fathered upon Andreas is a monstrous and incredible absurdity ;

it involves, moreover, a pious fraud which is wholly at variance with the known character of the supposed author. No sane person, much less a man who " looked through the follies of his age with a penetrating eye," could expect anything but failure to result from a gross imposition practised on the members of a projected association, who being assured of the possession of the Philosophical Stone, the life-elixir, and initiation into the secret mysteries of nature, were destined to receive, instead of these prizes, a barren and impossible commission to reform the age. What moral reformation could result from any scheme at once so odious and impracticable "?

Let us accept however, for a moment, the repulsive hypothesis of Buhle. Suppose the Rosicrucian manifestoes to have been written in 1602. Suppose Andreas to have scoured Germany and also to have visited other countries in search of ap- propriate members for his society. It would then be naturally concluded that the publication of the "Fama Fraternitatis " signified that his designs were matured. The subsequent conduct of Andreas is, nevertheless, so completely in the face of this conclusion, that Buhle is obliged to assume that the manifestoes were printed without the author's consent, than which nothing could be more gratuitous, and that the uproar of hostility which followed their publication made it necessary for Andreas to disavow them if he would succeed in his ultimate designs. The hostility provoked by the manifestoes bears no comparison with the welcome they received among all those classes to whom they were indirectly addressed, namely, the alchemists, theosophists, etc. Had Andreas projected a society upon the lines laid down by Buhle, nothing remained but to communicate with the innumerable pamphleteers who wrote in defence of the order during the years immediately succeeding the publication of the " Fama Fraternitatis," as well as with those other persons who in various printed letters offered themselves for admission therein, after which he could have proceeded in the accomplishment of his heartless design. That he did not do so when the circumstances were so favourable is proof positive that he had no such intention. In fact, at this very period, namely, in the year 1614, we find Andreas immersed in no dark and mysterious designs for the reformation of the age by means of a planned imposture, but simply celebrating his nuptials, and settling down into a tranquil domestic life.

One more gross and ineradicable blemish upon this hypothesis remains to be noticed. Not only is Andreas represented relinquishing his design at the very moment when it was possible to put it in force, but diverted at the uni- versal delusion he had succeeded in creating, he is represented as endeavouring to foster it, " to gratify his satirical propensities," and when even in after life he becomes " shocked to find that the delusion had taken firm root in the public mind," he adopts no adequate measures to dispel it. Thus not only does Andreas wilfully turn the long-planned purpose of his life into a wretched fiasco, but to complete the libel on the character of a great and good man, he is supposed to delude his fellow creatures no longer for a lofty purpose, but from the lowest motive which it is possible to attribute to anyone, — a motive indefinitely meaner than any of personal gain. The facts of the case untortured by any theory are these. The "Fama Fraternitatis " was published, say, in 1612. In 1613 a brief Latin epistle addressed to the venerable Fraternity E. C. is supposed to have appeared at Francfurt, supplemented the following year by an " Assertio Fraternitatis R. C. a quodam Fraterni ejus Socio carmine expressa." These two publications I have been unable to trace, though both are mentioned by Buhle, and are included by Langlet du Fresnoy in the Rosicrucian bibliography which is to be found in the third volume of his " Histoire de la Philosophic Herm^tique." In 1615, the Latin original of the " Confessio Fraternitatis " appeared, as we have seen, in the alchemical quarto of Philip a Gabella.

All these works are attributed to Andreas, and the year 1616 saw the publication of the " Chymical Nuptials of Christian Rosencreutz," which work is undoubtedly his. Taking this view, and comparing these persistent and successive attempts to draw attention to the secret society with the known character and the known ambitions of Andreas, we are evidently face to face with an earnest and determined pur-

pose, not to be arrested by a little hostility and not likely to degenerate into a matter for jest and satire. We must therefore reject the Buhlean hypothesis, because it fails all along the line, " and betrays itself in every circumstance." We must reject also that view which attributes the manifesto to Andreas, but considers them an ingenious jest. It is universally admitted that this jest had a seriously evil effect, and Andreas, on this hypothesis, lived to see some of the best and acutest minds of his time, to say nothing of an incalculable number of honest and earnest seekers, misled by the vicious and wanton joke which had been hatched by the perverted talents of his youth. The wickedness and cruelty of persisting in concealment of the true nature of the case through all his maturer life, through all his age, and not even making a posthumous explanation in the " Vita ab ipso Conscripta," is enough to raise indignation in every breast, and is altogether, and too utterly, vile and mean to ascribe to any right-minded and honourable person, much less to a man of the known intellectual nobility of Johann Valentin Andreas. Buhle says that to have avowed the three books as his own composition would have defeated his scheme, and that " afterwards he had still better reasons for disavowing them." He had no such reasons. The bluntest sense of duty and the feeblest voice of manliness must have provided him with urgent and unanswerable reasons for acknowledging them — a course to which no serious penalties could possibly attach.

To dispose of the Andrean claim, a third hypothesis must be briefly considered. If Andreas was a follower of Paracelsus, a believer in alchemy, an aspirant towards the spiritual side of the magnum opus, or an adept therein, he would naturally behold with sorrow and disgust the trickery and imposture with which alchemy was then surrounded, and by which it has been indelibly disgraced, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that he may have attempted to reform the science by means of a secret society, whose manifestoes are directed against those very abuses. But in spite of the statement of Louis Figuier, I can find no warrant in the life or writings of Andreas for supposing that he was a profound, student, much less a fanatical partisan of Paracelsus, and it is clear from his "Tunis Babel," " Mythologia Christiana," and other works, that he considered the Eosicrucian manifestoes a reprehensible hoax. In the twenty-fifth chapter of the first of these books, the author proposes to supply the place of the fabulous Eosicrucian Society by his own Christian Fraternity. Indeed, wherever he speaks of it in his known writings, it is either with contempt or condemnation. Niliil cum hac Fraternitatt commune habeo, says Truth in the " Mythologia Christiana." " Listen, ye mortals," cries Fama in the " Turris Babel," " you need not wait any longer for any brotherhood ; the comedy is played out ; Fama has put it up, and now destroys it. Fama has said Yes, and now utters No."

My readers are now in possession of the facts of the case, and must draw their own iConclusions. If in spite of the difficulties which I have impartially stated, Andreas has any claim upon the authorship of the Eosicrucian manifestoes, it must be viewed in a different light. According to Herder, his purpose was to make the secret societies of his time reconsider their position, and to shew them how much of their aims and movements was ridiculous, but not to found any society himself. According to Figuier, he really founded the Eosicrucian Society, but ended by entire disapproval of its methods, and therefore started his Christian Fraternity. But the facts of the case are against this hypothesis, for the " Invitatio Fraternitatis Christi ad Sacri amoris Candidates" was published as early as 1617, long before the Eosicrucian Order could have degenerated from the principles of its master. It is impossible that Andreas should have projected two associations at the same time. But in the face of the failure of all these hypotheses, one fact in the life of their subject remains unexplained. If Andreas did not write the " Fama " and " Confessio Fraternitatis," if he had no connection with the secret society from which they may be supposed to have emanated, if he did not study Paracelsus, and did not take interest in alchemy, how are we to account for the existence of the " Chymical Marriage," for its publication in the centre and heart of the Rosicrucian controversy, and for its apparently earnest purpose when he describes it as a jest or ludibrium ?

Without elaborating a new hypothesis, can we suggest a possible reason for this misnomer 1 Supposing Andreas to have been actually connected in his younger days with a certain secret society, which may have published the more or less misleading Rosicrucian manifestoes, the oath which all such societies impose upon their members, would for ever prevent him from divulging anything concerning it, though he may have withdrawn from its ranks at an early period. This society may have been identical, or affiliated, with the Militia Crucifera Evangelica, which, from the known character of its founder was probably saturated with alchemical ideas, in which case it offers at the end of the sixteenth century a complete parallel in its opinions with the Rosicrucian Fraternity. Both associations were ultra-Protestant, both were " heated with Apocalyptic

dreams," both sought the magnum opus in its transfigured or spiritual sense, both abhorred the Pope, both called him Antichrist, both coupled him with the detested name of Mahomet, both expected the speedy consummation of the age, both studied the secret . characters of nature, both believed in the significance of celestial signs, both adopted as their characteristic symbols the mystic Rose and Cross, and the reason which prompted this choice in the one probably guided it in the other. This reason is not to be sought in the typology of a remote period, nor even in the alchemical enigmas of mediaeval times. It is not to be sought in the armorial bearings of Johann Valentin Andreas. They bore the Rose and Cross as their badge, not because they were Brethren of the Concocted and Exalted Dew, not because they had studied the book called Zohar, not because they were successors and initiates of the ancient Wisdom-Eeligion and the sublime hierarchies of Eld, but because they were a narrow sect of theosophical dissidents, because the monk Martin Luther was their idol, prophet, and master, because they were rabidly and extravagantly Protestant, with an ultra-legitimate violence of abusive Protestantism, because, in a single word, the device on the seal of Martin Luther was a Cross-crowned heart rising from the centre of a Kose, thus —

I am in a position to maintain that this was the true and esoteric symbol of the Society, as the Crucified Rose was the avowed, exoteric emblem, because in a professedly authoritative work on the secret figuren of the Order — " Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer ans dem 16ten und 17ten Jahrhundert" — I find the following remarkable elaboration of the Lutheran seal, which practically decides the question. Taking into consideration that the " Naometria " of Simon Studion and the original draft of the " Nuptise Chymicse " both belong to nearly the same period, and that Andreas was undoubtedly acquainted with the work of the mystical teacher of Marbach, as a passage in the " Turris Babel" makes evident, it is not an impossible supposition that the young student of Tubingen came into personal communication with Studion, who was only some fifty miles distant in the cheapest days of travelling, and having a natural inclination to secret societies, became associated with the Militia Crucifera Evangelica. Out of this connection the " Nuptise Chymicse " might naturally spring, and the subsequent Rosicrucian society was the Militia transfigured after the death of Studion,1 and after the travels and experience dence, and which seems to have been unnoticed Jay previous investigators, namely, that Sigmund Richter, who claims to speak

of Andreas had divested him of his boyish delusions. Having proved the hollowness of their pretensions, but still bound by his pledge, he speaks of them henceforth as a deception and a mockery, and attempts to replace them by a practical Christian association without mysticism and symbols, making no pretension to occult knowledge, or to transcendant powers. This view is not altogether a new one, and undoubtedly has its difficulties. It cannot account for the publication of the " Nuptiae Chymicse" in 1616, nor for the revision which it apparently underwent at the very period when Andreas was projecting the unalchemical Christian Fraternity ; but so far as it extends, it does not torture the facts with which it professes to deal. I present it not in my character as a historian, but simply as a hypothesis which may be tolerated. To my own mind it is far from satisfactory, and, from a careful consideration of all the available materials, I consider that no definite conclusion can be arrived at. There is nothing in the internal character of the " Fama " and " Confessio Fraternitatis " to shew that they are a jest. On the other hand, they embody a fabulous story. There is no proof that they did or did not emanate from a secret society.1 The popular argument that the manifestoes were addressed to " the learned of Europe," but

authoritatively, declares in the year 1710 that one of the Rosicrucian headquarters is at Nurenberg ; that is, at the very place where the Militia Crucifera Evangdica originally met in 1586. I have spoken throughout of the Rosicrucians-as of a secret society. In the universal uncertainty, this view is as good as another, but it does not necessarily represent my personal opinion. By the term " Rosicrucian Fraternity " I simply mean to indicate the unknown source of the " Fama " and " Confessio Fraternitatis." the earnest entreaties of the flower of theosophical literati for admission into the ranks of the Fraternity remained unanswered, is no proof that the Society itself did not exist, for the statement is vicious in the extreme. We have absolutely no means of ascertaining with whom it may have come into communication, or what letters and applications were answered, because inviolable secrecy would cover the whole of the proceedings, and those who might have the best reason to know that the Society existed would be most obliged to hold their peace. Thus "the meritorious Order of the R. C." still remains shrouded in mystery, but this mystery is destitute of romance and almost of interest. The avowed opinions of the Fraternity for ever prevent us from supposing that they were in possession of any secrets which would be worth disentombing. To have accomplished the magnum opus of the veritable adept, is to be master of the Absolute and the heir of Eternity, is to be above all prejudices, all fears, and all sectarian bitterness.

