studious attitude in a stone chair, reading in a great book, with his elbow resting on a table like a rectangular altar, in the light of a large, ancient iron lamp, suspended by a thick chain to the middle of the roof. A cry of alarm, which he could not suppress, escaped from the scared discoverer, who involuntarily advanced one pace, beside himself with terror. He was now within the illuminated chamber. As his foot fell on the stone, the figure started bolt upright from his seated position, as if in awful astonishment. He erected his hooded head, and showed himself as if in anger about to question the intruder. Doubtful if what he saw were a reality, or whether he was not in some terrific dream, the countryman advanced, without being aware of it, another audacious step. The hooded man now thrust out a long arm, as if in warning; and in a moment the discoverer perceived that his hand was armed with an iron bâton, and that he pointed it as if tremendously to forbid further approach. Now, however, the poor man, not being in a condition either to reason or to restrain himself, with a cry, and in a passion of fear, took a third fatal step; and as his foot descended on the groaning stone, which seemed to give way for a moment under him, the dreadful man, or image, raised his arm high like a machine, and with his truncheon struck a prodigious blow upon the lamp, shattering it into a thousand pieces, and leaving the place in utter darkness.

This was the end of this terrifying adventure. There was total silence now, far and near. Only a long, low roll of thunder, or a noise similar to thunder, seemed to begin from a distance, and then to move with snatches, as if making turns; and it then rumbled sullenly to sleep, as if through unknown, inaccessible passages. What these were-if any passages-nobody ever found out. It was only suspected

that this hidden place referred in some way to the Rosicrucians, and that the mysterious people of that famous order had there concealed some of their scientific secrets. The place in Staffordshire became afterwards famed as the sepulchre of one of the brotherhood, whom, for want of a more distinct recognition or name, the people chose to call "Rosicrucius," in general reference to his order; and from the circumstance of the lamp, and its sudden extinguishment by the figure that started up, it was supposed that some Rosicrucian had determined to inform posterity that he had penetrated to the secret of the making of the ever-burning lamps of the ancients,-though, at the moment that he displayed his knowledge, he took effectual means that no one should reap any advantage from it.

The Spectator, in No. 379, for Thursday, May 15th, 1712, under the signature of "X," which is understood to be that of Budgell, has the following account of that which is chosen there to be designated "Rosicrucius's Sepulchre :"

"Rosicrucius, say his disciples, made use of this method to show the world that he had reinvented the ever-burning lamps of the ancients, though he was resolved no one should reap any advantage from the discovery."

We have chosen the above story as the introduction to our curious history.

Christian Rosencreutz died in 1484. To account for Rosicrucianism not having been heard of until 1604, it has been asserted that this supposed first founder of Rosicrucianism bound his disciples not to reveal any of his doctrines until a period of one hundred and twenty years after his death.

The ancient Romans are said to have preserved lights in their sepulchres many ages by the oiliness of gold (here steps in the art of the Rosicrucians), resolved by hermetic

methods into a liquid substance; and it is reported that at the dissolution of monasteries, in the time of Henry the Eighth, there was a lamp found that had then burnt in a tomb from about three hundred years after Christ-nearly twelve hundred years. Two of these subterranean lamps are to be seen in the Museum of Rarities at Leyden, in Holland. One of these lamps, in the papacy of Paul the Third, was found in the tomb of Tullia, Cicero's daughter, which had been shut up fifteen hundred and fifty years (Second edition of N. Bailey's Pλóλoyos, 1731).

Δ

Mark of the "Triune."

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

INSUFFICIENCY OF WORLDLY OBJECTS.

T is a constant and very plausible charge offered by the general world against the possession of the

power of gold-making as claimed by the alchemists, who were a practical branch of the Rosicrucians, that if such supposed power were in their hands, they would infallibly use it, and that quickly enough; for the acquisition of riches and power, say they, is the desire of all men. But this idea proceeds upon an ignorance of the character and inclinations of real philosophers, and results from an inveterate prejudice relative to them. Before we judge of these, let us acquire a knowledge of the natural inclinations of very deeply learned men. Philosophers, when they have attained to much knowledge, hold that the ordering of men, the following of them about by subservient people, and the continual glitter about them of the fine things of this world, are, after all, but of mean and melancholy account, because life is so brief, and this accidental preeminence is very transitory. Splendour, show, and bowing little delight the raised and abstract mind. That circuit formed by the own, ing of money and riches is circumscribed by the possessor's own ken. What is outside of this sight may just as well be enjoyed by another person as by the owner, since all is the thinking; only granting that a man has sufficient for

his daily wants, letting the "morrow, indeed, take thought for itself." One dinner a day, one bed for one night, in the alternations of sun and darkness, one of every thing that is agreeable to (or is desirable for) man, is sufficient for any one man. A man's troubles are increased by the multiplication even of his enjoyments, because he is then beset with anxiety as to their repetition or maintenance. Reduction, and not multiplication, is his policy, because thinking of it is all that can affect him about any thing in this world.

By the time that the deep, philosophical chemist has penetrated to the control and conversion of the ultimate elements, so as to have in his view the secret operations of Nature, and to have caught Nature, as it were, preparing her presentments behind the scenes, he is no more to be amused with vain book-physics. After his spying into the subtle processes of Nature, he cannot be contented with the ordinary toys of men; for are not worldly possessions, honour, rank, money, even wives and numerous or any children, but toys in a certain sense? Where sink they when the great unknown sets in which awaits every man? He who can work as Nature works-causing the sunshine, so to speak, to light fire up independently in itself, and to breed and propagate precious things upon the atmosphere in which it burnscausing the growing supernatural soul to work amidst the seeds of gold, and to purge the material, devilish mass until the excrement is expelled, and it springs in health into condensating, solid splendour, a produce again to be sown, to fructify into fresh harvests-the alchemist, or prince of chemists, who can do this, laughs at the hoards of kings. By the time that the artist is thus so much more than the usual man, is he the less desirous of the gratifying things to the ordinary man. Grandeur fades to him before such high