By the aid of an ultra-Horatian philosophy we may conceive that such men have been, and still are, but they have passed above " material forms " and the clouded atmosphere of terrestrial ideas; they inhabit the ideal "city of intelligence and love." They have left the brawling gutter of religious squabbling, the identification of Antichrist, the destruction of the Pope by means of nails, and the number of the beast, to Baxter and Guinness, Gumming and Brothers the prophet, who may share its squalors and wretchedness with — the Eosicrucian Fraternity.

THE immediate result of the "Fama" and "Confessio Fraternitatis " in Germany has been so well described by Professor Buhle that I cannot do better than transcribe this portion of his work as it is interpreted by Thomas De Quincey. " The sensation which was produced throughout Germany ... is sufficiently evidenced by the repeated editions ... (of the manifestoes) which appeared between 1614 and 1617, but still more by the prodigious commotion which followed in the literary world. In the library at Gottingen there is a body of letters addressed to the imaginary order of Father Rosy Cross, from 1614 to 1617, by persons offering themselves as members. These letters are filled with complimentary expressions and testimonies of the highest respect, and are all printed, the writers alleging that, being unacquainted with the address of the society, they could not send them through any other than a public channel. As certificates of their qualifications, most of the candidates have enclosed specimens of their skill in alchemy and cabbalism. Some of the letters are signed with initials only, or with fictitious names, but assign real places of address. Many other literary persons there were at that day who forbore to write letters to the society, but threw out small pamphlets containing their opinions of the Order, and of its

place of residence. Each successive writer pretended to be better informed on that point than all his predecessors. Quarrels arose ; partisans started up on all sides ; the uproar and confusion became indescribable ; cries of heresy and atheism resounded from every corner • some were for calling in the secular power ; and the more coyly the invisible society retreated from the public advances so much the more eager and amorous were its admirers, and so much the more bloodthirsty its antagonists. Meantime, there were some who, from the beginning, had escaped the general delusion, and there were many who had gradually recovered from it. It was remarked that of the many printed letters to the society, though courteously and often learnedly written, none had been answered ; and all attempts to penetrate the darkness in which the order was shrouded by its unknown memorialist were successfully baffled. Hence arose a suspicion that some bad designs lurked under the ostensible purposes of these mysterious publications. Many vile impostors arose, who gave themselves out for members of the Rosicrucian order ; and upon the credit which they thus obtained for a season, cheated numbers of their money by alchemy, or of their health by panaceas. Three in particular made a great noise at Watzlar, at JSTuremburg, and at Augsburg; all were punished by the magistracy — one lost his ears in running the gauntlet, and one was hanged. At this crisis stepped forward a powerful writer, who attacked the supposed order with much scorn and homely good sense. This was Andrew Libau. He exposed the impracticability of the meditated reformation, the incredibility of the legend of Father Rosy Cross, and the hollowness of the pretended sciences which they professed. He pointed the attention

of governments to the confusions which these impostures were producing, and predicted from them a renewal of the scenes which had attended the fanaticism of the Anabaptists." Andreas Libavius was born at Halle in Saxony about the year 1560. He was appointed professor of history and poetry at Jena in 1588, practised as a physician at Eotembourg on the Tauber from 1591 till 1605, when he became rector of the college of Casimir at Coburg in Franconia, where he died in 1616. He was the first writer who mentioned the transfusion of blood from one animal to another, and the property of oxide of gold to colour glass red. He also invented a chemical preparation, called the liquor of Libavius, "a highly concentrated muriatic acid, much impregnated with tin," and which has been long used in laboratories. He has been falsely represented by M. Hoefer as a follower of Paracelsus, but appears to have believed in the transmutation of metals, and in the medical virtues of various auriferous preparations. He is considered to rank among the first students of chemistry who pursued experimental researches upon the true method. His "Alchymia Eecognita" and his "History of Metals "are among the best practical manuals of the period. Though seeking the Philosophick Stone, he attached no credit to the Eosicrucian manifestoes, and was one of the first writers who attacked them, in two Latin folios dated 1615, and in a smaller German pamphlet which appeared in the following year. The first of these works contains an exhaustive criticism of the Harmonico-Magical Philosophy of the mysterious Brotherhood. It is entitled "Exercitatio Paracelsica nova de notandis ex scripto Fraternitatis de 1 De Quincey, " Rosicrucians and Freemasons," c. ii.

Eosea Cruce," and forms part of a larger " Examen Philosophise Novas, quse veteri abrogandae Opponitur." Professor Buhle is one of those interesting literary characters, by no means uncommonly met with, whose luminous hypotheses completely transfigure every fact which comes within the range of their radiation. Few persons who have taken the pains to labour through the ponderous folios of Libavius would dream of terming him a powerful writer, and personally I have failed to discern much of that " homely good sense " which manifested itself so gratuitously before the discerning eyes of the acute German savant. The criticisms, on the contrary, are weak, verbose, and tedious, and the investigations, as a whole, appear to have little raison d'etre. It may, in fact, be impartially declared that there is only one thing more barren and wearisome than the host of pamphlets, elucidations, apologies, epistles, and responses written on the Rosicrucian side, and that is the hostile criticism of the opposing party, and the dead level of unprofitable flatness which characterises its prosaic commonplace is an infliction which I honestly trust will be spared to all my readers. Master Andreas Libavius, though he wrote upon Azoth, was a practical thinker, and he refused to contemplate the projected universal reformation through the magic spectacles of the Rosicrucian. He had not read Wordsworth, and he had no definite opinions as to " the light that never was on land or sea." So he penned what Professor Buhle might call a searching criticism ; he was right in so far as the reformation is still to come, but in these days we have read Wordsworth, and we prefer the vague poetry of Rosicrucian aspirations to the perditional dulness of Master Libavius' prose. Still we respect Professor Buhle, chiefly

because we love De Quincey, and we have a thin streak of kindly feeling for his alchemical proUg^ so we recommend him as an antidote to Mr Hargrave Jennings, who has doubtless never read him, and seems only to have heard by report of such documents as the Fame and Confession of the meritorious order of the Brethren R. C. Though he disbelieved in the universal reformation, Libavius did not reject the signs of the times. " No one doubts that we are in the last age of the world, by reason of the signs which have preceded nearly every important event, and are still at this day repeatedly appearing." He takes exception to the philosophical peregrination of the high illuminated C. R. C. in Arabia, because it was superfluous to seek magicians in the east when they abounded at home. Some of his objections are, however, sufficiently pertinent. " If the society hath been ordained and commissioned of God, it ought to be in a position to prove its vocation in some conclusive manner." Incidentally he denounces astrology. " We have heard and read innumerable astrological theories, but we have not discovered their rational basis. On the contrary, we are daily deceived by lying predictions." With regard to the secrecy of the Order, he flings at it the following text — Omnis qui male agil, odit lucem et non venit ad lucem, ne arguantur opera ejus. Condemning their anonymous mystery, he asks — " Is their danger greater than Luther's, threatened by the proscription of the Pope and the Ernperor both ? " Representing the Rosicrucians as promising a new Theologia, Physica, and Mathematica, he asks — " What manner] of new theology is this, seeing there is nothing new under the sun 1 Again, where is its novelty, if it be that of the primitive Church ? Is it of the Gentile, Mahometan, Jew, Papist,

Make unto yourselves also a new God, with a new heaven, and beware lest you are plunged into the old perdition ! On our part, we will cling to the antiquity of the canonical Scriptures." And then in regard to the new physics, " If it be after the fashion of Parcelsus, chew the cud of your own reflections in silence, and slumber placidly in your absurdity. ... If ye come with the cabalistic calculations concerning the fifty gates of understanding, scrutinising the mysteriarcham Dei, take care that ye are not consumed by the fire which is therein, for those who will become searchers of majesty shall be overwhelmed with glory." The " Analysis Confessionis Fraternitatis de Eosea Cruce pro admonitione et Instructione eorum, qui, quia judicandum sit de ista nova factione scire cupiant," extracts, after the author's own fashion, the thirty-seven " reasons of our purpose and intention " which are to be found hidden in that Rosicrucian manifesto, and criticises the Vice accedendi, or methods of approaching the Order, which are — I. By a written petition. II. By the study of the Scriptures and their interpretation in the cabilistico-magical manner of the Paracelsists. III. By the writings and precepts of Paracelsus. IV. By the symbolical characters inscribed on the Macrocosmos.

These two Latin treatises were supplemented by a less tedious German pamphlet, which appeared at Francfurt in 1616 under the title of "Well-wishing objections concerning the Fame and Confession of the Brotherhood of the R. C., and their universal reformation of the whole world before the day of Judgment, and transformation thereof into an Earthly Paradise, such as was inhabited by Adam before the fall, and the restitution of all arts and wisdom as possessed by Adam, Enoch, Salomon, &c. Written with great care, by desire and command of some superior persons, by Andrew Libavius." It claims to be inspired by a spirit of friendly criticism, decides that the Order does exist, advises the accomplishment of a limited and private reformation, leaving the universal one to God, as the world is far too corrupt for improvement before the judgment day, and that a pretension so large will never by any possibility be carried out. Though posing as a critic, he advises all persons to join the Order, because there is much to be learned and much wisdom to be attained by so doing. He praises their sound doctrine in matters of religion, particularly the denunciation of the Pope and Mahomet, the value they set upon the Bible, &c. It is evident, in fact, that in spite of his " homely good sense " he had radically changed his ground. The treatise is divided into forty-three chapters, and among the subjects discussed are the Spheric Art, the Lapis Philosophorum, and the Magical Language.

What we seek as vainly in the most authoritative Eosicrucian apologists as in their critics, is any additional information concerning the society, its members, or its whereabouts. Such information is promised frequently on the title-pages of the innumerable pamphlets of the period, but it is not given, and the proffered proofs of the existence of the Order are confined to abstract considerations devoid of historical value. Professor Buhle considers that the attacks of Libavius joined to other writings " of the same tendency " might possibly have dispelled the delusion, except for the conduct of Andreas, whom he represents as doing his best to increase it by the publication of other documents, and for that of the Paracelsists. " With frantic eagerness they had sought to press into the imaginary order ; but, finding themselves lamentably repulsed in all their efforts, at length they paused ; and, turning suddenly round, they said to one another, 'What need to court this perverse order any longer ? We are ourselves Eosicrucians as to all the essential marks laid down in the three books. We also are holy persons of great knowledge ; we also make gold, or shall make it ; we also, no doubt, give us but time, shall reform the world : external ceremonies are nothing : substantially it is clear that we are the Rosicrucian Order.' Upon this they went on in numerous books and pamphlets to assert that they were the identical Order instituted by Father Eosycross, and described in the 'Fama Fraternitatis.' The public mind was now perfectly distracted ; no man knew what to think ; and the uproar became greater than ever."

Here is a dramatic situation well conceived and described ; its only fault is the very slender foundation of actual fact on which it appears to be based. I have failed altogether to discover those numerous books and pamphlets wherein the Paracelsists assert that they are to all intents and purposes identical with the invisible and unapproachable Brotherhood. Their anxiety to be admitted into its ranks may be freely granted, but it is remarkable how few of the pamphleteers who wrote favourably on the Rosicrucian mystery made any claim to be personally connected therewith. In the pages which follow I shall give a brief account, arranged in chronological order, of the most important and interesting publications that appeared in elucidation of this mystery. A work of considerable interest was printed in 1615, under the title " Echo of the God-illuminated Brotherhood of the Worthy Order R. C., to wit, an absolute proof that not only all which is stated in the ' Fama ' and ' Confessio ' of the R. C. Brotherhood is possible and true, but that it has been known already for nineteen years and more to a few God-fearing people, and has been laid down by them in certain secret writings ; as it has all been stated and made public in an excellent magical letter and pamphlet by the Worshipful Brotherhood R. C., in print in the German language." The accredited author was Julius Sperber of Anholt, Dessau.

This work was printed at Dantzig by Andreas Huenfeldts. It maintains that there have been only a few human beings who have been worthy to become recipients of the wisdom of God, the reason being that so few have sought it with the necessary earnestness. When Christ was on the earth he had innumerable listeners, of whom only a small portion could discern the significance of His teachings. It was for this cause that He said to his disciples — "To you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not given." Peter, James, and John were the only three of His apostles to whom he revealed these mysteries, and to them He showed the same sight that had been vouchsafed by God to Elias and Moses. Only those who renounce the world and their own fleshly lusts can become worthy to know such secrets. Nobody who is addicted to mundane wisdom can ever attain them, for the wisdom of God and the wisdom of this world are contradictory.

The preface is addressed to the E.G. Brotherhood. It admonishes the members to persevere in the way they have chosen, and to get possessed of the secrets of God. It praises their wisdom and knowledge, but says that much of what is stated in the "Fama" and " Confessio " must appear foolish to the worldly wise. It calls upon the Brethren to meet together in the name of the Holy Trinity, and to teach the true light to the world, as it is contained in the secret meaning of Holy Scripture and of Nature. Some curious information, not always relevant to the main object, is scattered throughout the volume. The second preface mentions a certain Petrus Wirtzigh of Presslau as one of the greatest and wisest men of his time, who, being by profession a medical man, studied the secret arts with such zeal that he became master of many wonderful mysteries. He was the author of many large unpublished volumes which the writer of the " Echo," being his great friend, has been allowed to dip into, and he avers that they contain much wisdom and curious lore. Another wise and God-loving man was ^Egidius Guttmann in Suaria, who wrote a book which he divided into twenty-four volumes. The author of the " Echo " compares this work, having regard to the wisdom of its contents, with the seventy volumes which God dictated by His angel to the prophet.

Like other writers on the Eosicrucian side, the author of the " Echo " deals in vague generalities, and even the Laws of the Fraternity which he publishes are worthless as regards information. They run as follows : — 1. Love your neighbour. 2. Talk not badly of him, neither hold him in contempt. 4. Be modest and obedient. 5. Do not ridicule the secret studies. 6. Keep silent about what you learn from these studies. 7. Share your fortune with your fellow-creatures. According to this apologist of the secret order, " Adam was the first Eosicrucian of the Old Testament and Simeon the last." The golden chain of the esoteric tradition was not broken by Christ, who established " a new college of magic." In 1615, Julianus de Campis published an " open letter or report," addressed to all who have read anything concerning the new Brotherhood of E. C., or have heard anything of the position of this matter. It accounts for the Eosicrucians not revealing their whereabouts, " and not answering the letters addressed to them. He was himself," he said, " a member of the Order ; but in all his travels he had met but three other members, there being (as he presumed) no more persons on the earth worthy of being entrusted with its mysteries." It is needless to say that an initiate of the Fraternity would be accurately acquainted with its numerical strength, and that the writer's statement on this point contradicts the " Fama Fraternitatis." The pamphlet otherwise is not of great importance.

" There are many who run for, but few who gain, the jewel. Therefore I, Julianus de Campis, admonish all who are governed by a fortunate disposition not to be made obstinate by their own diffidence, nor by the judgments of ignorant people." Many great secrets are concealed by Nature, and those who study them are worthy of every praise. The E. C. are defended against various accusations, and the theologians who attack them are reminded that the questions raised are without their province, because they are theologi and not theosophi. The secret art of the E. C. is declared to be a matter of fact, and not an abstract or fanciful thing; and the profanum vulgus are assured that those who are in the possession of such an imperial secret can dispense with the praise of the world.

The " Fama Remissa ad Fratres Roseae Crucis," which appeared in 1616, is to a great extent an anonymous pamphlet written against the pretensions and ideas of the Brethren, principally denouncing their impracticahle and Utopian ambition to reform the whole world. It complains bitterly of their religious opinions, and absolutely declines to acknowledge them as a good society until they openly accept and subscribe to the Confession of Augsbourg. A brief Latin appendix incidentally discusses the doctrine of transubstantiation and to reconcile the words of Jesus, " Hoc est corpus meum" with the statement of this Evangelist, et ascendit in codum, it speculates on the distance which intervenes between the earth and the Empyrean. According to Pencerus the eighth sphere is distant 20081^ semidiameters of the earth, and the distance, according to the " Fama Remissa," from the Mount of Olives to the Empyrean Heaven is, in its summa tota, 17,266,001 milliaria Germania I The following year beheld the publication of Brotoffer's curious and perverse alchemical interpretation of the Universal Reformation, another edition of the Rosicrucian manifestoes, with additions by Julianus de Campis and Georg Molthers, and two works from the pen of Michael Maier, which will be noticed in the next chapter. Among the curious pamphlets of this year professing to treat of the mysterious Order, must be included the " ' Fraternitatis Rosatse Crucis Confessio Recepta,' to wit : A short and well-wishing report concerning the Confession or Faith of the Brethren of the Rosy Cross, useful to all readers who not only consider their well-being in this world, but their salvation in the next. Written by A. 0. M T. W." This appeared in defence of the Order, and maintains that it is a good and useful Society, which is not merely in pos-

session of many and great secrets, but is righteous in the eyes of Almighty God. The author distinguishes at length between the different ways whereby God makes Himself known, and declares that it requires much study and careful research, as well as personal sacrifice, to become the possessor of transcendental secrets, but that anyone can do so by following the Divine counsels. He concludes with an admonition to " the highly- wise and God-beloved E. C." to press on with their sublime work. About this time a somewhat vicious attack was made on the supposed Society by a writer calling himself Fredericus G. Menapius, but whose real name was Johann Valentin Alberti, and who is associated by Buhle with Irenseus Agnostus as a personal friend of Andreas. It is clear, however, from the evidence of all the pamphlets, that Agnostus and Menapius are one and the same person. " Epitimia, F. E. C., to wit: The final manifestation or discovery and defence of the worthy and worshipful Order E. C. Also of the true and well-known confession addressed to all classes of literati and illustrious persons in Europe. Written by command of the above-mentioned society by Irenaeus Agnostus (Menapius)." The only edition of this work which I have seen is dated 1619, but it seems to have been originally published about two years previously. It is a skit written against the E. C. by Menapius, but pretends to be printed and published by the command of the Order. The principal purpose of the pamphlet is to prove that the Eosicrucian Fraternity was founded by the Jesuits for the purpose of the secret propaganda of their doctrines in opposition to the Protestant religion. It begins with a lengthy and pseudo-authoritative laudation of the writer, who is declared to be an eminently learned and godly man,

having saved the lives of a number of persons in a miraculous manner, and disputed victoriously with the most learned Catholic divines. It proceeds to a vigorous denunciation of the Roman Church for its manifold corruptions and abuses, citing a good many historical examples of princes who have expressed themselves in similar terms, and concluding with an admonition to live well and act uprightly. Speaking in his own person, the author addresses his supposed confreres in the following fashion : — " I know not, my Brothers of the R C., what manner of men to consider you. T have troubled my mind about you this long time, but can attain to no conclusion, because all that you set down in your writings has been so long familiar. Could you tell me anything of the unicorn, or anything more trustworthy than has emanated from Andreas Baccius,1 your productions would be much more valuable. A number of books have been written by you, or have appeared in your name, but they teem with such violent contradictions that I should imagine you were yourselves in doubt as to who or what you are, and as to your own performances." Afterwards he very reasonably declares that if the Rosicrucians are the depositaries of a beneficial knowledge, they ought to proclaim it publicly in their own persons and not in anonymous pamphlets. He upbraids them as magicians who falsely pretend to great power, says that he has travelled in many countries without hearing anything concerning them, and concludes by expressing his conviction that

i A voluminous writer on medicine, philosophy, natural history, and antiquities. The reference is to a treatise entitled " De Monocerote seu Unicornu ejusque viribus et usu tractatus per A. B.," afterwards published in Italian, Fiorenza, 1573, 4to. Bacci flourished at the end of the sixteenth century ; he was physician to Sixtus V. , and professor of botany at Rome from 1557 to ItiOO. their supposed wisdom is a shallow pretence, and that they are in reality ignorant people. This attack was presently followed by a tract entitled " I. Menapius Roseae Crucis, to wit : Objections on the part of the unanimous Brotherhood against the obscure and unknown writer, F. G. Menapius, and against his being classed among the true brethren. II. A Citation of the same person to our final Court at Schmejarien contra Florentinus de Valentia. III. Finally, a convocation of the R. C. Fratres to the same invisible place. By order of the worshipful society. Written and published by Theophilus Stihweighart. 1619." Here Menapius presents himself under another name, and poses as his own opponent. The pamphlet contains a sort of legal process, with citation, defence, &c. One of the arguments used against the Rosicrucian Fraternity, who believed in the manufacture of gold from ignoble metals, is as follows : — " A grown up man is a reasoning being ; so is a young boy. A cow is an unreasoning being ; so is a calf.

But this does not prove that the cow is a calf ; and the transmutation of ignoble metals into gold is just as easy as to transform a cow into a calf, of you ask why there is so little gold, it is for the same reason that there are so few cows, namely, in the one case, because the young calves are killed, and in the other, because the ignoble metals are not left long enough in the earth, but are extracted by avaricious people." Menapius is the most entertaining of the dull race of Rosicrucian critics, but his analogical arguments are not of a convincing nature. He concludes with an admonition to all and several — literati, nobles, merchants, peasants, &c. — to live well and to do their duty.

Menapius, as I have said, is represented by Buhle as a friend of Andreas, and Andreas is accredited with two Rosicrucian pamphlets which appeared under the name of " Florentinus de Valentia." The authority may be questionable or not, but the reference is somewhat suicidal to the Buhle-Andrean hypothesis, for not only do we discover the pseudonymous author attacking his personal friend, but hurrying forward full of zeal to the defence of the Rosicrucian pretensions. " Rosa Florescens contra F. G. Menapii Calumniis, to wit : A short notice and refutation of the libels published on June 3, 1617, in Latin, and on July 15 of the same year in German by F. G. Menapius, against the Rosicrucian Society. Written by Florentinus de Valentia in great zeal." It is a reply to the first pamphlet of Menapius, the Latin original of which I have been unable to trace. It begins by blaming Menapius for his extravagant self-laudation, then refers to the attack on the secresy of the Society, and on the anonymous publication of their manifestoes. It declares any other method than that of secresy to be contrary to the will of God, and in other ways dangerous, asserting that nobody suffers by the concealment of their names and places of abode. The writer further accuses Menapius of blind hatred of the Rosicrucians, when he compares them to the devils, for the whole intent of the Society is the welfare of all humanity.

He says : — " The opinion of the Fraternity is not that all men should be made or become equal, because the majority are too hard and sinful, but that the few who love God, and live to please Him, should be like Adam in Paradise." The desire of the Order is to serve God as faithfully as possible, to discover the secrets of Nature, and to use them in diffusing a true belief in Christ, and for the glory of God. Therefore, the author requests Menapius to desist from

blaming and libelling the members of the Fraternity, but rather to turn round and to love them, because they are true seekers of the veritable wisdom. In a Latin appendix to a tract entitled " Eons Gratise," by Irenaeus Agnostus, Johann Valentin Alberti, alias F. G. Menapius, alias Theophilus Schweighart, alias Ireriaeus Agnostus, published a short rejoinder in prose and verse to the defence of Valentia. " Judicia de Statu Fraternitatis de Eosea Cruce " is a melange of prose and verse, with addresses ad venerandos, doctissimos, et illuminatissimos, viros Dnn. Fratres iS. Rosece Crucis conjunctissimos, and as the judgment is professedly that of an outsider seeking initiation, it does not throw any light upon the proceedings of the Society. It is crammed with extravagant adulation of the pious, learned, and illuminated Brothers, but is otherwise not inelegantly written, and has apt classical quotations. A lofty ambition is claimed by the aspirant to association, who avers that he is in search of no common and metallic gold, but that Philosophical and Spiritual Treasure, one particle of which is sufficient to transmute and perfectionise the soul, and conduct it from illumination to illumination. This is that veritable gold, says the alchemical enthusiast, none other than the first and all- containing knowledge, whereby

Mens ptira et nullo mortali pondera pressa, Libera terrenis affectibus, atria cceli Scandit, et aetherea cum diis versatur in aula. None can expect to attain it unless he shall first have expelled — A sese omne nefas, purgatus crimine ab omni, Quippe habitare negat fcedum Sapientia pectus, Impurasque odit, cum sit purissima, mentes. Those who believe in the existence and magical endowments of the Rosicrucian Brethren will hope that this promising pupil received the recompense so undoubtedly due to the beauty of his aspirations. The Latin Epistle is supplemented by a post datum, which refers to the " Nuptise Chymicae " as containing " the whole chymical artifice enigmatically delineated." " Responsum ad Fratres Rosaceae Crucis Illustres " is a printed letter addressed to the Fraternity in the year 1618, by Hercules Ovallodius, Alsatus ; Heermannus Condesyanus ; and Martinus a Casa Cegdessa Marsiliensis. It is a piece of piteous pleading for admission into the ranks of the Brethren by three writers who believe themselves to "have fallen upon evil times, and know that there is no entrance into the mystic temple which is filled with the glory and power of God, till the seven last plagues have been poured out upon the earth. They acknowledge the Viri Fratres as the instruments of the Divine vengeance in the consummation of the age. Ipse est malleus noster et arma, vos ipsius servi.

A curious Rosicrucian reverie, entitled " F. R. C. Fama e scanzia Redux," written in execrable Latin, and printed in a style corresponding with its literary merits, appeared Anno Christi M.DC.XVIII., as the title has it. It professes to be the trumpet Jubilei ultimi, that is, presumably, of the last jubilee year among the Jews, and bears for one of its mottoes, "One woe hath passed ; behold, there come yet two other woes after this one." It is precisely one of those mysterious and problematical productions which are sometimes supposed to conceal deep secrets, because they are completely unintelligible and barbarous. It professes to contain a Judicium de Fraternitatis R. C. Sigillo et Buccina etfuturce Reformations Mysterie, and is mystically separated into seven parts or chapters, each terribly intituled. Thus the seventh is the " voice of the dove speaking concerning the jawbone of the ass," and the " Judgment " itself is averred to proceed from a similar quarter " ex asini mandibula." The statement is apparently serious, for this extraordinary local habitation is parenthetically explained to be the fans vitce, or fount of life. The whole pamphlet is a raving chaos of scriptural quotations concerning the Corner Stone, the Keys of David, and the proximity of the Eegnum Dei. It concludes with the following triumphant admonition to the reader :—

Quisquis de Rosese dubitas Crucis ordine Fratrum, Hoc lege, perlecto carmine certus eris. It is needless to say that the whole pamphlet does not contain a single reference to the Kosicrucians. " <p\tvffdiovps$af. Hoc est Eedintegratio," addressed to the "Brotherhood of the Rose-Cross," appeared in 1619, with the motto, Omnes de Saba veniunt, aurum et thus deferentes, et laudem Domini annunciantes, and prefaced by the following lines : — Vestro praesentes esse favore mihi. Fama velut cunctis vos respondere paratos Exhibet ; Ah ne sint irrita vota precor. Fidus amicus ero, fidos quoque gestit amicos Mens mea de musis conciliare novem. At, si scripta fient qusedam minus apta, flabello Fratrum non Momi sint abigenda, pio. Usus enim Famse potiori ex parte loquelis Fratres propitios hinc mage spero mihi. This little pamphlet compares different expressions of opinions by opposed parties, and concludes that any person may take part with a good conscience in the Brotherhood, and without prejudice to their Christianly convictions. It cites the common reproaches cast at the Order, to wit : that they are enemies of all lawful government, Jesuits, or Calvinists, also the suspicion that there is no order at all, but that the whole business is a farce, written for some undefined purpose. It maintains that there is such an order, and that it is in possession of great secrets, because it consists of pre-eminently learned men. Finally, the author exhorts all to join it.

After swindling him out of his own and his wife's fortune, amounting to eleven thousand dollars, they kicked him out of the order, with the assurance that they would murder him if he revealed their secrets, ' which secrets,' says he, ' I have faithfully kept, and for the same reason that women keep secrets— viz., because I have none to reveal ; for their knavery is no secret.' "

Vague rumours of veritable Kosicrucian adepts were occasionally heard, but in spite of their boasted powers, in spite of their projected reformation of all the world, and in spite of the seven years' strife of tongues which they occasioned, they had no influence whatsoever upon the thought of their age. An isolated and doubtful transmutation is occasionally ascribed to them, which is the sum total of their alchemical achievements. They posed principally as a healing fraternity, yet their influence on the medical science of their century is less still than that which they exerted upon alchemy. " In medicine," says Figuier, " that art which they were pledged to practise wherever they wandered, according to the first commandment of their master, the catalogue of their triumphs is speedily exhausted. We have already seen that they boasted of having cured the leprosy in an English count. They also claimed to have restored life to a Spanish King after he had been dead for six hours. Apart from these two cures, the second of which is doubtless a miracle, but can boast only of their own testimony, their whole medical history consists in vague allegations and a few unimportant facts, as, for instance, that which Gabriel Naude cites in the following terms : —

"In the year 1615 a certain pilgrim suddenly appeared in a German town, and assisted, as a doctor, at the prognostication of the death of a woman whom he had helped by some of his remedies ; he assumed to be proficient in several languages, related what had occurred in the town during his sojourn at this house; in a word, apart from the doctrine in which he shone still more, he was in every way similar to that Wandering Jew described by Cayot in his " Histoire Septenaire " — moderate, reserved, carelessly clad, never willingly remaining a long time in any one place, and still less desirous to be taken for what he nevertheless claimed to be, the third brother of the R.C., as he testified to the doctor Moltherus, who could not be so certainly persuaded to give credence to his statements, but has presented us with this history, leaving our judgment free to decide if it could establish a certain proof of the existence of this Company."1 According to Sprengel, a true Rosicrucian had only to gaze fixedly on a person, and however dangerous his disease, he was instantaneously healed ; the Brethren claimed to cure all diseases, without the help of drugs, by means of imagination and faith. But the matter remains at this day just where the claim originally left it, wholly unsupported by fact.

1 "L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes, " p. 301. THIS celebrated German alchemist was born at Ruidsburg, in Holstein, about the year 1658. In his youth, says the "Biographic Universelle," he applied himself to the study of medicine, and establishing himself at Rostoch, he practised that art with so much success that he became physician to the Emperor Rudolph II., by whom he was ennobled for his services. Some adepts, notwithstanding, succeeded in wiling him from the practical path he had followed so long ; il se passionna pour le grand ceuvre, and scoured all Germany to hold conferences with those whom he thought to be in possession of transcendent secrets. Another account declares that he sacrificed his health, his fortune, and his time to these " ruinous absurdities." According to Buhle, he travelled extensively, particularly to England, where he made the acquaintance of Robert Fludd. He finished by accepting the post of physician at Magdebourg, where he died in 1622. Michael Maier is one of the most important and interesting persons connected with the Rosicrucian controversy. He was the first to transplant it into England, "and as he firmly believed in the existence of such a sect, he sought to introduce himself to its notice \ but finding this impossible," says Buhle, "he set himself to establish such an order by his own efforts ; and in his future writings he

spoke of it as already existing — going so far even as to publish its laws." He was a voluminous and ingenious writer, and, according to Langlet du Fresnoy, all his treatises were excessively rare, even in the eighteenth century. " They contain much curious material," says this writer, " and I am astonished that the German booksellers, who publish innumerable worthless works, have not condescended to perceive that a complete collection of the writings of Michael Maier would be more useful and command a larger sale than the trash with which they overwhelm scholars and the public generally." This task still remains to be accomplished, and considerations of space will prevent me from even supplying a bibliography of these singular works. The most curious of all is " Atalanta Fugiens," which abounds with quaint and mystical copperplate engravings, emblematically revealing the most unsearchable secrets of Nature. This production, with the " Tripus Aureus," or three tracts of Basil Valentin, Thomas Norton, and Cremer, the Abbot of Westminster, all of which were unearthed by the diligence of Maier, seem to have appeared before he had immersed himself in the insoluble Eosicrucian mystery. The " Silentium Post Clamores," however, published at Francfurt in 1 6 1 7, professes to account not only for the speech in season uttered by the Fraternity in its priceless manifestoes, but for the silence which followed when it declined even to reply to the pamphlets and epistles of persons seeking initiation. The author asserts that from very ancient times philosophical colleges have existed among various nations for the study of medicine and of natural secrets, and that the discoveries which they made were perpetuated from generation to generation by the initiation of new members,

whence the existence of a similar association at that present time was no subject for astonishment. The philosophical colleges referred to are those of old Egypt, whose priests in reality were alchemists, " seeing that Isis and Osiris are sulphur and argmtum vivum " ; of the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries, of the Samothracian Cabiri, the Magi of Persia, the Brachmans of India, the Gymnosophists, Pythagoreans, £c. He maintains that one and all of these were instituted, not for the teaching of exoteric doctrines, but the most arcane mysteries of Nature. Afterwards he argues that if the German Fraternity had existed, as it declares, for so many years, it was better that it should reveal itself, than be concealed for ever under the veil of silence, and that it could not manifest itself otherwise than in the " Fama " and " Confessio Fraternitatis," which contain nothing contrary to reason, nature, experience, or the possibility of things. Moreover, the Order rightly observes that silence which Pythagoras imposed on his disciples, and which alone can preserve the mysteries of existence from the prostitution of the vulgar. The contents of the two manifestoes are declared to be true, and we are further informed that we owe a great debt to the Order for their experimental investigations, and for their discovery of the universal Catholicon. The popular objections preferred against it are disposed of in different chapters, e.g., the charges of necromancy and superstition. The explicit statement of the Society, that all communications addressed to it should not fail to reach their destination, although they were unknown and anonymous, proving apparently false, was a special cause of grievance ; those who sought health and those who coveted treasures at their hand were equally disappointed, and, according to Michael Maier, appear to have

ROSICRUCIAN APOLOGISTS: MICHAEL MAIER.vji been equally enraged. He expostulates with them, saying Non omnis ad omnia omnibus horispamtus est, but his arguments as a whole can hardly be deemed satisfactory. Locorum absentia, personarum distantia, &c., could scarcely prove obstacles to men who were bound by no considerations of space and time, and readers of the inmost heart would have discovered some who were worthy among the host of applicants. A much larger work, " Symbola Aurese Mensae," published in the same year as the " Silentium Post Clamores " also contains some references to the " College of German Philosophers of E. C." The story of the founder is reprinted, and Apollo with the twin muses are represented as contributing various vexatious metrical enigmas for the benefit of those enquirers who desired to be directed to the local habitation of the Order. Neither of these works represents their author as personally connected with the Rosicrucians, nor do they convey any information respecting them. The same must be said of " Themis Aurea, hoc est, De Legibus Fraternitatis R. C. Tractatus," which Maier published at Francfurt in 1618. It maintains that the laws in question are good, dilates upon the pre-eminent dignity of the healing art, declares that all vices are intolerable in physicians, and that the Rosicrucians are free from all. The most curious and important point in the whole " Apologia" is that Maier declares the " Universal Reformation " to have no connection with the manifestoes of the Society, but to be a tract translated from the Italian, and simply bound up with the "Fama." Moreover, he earnestly endeavours to free the Order from the imputation that it desired to reform the world. Reformatio omnium hercesum potius ad Deum, quam hominem spectat, nee a Fratribus affectatur. But whether the Com-

munis et Generalis Reformatio had any connection with the Rosicrucians, or not, it is evident from the documents about which there is no doubt or question, and particularly from the " Fama Fraternitatis," that they believed a general revolution to be at hand, and that they would be concerned therein. A posthumous tract of Michael Maier was published in 1624 by one of his personal friends, who explicitly states that he is ignorant whether the departed alchemist, who so warmly and gratuitously defended the cause of the Rosicrucians, was ever received into their number, but that it is certain he was a Brother of the Christian Reft ligion, or a Brother of the Kingdom of Christ. This statement may simply mean that he was a Christian and a man of God, or, on the other hand, it may signify that he was a member of the Christian Fraternity of Andreas. However this may be, two Latin tracts, being translations from the German made by the same friend of Maier, follow the posthumous pamphlet of the alchemist. The first is a colloquy on the Society by personages respectively called Quirinus, Polydorus, Tyrosophus, Promptutus, and Politicus. The second is an " Echo Colloquii " by Benedict Hilarion, who professes to write " Mandato superiorum/' to represent the order, and to be himself a Rosicrucian. There are two mottoes on the title page of this work — the one is per angusta ad augusta, the other

Augustis, Augusta, viis petit ardua virtus, Non datur, ad ccelum currere lata via. The writer refers in a kindly manner to the propagandist labours of Michael Maier, and assures the anonymous but illustrious Tyrosophus that his Rosicrucian apologies were not written in vain, and hints broadly that he was at length admitted into their Order, which still holds out the promise of initiation to others when the proper time shall have arrived. This publication is singularly free from the sectarian bitterness of the first manifestoes. It recognises that all have erred, including Luther himself, and seems animated by a reasonable and conciliatory spirit. At the end there are published some " Declaratory Canons" of the Order, which define God to be the Eternal Father, incorruptible fire, and everlasting light, discuss the generation of the invisible and incomprehensible Word of God, and the tetradic manifestation of the elements. In none of these works does the statement of Professor Buhle, concerning the foundation of a Rosicrucian society, and the publication of its laws, receive a particle of corroboration. The other works of Michael Maier are of a purely alchemical nature, save and except some obscure pamphlets which are not in the Library of the British Museum, which I have therefore been unable to consult, and which may contain the information in question; but from my knowledge of Professor Buhle and his romantic methods, I suspect his imagination has been unconsciously at work on some doubtful passages in the writings which have already been noticed, more especially as the personal but anonymous friend who edited Maier's posthumous tract entitled " Ulysses," knew nothing apparently of such a pseudo-association, nor is it likely that the author of the "Echo Colloquii" would hint at his initiation into the genuine order if Maier had instituted a rival society, shining by the borrowed lustre of its name and its symbols.

However this may be, with the death of Michael Maier the Eosicrucians disappear from the literary horizon of Germany till the year 1710, when a writer, calling himself S. R, that is, Sincerus Eenatus, otherwise Sigmund Eichter, published at Breslau his " Perfect and True Preparation of the Philosophical Stone, according to the Secret of the Brotherhoods of the Golden and Eosy Cross," to which is annexed the " rules of the above-mentioned Order for the initiation of new members " and their enrolment among the Sons of the Doctrine. This extraordinary publication was followed, in 1785-88, by the " Secret Symbols of the Eosicrucians of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," which, though published at Altona, seem to have emanated from the same source. The latter work is also of an alchemical nature, and no information of a historical kind is to be found in either. I shall conclude this account of the results of the Eosicrucian manifestoes in Germany with the Laws of the Brotherhood, as published by Sincerus Rmatus. It is certain, says Semler, that the long series of regulations enumerated by this writer were not adopted before 1622, for Montanus (Ludov. Conr. von Berger), who was supposed to have been expelled from the Order in that year, was not acquainted with them.

I. The brotherhood shall not consist of more than sixtythree members. II. The initiation of Catholics shall be allowed, and one member is prohibited to question another about his belief. III. The ten years' office of the Eosicrucian imperator shall be abolished, and he shall be elected for life. IV. The imperator shall keep the address of every member on his list, to enable them to help each other in case of necessity. A list of all names and birthplaces shall likewise be kept. The eldest brother shall always be impera- tor. Two houses shall be erected at Nurenberg and Ancona for the periodical conventions. V. If two or three brethren meet together, they shall not be empowered to elect a new member without the permission of the imperator. Any such election shall be void. VI. The young apprentice or brother shall be obedient unto death to his master. VII. The brothers shall not eat together except on Sundays, but if they work together they shall be allowed to live, eat, and drink in common. VIII. It is prohibited for a father to elect his son or brother, unless he shall have proved him well. It is better to elect a stranger so as to prevent the Art becoming hereditary.

IX. Although two or three of the brethren may be gathered together, they shall not permit anyone, whomsoever it may be, to make his profession to the Order unless he shall have previously taken part in the Practice, and has had full experience of all its workings, and has, moreover, an earnest desire to acquire the Art. X. When one of the brethren intends to make an heir, such an one shall confess in one of the churches built at our expense, and afterwards shall remain about two years as an apprentice. During this probation he shall be made known to the Congregation, and the Imperator shall be informed of his name, country, profession, and origin, to enable him to despatch two or three members at the proper time with his seal to make the apprentice a brother. XI. When the brethren meet they shall salute each other in the following manner : — The first shall say, Ave Prater ! The second shall answer, fiosece et Aurece. Whereupon the first shall conclude with Crucis. After they have thus discovered their position, they shall say one to another, Benedidus Dominus Deus noster qui dedit nobis signum, and shall also uncover their seals, because if the name can be falsified the seal cannot.

XII. It is commanded that every brother shall set to work after he has been accepted in our large houses, and has been endowed with the Stone (he receives always a sufficient portion to ensure his life for the space of sixty years). Before beginning he shall recommend himself to God, pledging himself not to use his secret Art to offend Him, to destroy or corrupt the empire, to become a tyrant through ambition or other causes, but always to appear ignorant, invariably asserting that the existence of such secret arts is only proclaimed by charlatans. XIII. It is prohibited to make extracts from the secret writings, or to have them printed, without permission from the Congregation ; also to sign them with the names or characters of any brother. Likewise, it is prohibited to print anything against the Art. XIV. The brethren shall only be allowed to discourse of the secret Art in a well-closed room. XV. It is permitted for one brother to bestow the Stone freely upon another, for it shall not be said that this gift of God can be bought with a price. XVI. It is not permissible to kneel before any one, under any circumstances, unless that person be a member of the Order.

XVII. The brethren shall neither talk much nor marry. Yet it shall be lawful for a member to take a wife if he very much desire it, but he shall live with her in a philosophical mind. He shall not allow his wife to practise over- much with the young brethren. With the old members she may be permitted to practise, and he shall value the honour of his children as his own. XVIII. The brethren shall refrain from stirring up hatred and discord among men. They shall not discourse of the soul, whether in human beings, animals, or plants, nor of any other subject which, however natural to themselves, may appear miraculous to the common understanding. Such discourse can easily lead to their discovery, as occurred at Rome in the year 1620. But if the brethren be alone they may speak of these secret things. XIX. It is forbidden to give any portion of the Stone to a woman in labour, as she would be brought to bed prematurely. XX. The Stone shall not be used at the chase. XXI. No person having the Stone in his possession shall ask a favour of any one. XXII. It is not allowable to manufacture pearls or other precious stones larger than the natural size.

XXIII. It is forbidden (under penalty of punishment in one of our large houses) that anyone shall make public the sacred and secret matter, or any manipulation, coagulation, or solution thereof. XXIV. Because it may happen that several brethren are present together in the same town, it is advised, but not commanded, that on Whitsuntideday any brother shall go to that end of the town which is situated towards sunrise and shall hang up a green cross if he be a Eosicrucian, and a red one if he be a brother of the Golden Cross. Afterwards, such a brother shall tarry in the vicinity till sunset, to see if another brother shall come and hang up his cross also, when they shall salute after the usual man ner, make themselves mutually acquainted, and subsequently inform the imperator of their meeting. XXV. The imperator shall every ten years change his abode, name, and surname. Should he think it needful he may do so at shorter periods, the brethren to be informed with all possible secresy. XXVI. It is commanded that each brother, after his initiation into the Order, shall change his name and surname, and alter his years with the Stone. Likewise, should he travel from one country to another, he shall change his name to prevent recognition.

XXVII. No brother shall remain longer than ten years out of his own country, and whenever he departs into another he shall give notice of his destination, and of the name he has adopted. XXVIII. No brother shall begin to work till he has been one year in the town where he is residing, and has made the acquaintance of its inhabitants. He shall have no acquaintance with the professores ignorantes. XXIX. No brother shall dare to reveal his treasures, either of gold or silver, to any person whomsoever ; he shall be particularly careful with members of religious societies, two of our brethren having been lost, anno 1641, thereby. No member of any such society shall be accepted as a brother upon any pretence whatever. XXX. While working, the brethren shall select persons of years as servants in preference to the young. XXXI. When the brethren wish to renew themselves, they must, in the first place, travel through another kingdom, and after their renovation is accomplished, must remain absent from their former abode. XXXII. When brethren dine together, the host, in ac- cordance with the conditions already laid down, shall endeavour to instruct his guests as much as possible.

XXXIII. The brethren shall assemble in our great houses as frequently as possible, and shall communicate one to another the name and abode of the imperator. XXXIV. The brethren in their travels shall have no connection nor conversation with women, but shall choose one or two friends, generally not of the Order. XXXV. When the brethren intend to leave any place, they shall divulge their destination to no one, neither shall they sell anything which they cannot carry away, but shall direct their landlord to divide it among the poor, if they do not return in six weeks. XXXVI. A brother who is travelling shall carry nothing in oil, but only in the form of powder of the first projection, which shall be enclosed in a metallic box having a metal stopper. XXXVII. No brother should carry any written description of the Art about him, but should he do so, it must be written in an enigmatical manner. XXXVIII. Brethren who travel, or take any active part in the world, shall not eat if invited by any man to his table unless their host has first tasted the food. If this be not possible, they shall take in the morning, before leaving home, one grain of our medicine in the sixth projection, after which they can eat without fear, but both in eating and drinking they shall be moderate.

XXXIX. No brother shall give the Stone in the sixth projection to strangers, but only to sick brethren. XL. If a brother, who is at work with anyone, be questioned as to his position, he shall say that he is a novice and very ignorant. XLI. Should a brother desire to work, he shall only employ an apprentice in default of securing the help of a brother, and shall be careful that such an apprentice is not present at all his operations. XLII. No married man shall be eligible for initiation as a brother, and in case any brother seeks to appoint an heir, he shall choose some one unencumbered by many friends. If he have friends, he must take a special oath to communicate the secrets to none, under penalty of punishment by the imperator. XLIII. The brethren may take as an apprentice anyone they have chosen for their heir, provided he be ten years old. Let the person make profession. When the permission of the imperator is obtained, whereby anybody is really accepted as a member, he can be constituted heir. XLIV. It is commanded that a brother who by any accident has been discovered by any prince, shall sooner die than initiate him into the secret ; and all the other brethren, including the imperator, shall be obliged to venture their life for his liberation. If, by misfortune, the prince remain obstinate, and the brother dies to preserve the secret, he shall be declared a martyr, a relative shall be received in his place, and a monument with secret inscriptions shall be erected in his honour.

XLV. It is commanded that a new brother can only be received into the Order in one of the churches built at our expense, and in the presence of six brethren. It is necessary to instruct him for three months, and to provide him with all things needful Afterwards he must receive the sign of Peace, a palm-branch, and three kisses, with the words — "Dear brother, we command you to be silent." After this, he must kneel before the imperator in a special dress, with an assistant on either side, the one being his magister, and the other a brother. He shall then say : — "I, N. N., swear by the eternal and living God not to make known the secret which has been communicated to me (here he uplifts two fingers l) to any human being, but to preserve it in concealment under the natural seal all the days of my life ; likewise to keep secret all things connected therewith as far as they may be made known to me ; likewise to discover nothing concerning the position of our brotherhood, neither the abode, name, or surname of our imperator, nor to shew the Stone to anyone ; all which I promise to preserve eternally in silence, by peril of my life, as God and His Word may help me."

Afterwards his magister cuts seven tufts of hair from his head and seals them up in seven papers, writing on each the name and surname of the new brother, and giving them to the imperator to keep. The next day the brethren proceed to the residence of the new brother, and eat therein without speaking or saluting one another. When they go away, however, they must say, "Prater Aurece (vel Rosece) Crucis Dens sit tecum cum perpetuo silentio Deo promisso et nostrce sanctcv congregation^' This is done three days- in succession. XLVI. When these three days are passed, they shall give some gifts to the poor, according to their intention and discretion. XL VII. It is forbidden to tarry in our houses longer than two months together. XLVIII. After a certain time the brethren shall be on a more familiar footing with the new brother, and shall instruct him as much as possible. 1 See ''The Mysteries of Magic," pp. 324, 325. XLIX. No brother need perform more than three projections while he stays in our large house, because there are certain operations which belong to the magisters. L. The brethren shall be called, in their conversation with each other, by the name they received at their reception.

LI. In presence of strangers they shall be called by their ordinary names. LII. The new brother shall invariably receive the name of the brother then last deceased ; and all the brethren shall be obedient to these rules when they have been accepted by the^Order, and have taken the oath of fidelity in the name of the Lord Jesus Christus. THE central figure of Eosicrucian literature, towering as an intellectual giant above the crowd of souffleurs, theosophists, and charlatanic professors of the magnum opus, who, directly or otherwise, were connected with the mysterious Brotherhood, is Robertus de Fluctibus, the great English mystical philosopher of the seventeenth century, a man of immense erudition, of exalted mind, and, to judge by his writings, of extreme personal sanctity. Ennemoser describes him as one of the most distinguished disciples of Paracelsus, but refuses to number him with " those consecrated theosophists who draw all wisdom from the fountain of eternal light." He does not state his reasons for this depreciatory judgment, and the brief and inadequate notice which he gives of Fludd's system displays such a cursory acquaintance with the works in which it is developed, that it is doubtful whether he had taken pains to understand his author. I should rank the Kentish mystic second to none among the disciples of the " divine " Theophrastus, while in the profundity and extent of his learning, there can be no question that he far surpassed his master, who is said to have known little but to have divined almost everything, and who is, therefore, called divinus, in the narrower sense of that now much abused term.

Robert Fludd was born at Milgate House,1 in the parish of Bersted, Kent, during the year 1574. By his mother's side he was descended from the ancient family of Andros of Taunton in Somerset. His father, Thomas Fludd, was a representative of a Shropshire stock, and successively occupied several high positions. He was victualler of Bewick, and then of JSTewhaven in France ; afterwards he was made Receiver of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, and being appointed treasurer of the army sent under Lord Willoughby to Henry IV. of France, "he behaved so honourably that he was knighted, and on his return to England was made treasurer of all her Majesty's forces in the Low Countries." : This was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth ; he was constantly a justice of the peace where he resided, and was also treasurer of the Cinque ports. " He bore for his arms — vert, a chevron between three wolves' heads erased, argent, which coat, with his quarterings, was confirmed to him by Robert Cook, Clar., Nov. 10, 1572."3 I have succeeded in compiling from various sources the following scanty genealogy of the Fludd family :— 1 " The seat of Milgat was formerly esteemed a manor. It was anciently possessed by the family of Coloigne, one of whom, Robert de Coloigne, died feifed of it in the 35th year of Edward III. In process of time his descendants came to be called Coluney, one of whom, Thomas Coluney, as appears by an old survey of Bersted, possessed it in the 14th year of Edward IV.

In the beginning of the reign of Henry VII. it was become the property of the family of Stonehouse, whose ancient seat was at Hazelwood, Boughton Malherbe (Philpot, p. 68). Robert Stonehouse was of Bersted, Esquire, at the latter end of Henry VIII. His son George, at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, alienated this seat to Thomas Fludd, Esquire, afterwards knighted, and who considerably improved and augmented it. " One corner of this edifice is still said to remain built in the manor-house erected on its site when the old house fell into ruins. — Hasted, "History of Kent," vol. ii., pp. 486, 487.

- Hasted's "History of Kent," vol. ii., p. 486. ;: " Visitation of County of Kent, ir>74 and 1619." .43" -H t- 8 9 ^Sl if w s According to this genealogy, Robert Fludd was the youngest of five sons. He was entered of St John's College in the year 1591, at the age of seventeen. Having graduated both in arts and medicine, he appears to have travelled extensively, for the space of six years, in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. On his return to England, he was made a member of the London College of Physicians, and took his degree of Master in Arts in the year 1605. His first published work appeared in 1616, about which time he was visited by Michael Maier, by whom he was probably acquainted with the Rosicrucian controversy, and with whom he corresponded after the renowned German alchemist had returned to his own country. Fludd appears to have resided chiefly in London, then as now the great intellectual centre of England. He had a house in Fenchurch Street, according to Fuller,* and another in Coleman Street, where he died in the year 1637, on the 8th day of September. He was buried in the chancel of Bersted Church, under a tomb which he had previously erected — " An oblong square of dark, slate- coloured marble, occupying a large space of the chancel wall on the left as you stand before the altar, looking up the body of the small church towards the door. There is a seated half-length figure of Fludd, with his hand on a book, as if just raising his head from reading to look at you. Upon the monument are two marble books inscribed Misterium Cabalisticum and Philosophia Sacra. There were originally eight books. The inscription to his memory is as follows : —

Doctor Fludd's Answer unto M. Foster, or the squesing of Parson Foster's Sponge, ordained by him for the wiping away of the weapon-salve. London, 1631. 4to. Clavis Philosophise et Alchymise. (A Reply to Father Gassendi.) Francofurti, 1633. Fol. Phylosophia Mosaica. In qua Sapientia et Scientia creationis et creaturarum sacra vereque Christiana . . . ad amussim et enuncleate explicatur. Goudse, 1638. Fol. It will be seen from this list that the Rosicrucian manifestoes found an immediate defender in Robert Fludd, that is, if the " Apologia " which bears his name is to be considered his work. There is some uncertainty on this point, but it has been disputed on insufficient grounds. As a maiden effort, it will not of course bear comparison with the dialectical skill of his mature productions, but the principles it propounds are those of the " Mosaicall Philosophy " and the " Tractatus Varii." " What was the particular occasion of his own first acquaintance with Kosicrucianism is not recorded," says Buhle. " All the books of Alchemy or other occult knowledge, published in Germany, were at that time immediately carried over to England —provided they were written in Latin ; and if written in German, were soon translated for the benefit of English students. He may therefore have gained his knowledge immediately from the Eosicrucian books, but it is more probable that he acquired it from his friend Maier. ... At all events, he must have been initiated into Eosicrucianism at an early period."

By whomsoever written, the "Tractatus Apologeticus " is an exceedingly curious work, so astonishing occasionally in the nature of its arguments that it is difficult to suppose that they were put forward seriously. It was called for by Andrew Libavius' " searching and hostile analysis " of the Eosicrucian Confession, and was written to clear the Society from the Infamies, maculce cast on it by the accusations then brought forward, and above all from the charges of detestable magic and diabolical superstition. It is divided into three parts, and various chapters are illustrated by appropriate quotations from the manifesto it is defending, whose underlying principles are developed and explained. The first part treats of the various departments of magical science, of the Cabala, of the Books of God, both visible and invisible, of the secret characters of Nature, and of the value of astrological portents. The second part is devoted to a lugubrious consideration of the impediments and degeneracy of the arts and sciences in modern times — de scientiarum hodierno die in scholis mgentium impedimentis. It enlarges on the urgent necessity for a reformation in Natural Philosophy, Medicine, and Alchemy. Concerning the first, the author declares it to be impossible for any one to attain to the supreme summit of the natural sciences unless he be profoundly versed in the occult meaning of the ancient philosophers, but the minute and most accurate observer who does achieve this height will not find it difficult to adapt the materials which are prepared by Nature in such a manner as to produce, by the application of actives to passives, many marvellous effects before the time ordained by Nature ; and this, he adds, will be mistaken by the uninitiated for a miracle.

Like others of his school, he insists on the uncertainty of (L posteriori and experimental methods, to which he unhesitatingly attributes all the errors of the natural sciences. " Particulars are frequently fallible, but universals never. Occult philosophy lays bare Nature in her complete nakedness, and alone contemplates the wisdom of universals by the eyes of intelligence. Accustomed to partake of the rivers which flow from the Fountain of Life, it is unacquainted with grossness and with clouded waters." In Medicine he laments the loss of that universal panacea referred to by Hippocrates : — " But absolutely nothing remains of that one and only medicament of which Hippocrates makes mention (darkly and mystically, I admit) in several places, and still less are its operations understood, inasmuch as no one now searches with lynx-like eyes into the profound depths of true natural philosophy, to gain an accurate knowledge of its composition and its virtues." Concerning Arithmetic, he asks mournfully, and with apparent earnestness, " Which of us has, at this day, the ability to discover those true and vivific numbers whereby the elements are united and bound to one another 1 " And then, with regard to music, which, as he remarks, non aliter succedit Arithmetical quam medicina Philosophies Naturali, he cries after the same fashion : — " But, good God, what is this when compared with that deep and true music of the wise, whereby the proportions of

natural things are investigated, the harmonical concord and the qualities of the whole world are revealed, by which also connected things are bound together, peace established between conflicting elements, and whereby each star is perpetually suspended in its appointed place by its weight and strength, and by the harmony of its lucent spirit." It is impossible to read without a smile when the author urges the necessity for a musical reformation, on the ground that we have lost that art of Orpheus by which he moved insensible stones, and that of Arion by which the fishes were charmed.

The cursory review of alchemy is equally gloomy : — " The art, also, of alchemy or chemistry is surrounded with such insoluble enigmas that we can scarcely gain anything bub ignorance therefrom, and ignotum per ignotius.^ He enlarges on its fictitious vocabulary, and quotes Maricinus as follows : — " The magisterium of the philosophers is hidden and concealed, and wherever found is known by a thousand names ; moreover, it is surrounded by symbols and is revealed to the wise alone, yet this is, notwithstanding, the one, only, and lineal way of the whole operation." Then he himself continues : — " Neither common fire, but Nature herself, neither artificial furnaces, but natural matrices, are needed in this work, which is the work of Nature only, and wherein nothing is required save the brief co-operation of her minister, by whom things natural to things also natural, and species to their congruents, are duly and accurately applied." Mathematics, optics, and astronomy he treats after the same fashion, comparing their tame and commonplace frivolities with the sublime knowledge of the ancients. The third part is entitled " De Naturae Arcanis," and treats of the mysteries of Light, &c., developing in a small space a curious and profound philosophy. It describes God as the ens entium, eternal form, inviolable, purely igneous, without any intermixture of material, unmanifested before the creation of the universe, according to the maxim of Mercurius Trismegistus, " Monas generat molem, et in seipsum refledit ardor em suam" Earth is defined to be a gross water, water a gross air, air a gross fire, fire a gross ether, while the ether itself is the grosser part of the empyrean, which is distinguished from the ethereal realm, and is described as a water of extreme tenuity, constituted of three parts of luminous substance to one aqueous part ;

it is the purest essence of all substances, and is identical with the luminiferous ether of the latest scientific hypothesis. Its place is the medium mundi, wherein is the sphcera cequalitatis, in which the sun performs its revolution. The sun itself is composed of equal parts of light and water. Light is the cause of all energies — nihil in hoc mundo peradum fuerit, sine lucis mediatione aut actu divino. "It is impossible for man to desire more complete felicity than the admirable knowledge of light and its virtues," by which the ancient magi constructed their ever-burning lamps, forced fire out of stones and wood, kindled tapers from the rays of stars, and naturally, by means of its reflections, produced many wonders in the air,

such as phantom writing, and, more than all, by the true use of the lux, invisibilis, made men themselves invisible. The information scattered through the various parts of the apology on the different departments of magic is also noteworthy. It distinguishes between natural, mathematical, venific, necromantic, and thaumaturgic magic. " That most occult and secret department of physics by which the mystical properties of natural substances are extracted, we term Natural Magic. The wise kings who (led by the new Star from the East) sought the infant Christ, are called Magi, because they had attained a perfect knowledge of natural things, whether celestial or sublunar. This branch of the Magi also includes Salomon, since he was versed in the arcane virtues and properties of all substances, and is said to have understood the nature of every plant from the cedar to the hyssop. Magicians who are proficient in the mathematical division construct marvellous machines by means of their geometrical knowledge; such were the flying dove of Archytas, and the brazen heads of Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, which are said to have spoken. Venific magic is familiar with potions, philtres, and with the various preparations of poisons ; it is in a measure included in the natural division, because a knowledge of the properties of natural things is requisite to produce its results. Necromantic Magic is divided into goetic, maleficient, and Theurgic. The first consists in diabolical commerce with unclean spirits, in rites of criminal curiosity, in illicit songs and invocations, and in the evocation of the souls of the dead. The second is the adjuration of the devils by the Virtue of Divine Names. The third pretends to be governed by good angels and the Divine Will, but its wonders are most

frequently performed by evil spirits, who assume the names of God and of the angels. This department of Necromancy can, however, be performed by natural powers, definite rites and ceremonies, whereby celestial and divine virtues are reconciled and drawn to us ; the ancient Magi promulgated in their secret books many rules of this doctrine. The last species of magic is the thaumaturgic, begetting illusory phenomena ; by this art the Magi produced their phantasms and other marvels." When speaking of the wonders wrought mechanically by Eoger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and Boetius, the apologist of the Rosicrucians tells us that he himself, by his assiduity in mechanical arts, constructed a wooden bull which lowed and bellowed after the fashion of the living animal ; a dragon which flapped its wings, hissed, and vomited forth fire and flames upon the bull ; and a lyre which played melodies without human intervention, as well as many other things, which by the simple mathematical art, apart from natural magic, could not have been accomplished. The scientific and philosophical principles of Robert Fludd were attacked by Father Mersenne, with special reference to his belief in the Rosicrucian Society. Some twelve years had passed since the appearance of the "Tractatus Apologeticus," which he probably no longer valued. He replied to the attack in the work entitled " Sophise cum Moria Certamen," without mentioning the Rosicrucians. But the " Summum Bonum," by Joachim Fritz, which accompanied this reply, contains an elaborate defence of the Order, to which, in one of its phases, Fludd is said to have belonged. The authorship of this defence he is supposed to have disavowed. Buhle, however, points out that as " the principles, the style, the animosity towards

Mersenne, the publisher, and the year, were severally the same as in the ' Sophise cum Moria Certamen ' which Fludd acknowledged, there cannot be much reason to doubt that it was his." But as I am unwilling to consider that a man of Fludd's high character would be guilty of deliberate falsehood, and as it was not his habit to write either anonymously or pseudonymously, I prefer the alternative offered by the German critic when he says, " If not Fludd's, it was the work of a friend of Fludd's." In either case, his opinions are represented. On the title-page of the " Summum Bonum," there is a large Rose on which two bees have alighted, with this motto above — Dat Rosa mel apibus. The book treats of the noble art of magic, the foundation and nature of the Cabala, the essence of veritable alchemy, and of the Causa Fratrum Eosece Crucis. It identifies the palace or home of the Rosicmcians with the Scriptural house of wisdom. Ascendamus ad montem rationabilem, et cedificemus domum Sapientice. The foundation of the mountain thus referred to is declared to be the Lapis angularis, the corner-stone, cut out of the mountain without hands. This stone is Christ. It is the spiritual palace which the Rosicrucians desire to reveal, and is therefore no earthly or material abode. There is a long disquisition on the significance of the Rose and the Cross, a purely spiritual interpretation being adopted. At the conclusion, the writer anticipates the question whether he himself is a brother of the Rose Cross, since he has settled all questions as to their religion and symbolism. His answer is that he least of any has deserved such a grace of God ; if it have pleased God to have so ordained it, it is enough. To satisfy, however, the curiosity of his readers, he supplies them with a curious letter supposed to have

emanated from the society, and which has been quaintly translated in a manuscript of the seventeenth century. This Epistle was written and sent by ye Brethren of R. C. to a certaine Germaine, a coppy whereof Dr Flud obtained of a Polander of Dantziche his friend, which he since printed in Latin at ye end of his tract, intituled, De Summo Bono. Venerable and Honourable Sr- Seeing that this will be ye first yeare of thy nativity, wee pray that thou mayst have from ye Most High God, a most happy entrance into and departure from out of thy life, and because thou hast hitherto been with a good mind a constant searcher of holy philosophy, well done ! Proceed, fear God, for thus thou mayest gaine Heaven. Get to thyself the most true knowledge, for it is God who hath found out every way ; it is God who alone is circumference and centre. But draw thee neere, listen, take this to thee W, for he who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow, because that in much knowledge is much griefe, wee speake by experience. For all worldlings, and vaine-glorious, vauntinge boasters, gorgious men, talkers, and vaine people doe unworthily scandalize, yea, and curse us for an unknown matter. But we wonder not that ye> ungrateful world doe persecute ye professors of ye true Arts, together with ye truth itself. Yett for thy sake wee shall briefly answer to these questions, viz. : What wee doe ? What can wee doe *? Or whether are any such as wee ? In John, therefore, wee reade that God is ye Supreme Light, and in light wee walke, so that wee exhibit light (although in a lanthern) to ye world. But thou man of ye world that deniest this, thou knowest not or seest not it behoves thee

to know that in thy vile boddy Jesus dwelleth. This thou hast from ye apostle. " And Jesus knew all their thoughts," to whom if thou adherest, thou are at length made one spirit with Him, and being such, who prohibeteth thee with Solomon to know as well ye wicked as good contentions of men. And this thou mayest take from me out of ye premises. And hence it is that wee doe not answer to all, viz., because of the deceitfull minds of some. For whosoever are alienated from God are contrary to us, and who is so foolish as to permit a new-come stranger to enter into another man's house 1 But if thou objectest that this union is onely to be expected in ye world to come, behold now in this thou showest thyself for a worldling who extinguishest light by thy ignorance. Also thou are not ashamed to make ye apostle a liar, in whom those things are more clearly manifested in these wordes— " So that you may be wanting in no grace, expectinge ye Revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ." But thou sayest that this is not to be understood of this inferiour life. What therefore does ye folio winge verse intend 1 " Who shall confirme you even to the end," for in the Kiugdome of God there is noe end, therefore in this temporall state will appear ye glory of ye Lord, and Jesus glorified.

If any thinge is further demanded concerning our office, our endeavoure is to leade backe lost sheepe to ye true sheepefold. You labore therefore in vaine, 0 miserable mortals, who enter upon another way than that ye apostle wills by putinge off your tabernacle, which way is not walked in through dyinge, but as Peter willeth when he saith : "As Christ hath taught mee," viz., when he was transfigured in ye mount, which laienge down, if it had not bine secret and hidden, ye apostle had not saide, " as Jesus taught mee," neither had ye

Supreme Truth saide : " Tell this to no man," for accordinge to ye vulgar way, vulgarly to die was known to all men from ye beginninge of ye world. Be yee changed therefore, be yee changed from dead stones into livinge philosophical stones. The apostle shews ye way when he saith : " Lett the same minde be in you as is in Jesus." Also he explains that minde in ye followinge words, viz., when as beinge in ye form of God, he thought it no robbery to be equal to God. Behould these things, 0 all you that search into ye abstruse secrets of nature ! Yee heare these matters, but you believe them not, 0 miserable mortals, who doe so anxiously run into youre own ruine, but wilt thou be more happy, 0 thou most miserable, wilt thou be elevated above ye circles of ye world, 0 thou proud one, wilt thou command in Heaven above, this earth, and thy darke body, 0 thou ambitious, will yee performe all miracles, 0 yee unworthy ? Know yee, therefore, ye rejected, of what nature it is, before it is sought. But thou, 0 Brother, hearken ! I will speake with S. John, that thou mayest have fellowshippe with us, and indeed our fellowshippe is with ye Father and with Jesus, and wee write unto you that yee may rejoyce because God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

But that thou mayest come unto us, behould this light, for it is impossible for thee to see us (unless when wee will) in another light. In this, therefore, follow us, whereby thou mayest be made happy with us, for our most immoveable pallace is ye centre of all things, likewise is it much obscured, because covered with many names. Enter, enter into ye glory of God and thy own salvation, ye gates and Schoole of Philosophicall Love, in which is taught everlastinge charity and fraternall love, and that some resplendent and invisible castle which is

built upon the mountaine of ye Lord, out of whose roote goeth forth a fountaine of livinge waters, and a river of love ! Drinke, drinke, and againe drinke, that thou mayest see all hidden things, and converse with us ! Againe beware ! But what 1 For thou knowest very well that nature receives nothing for nutriment but that which is subtile, the thick and foeculent is cast out as excrements. It is also well disputed by thyself, that those who will live in ye minde, rather than in ye body, take in nourishment by ye spirit, not by ye mouth. As for example, it is lawful to know Heaven by Heaven, not by earth, but ye virtues of this by ye other, and if you understand me aright, no man ascends into Heaven, which thou seekest, except He who descended from Heaven, which thou seekest not, enlighteneth him first. Whatsoever therefore is not from Heaven is a false immage, and cannot be called a virtue. Therefore, 0 Brother, thou canst not be better confirmed then by virtue itselfe, which is ye Supreame Truth, which if thou wilt religiously, and with all thy might, endeavour to follow in all thy wordes and workes, it will confirm thee daily more and more, for it is a fiery spirite, a glisteninge sparke, a graine impossible, never diinge, subliminge his own body, dwellinge in every created beeinge, sustaininge and governinge it, gold burninge, and by Christ purged, pure in ye fire, allwaye more glorious and pure, jubilatinge without diminution, this shall (I say) confirme thee daily, untill (as a certaine learned man saith) thou art made like a lion in battle, and canst take away all ye strength of ye world, and fearest not death, nor any violence whatsoever a divellish tyranny can invent, viz., seeinge thou art become such a one as thou desirest, a stone and a worke. And that God may bless thy labours which thou shalt

receive in most approved authors under a shaddow, for a wise man reads one thinge and understands another. Art thou imperfect 1 Aspire after a due perfection. Art thou foul and unclean 1 Purge thyself with teares, sublime thyselfe with good manners and virtues, adorn and beautify thyselfe with sacramentall graces ! Make thy soule sublime and subtile for ye contemplation of heavenly thinges, and conformable to angelicall spirits, that it may vivify thy vile ashes and vulgar body, and make it white, and render it altogether incorruptible and impassible by ye resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Doe these thinges, and thou wilt confess that no man hath wrote more plainly then I. These thinges the Lady Virtue hath commended should be told to thee, from (or by) whom, accordinge to thy deserts, thou shalt hereafter be more largely taught, these read, if thou wilt, as the apostle willeth, keepe that which is committed to thy trust. Farewell. F. T. F., in Light and C. By his talents and intellectual ability, Eobert Fludd is a character so important in English Rosicrucian literature, that I propose to give a short sketch or syllabus of his singular cosmical philosophy. The substance will be taken from the " Mosaicall Philosophy," and the folio volume entitled Tmdatus Varii, and it will be rendered as far as possible in the philosopher's own words.

The author distinguishes in several places between the Divine ffo<p/a, the eternal sapience, the heavenly wisdom, which is only mystically revealed to mankind, and the wisdom which is derived from the invention and tradition of men. He declares the philosophy of the Grecians, or the ethnick philosophy, to be based only on the second, and to be terrene, animal, and diabolical, not being founded on the deific corner-stone, namely, Jesus Christ, who is the essential substance and foundation of the true science. The original fountain of true wisdom is in God, the natura naturans, the infinite, illimitable Spirit, beyond all imagination, transcending all essence, without name, all wise, all-clement, the Father, the Word, and the ineffable, Holy Spirit, the highest and only good, the indivisible Trinity, the most splendid and indescribable light. This Wisdom is the vapor virtutis Dei, and the stainless mirror of the majesty and beneficence of God. All things, of what nature and condition soever, were made in, by, and through this Divine Word or emanation, which is God Himself, as it is the Divine Act, whose root is the Logos, that is, Christ. This Eternal Wisdom is the fountain or corner-stone of the higher arts, by which also all mysterious and miraculous discoveries are effected and brought to light.

Before the spagirical separation which the Word of God, or divine Elohim, effected in the six days of creation, the heavens and earth were one deformed, rude, undigested mass, complicitly comprehended in one dark abyss, but explicitly as yet nothing. This nothing is compared by St Augustine to speech, which while it is in the speaker's mind is as nothing to the hearer, but when uttered, that which existed complicitly in animo loquentis, is explicitly apprehended by the hearer. This nihihm or nothing is not a nihilum negativum. It is the First Matter, the infinite, informal, primordial Ens, the mysterium magnum of the Paracelsists. It existed eternally in God. If God had not produced all things essentially out of Himself, they could not be rightly referred to Him. The primeval darkness is the potentia dlvina as light is the actus divinus — theAleph tenebrosum and Aleph lucidum. Void of form and life, it is still a material developing from potentiality into the actual, and was informed by the Maker of the world with a universal essence, which is the Light of Moses, and was first evolved in the empyrean heaven, the highest and supernatural region of the world, the habitaculum fontis lucidi, the region not of matter but of form — form simple and spiritual beyond all imagination. There is a second spiritual heaven, participating in the clarity and tenuity of the first, of which it is the base ;

this is the medial heaven, called the sphcera cegualitatis and it is corporeal in respect of the former. The third heaven is the locality of the four elements. The progression of the primordial light through the three celestial spaces was accomplished during the first three days of creation. Christ the Wisdom and Word of God, by His apparition out of darkness, that is, by the mutation of the first principle from dark Aleph to light Aleph, revealed the waters contained in the profound bosom of the abyss, and animated them by the emanation of the spirit of eternal fire, and then by his admirable activity distinguished and separated the darkness from the light, the obscure and gross waters from the subtle and pure waters, disposing the heavens and spheres, as above stated, and dividing the grosser waters into sublunary elements. These elements are described as follows : — Earth is the conglomeration of the material darkness and the refuse of the heavens ; Water is the more gross spirit of the darkness of the inferior heaven, nearly devoid of light ; Air is the spirit of the second heaven j Fire, the spirit of the darkness of the Empyrean heaven.

The archetypal world was made by the egression of one out of one, and by the regression of that one, so emitted, into itself by emanation. According to this ideal image, or archetypal world, our universe was subsequently fashioned as a true type and exemplar of the Divine Pattern ; for out of unity in his abstract existence, viz., as it was hidden in the dark chaos, or potential mass, the bright flame of all formal being did shine forth, and the Spirit of Wisdom, proceeding from them both, conjoined the formal emanation with the potential matter, so that by the union of the divine emanation of light and the substantial darkness, which was water, the heavens were made of old, and the whole world.

God, according to these abstruse speculations, is that pure, catholic unity which includes and comprehends all multiplicity, and which before the objective projection of the cosmos must be considered as a transcendent entity, reserved only in itself, in whose divine puissance, as in a place without end or limit, all things which are now explicitly apparent were then complicitly contained, though in regard to our finite faculties it can only be conceived as nothing — nihil, non finis, non ens, aleph tenebrosum, the Absolute Monad or Unity. Joined to the cosmical philosophy of Eobert Fludd, there is an elaborate system of spiritual evolution, and the foundation of both is to be sought in the gigantic hypotheses of the Kabbalah. His angelology is derived from the works of pseudo-Dionysius on the celestial hierarchies, and he teaches the doctrine of the pre-existence of human souls, which are derived from the vivifying emanation dwelling in the Anima Mundi, the world's spiritual vehicle, the catholic soul, which itself is inacted and preserved by the Catholic and Eternal Spirit, sent out from the fountain of life to inact and vivify all things. These mystical speculations, whatever their ultimate value, are sublime flights of an exalted imagination, but they are found, in the writings of Robert Fludd, side by side with the crudest physical theories, and the most exploded astronomical notions. He denies the diurnal revolution of the earth, and considers the light of all the stars to be derived from the one " heavenly candle " of the sun.

Rejecting the natural if inadequate explanations of Aristotle and his successors, he presents the most extravagant definitions of the nature of winds, clouds, snow, &c. The last is described as a meteor which God draweth forth of His hidden treasury in the form of wool, or as a creature produced out of the air by the cold breath of the Divine Spirit to perform his will on earth. Thunder is a noise which is made in the cloudy tent or pavilion of Jehovah, lightning a certain fiery air or spirit animated by the

brightness and burning from the face or presence of Jehovah. Literally interpreting the poetic imagery of Scripture, he perceives the direct interference of the Deity in all the phenomena of Nature, and denounces more rational views as " terrene, animal, and diabolical." EUGENIUS PHILALETHES, the author of the renowned "Introitus apertus ad occlusum Regis Palatium," the "Entrance opened to the Closed Palace of the King," is so far connected with the Rosicrucians that he published a translation, as we have seen, of the "Fama" and "Confessio Fraternitatis," and his philosophical doctrines are very similar to those of the mysterious Brotherhood, of which he has been erroneously, and despite his express and repeated denials, represented as a member. Like them, he expected the advent of the artist Elias who was foretold by Paracelsus, represents his most important alchemical work as his precursor, and declares that problematical personage to be already born into the world. The entire universe is to be transmuted and transfigured by the science of this artist into the pure mystical gold of the Spiritual City of God, when all currencies have been destroyed. " A few brief years," he cries in his prophetic mood, " and I trust that money will be despised as completely as dross, and that we shall behold the destruction of this vile invention, so opposed to the spirit of Jesus Christ. The world is bewitched by it, and the infatuated nations adore this vain and gross metal as a divinity. Is it this which will help towards our coming redemption and our lofty future hopes 1 By this shall we enter that New Jerusalem

when its ways are paved with gold, and its gates are of pearls and precious stones, and when the Tree of Life, planted in the centre of Paradise, will dispense health to the whole of humanity 1 I foresee that my writings will be esteemed as highly as the purest gold and silver now are, and that, thanks to my works, these metals will "be as despised as dung." The date of this author's birth was 1612; he is supposed to have been a native of Scotland, but the fact of his placing a Welsh motto on the title of one of his books, together with his true name, Thomas Yaughan, which is pure Welsh, is a strong argument of his Welsh nationality. He adopted various pseudonyms in the different countries through which he passed in his wanderings as an alchemical propagandist. Thus in America he called himself Doctor Zheil, and in Holland Carnobius. According to Herthodt, his true name was Childe, while Langlet du Fresnoy writes it Thomas Vagan, by a characteristic French blunder. His nom de plume was Eugenius not Irenseus Philalethes, as Figuier states.1 The life of this adept is involved in an almost Rosicrucian uncertainty ; he was a mystery even to his publishers, who received his works from " an unknown person." Nearly all that is ascertained concerning him, and concerning his marvellous transmutations, rests on the authority of Urbiger, who has been proved inaccurate in more than one of his statements. His sojourn in America is an established fact, according to Louis Figuier, and the projections which he there accomplished in the laboratory of George Starkey, an apothecary, were subsequently published by the latter in London.

And now, gentlemen, I thank you, I have aire and room enough ; methinks you sneak and steal from me, as if the plague and this Red Cross were inseparable. Take my Lord have mercy along with you, for I pitty your sickly braines, and certainly as to your present state the inscription is not unseasonable. But in lieu of this, some of you may advise me to an assertion of the Capreols of del Phsebo, or a review of the library of that discreet gentleman of La Mancha, for in your opinion those knights and these brothers are equally invisible. This is hard measure, but I shall not insist to disprove you. If there be any amongst

the living of the same bookish faith with myself, they are the persons I would speak to." The preface proceeds to discourse upon the contempt which magic has undergone in all ages, and then the author distinctly denies his personal acquaintance with the Eosicrucian Society. " As for that Fraternity, whose History and Confession I have here adventured to publish, I have, for my own part, no relation to them, neither do I much desire their acquaintance. I know they are masters of great mysteries, and I know withal that nature is so large they may as wel receive as give. I was never yet so lavish an admirer of them as to prefer them to all the world, for it is possible, and perhaps true, that a private man may have that in his possession whereof they are ignorant. It is not their title and the noise it has occasioned which makes me commend them. The acknowledgment I give them was first procured by their books, for there I found them true philosophers, and therefore not chimseras, as most think, but men. Their principles are every way correspondent to the ancient and primitive wisedome — nay, they are consonant to our very religion, and confirm every point thereof. I question not but most of their proposals may seem irregular to common capacities, but when the prerogative and power of Nature is known, there they will quickly fall even, for they want not order and sobriety. It will be expected, perhaps, that I should speak something as to their persons and habitations, but in this my cold acquaintance will excuse me, or, had I any familiarity with them, I should not doubt to use it with more discretion. As for their existence (if I may speak like a schoolman), there is great reason we should believe it ; neither do I see how we can deny it, unless we grant that Nature is studied, and books