last, hesitating, to Signor Gualdi. A slight cold change passed over the eyes of the stranger; but he only made reply by a low bow. "You look a moderately young man,-to be candid with you, sir, I should say about forty-five, or thereabouts; and yet I know, by certain means of which I will not now further speak, that this picture is by the hand of Titian, who has been dead nearly a couple of hundred years. How is this possible ?" he added, with a polite, grave smile. "It is not easy," said Signor Gualdi quietly, "to know all things that are possible, for very frequently mistakes are made concerning such; but there is certainly nothing strange in my being like a picture painted by Titian." The nobleman easily perceived by his manner, and by a momentary cloud upon his brow, that the stranger felt offence. The daughter clung to her father's arm, secretly afraid that this little unexpected demur might pass into coolness, and end with a consummation of estrangement, which she feared excessively; she dreaded the rupture of their intimacy with the stranger; and, contradictory as it may seem, she wanted to withdraw, even without the point she dreaded being cleared up into renewed pleasant confidence. However, this little temporary misunderstanding was soon put an end to by Signor Gualdi himself, who in a moment or two resumed his ordinary manner; and he saw the father and daughter down-stairs, and forth to the entrance of his house, with his usual composed politeness,-though the nobleman could not help some feeling of restraint, and his daughter experienced a considerable amount of mortification; and she could not look at Signor Gualdi,-or rather, when she did, she looked too much.

This little occurrence remained in the mind of the nobleman. His daughter felt lonely and dissatisfied afterwards, eager for the restoration of the same friendly feeling

"LES MÉMOIRES HISTORIQUES."

31

with Signor Gualdi, and revolving in her mind numberless. schemes to achieve it. The Venetian betook himself in the evening to the usual coffee-house; and he could not forbear speaking of the incident among the group of people collected there. Their curiosity was roused, and one or two resolved to satisfy themselves by looking at the picture attentively the next morning. But to obtain an opportunity to see the picture on this next morning, it was necessary to see the Signior Gualdi somewhere, and to have his invitation to his lodgings for the purpose. The only likely place to meet with him was at the coffee-house; and thither the gentlemen went at the usual time, hoping, as it was the Signior's habit to present himself, that he would do so. But he did not come,-nor had he been heard of from the time of the visit of the nobleman the day before to the Signior's house, which absence, for the first time almost that he had. been in Venice, surprised every body. But as they did not meet with him at the coffee-house,-as they thought was sure, one of the persons who had the oftenest conversed with the Signior, and therefore was the freer in his acquaintance, undertook to go to his lodgings and inquire after him, which he did; but he was answered by the owner of the house, who came to the street-door to respond to the questioner, that the Signior had gone, having quitted Venice that morning early, and that he had locked up his pictures with certain orders, and had taken the key of his rooms with him.

This affair made a great noise at the time in Venice; and an account of it found its way into most of the newspapers of the year in which it occurred. In these newspapers, and elsewhere, an outline of the foregoing particulars may be seen. The account of the Signior Gualdi will also be met with in Les Mémoires historiques for the year 1687,

tome i. p. 365. The chief particulars of our own narrative are extracted from an old book in our collection treating of well-attested relations of the sages, and of life protracted by their art for several centuries: "Hermippus Redivivus; or, the Sage's Triumph over Old Age and the Grave. London. Second Edition, much enlarged. Printed for J. Nourse, at the 'Lamb,' against Catherine Street in the Strand, in the year 1749."

And thus much for the history of Signor Gualdi, who was suspected to be a Rosicrucian.

We shall have further interesting notices of these unaccountable people as we proceed.

The Egyptian Eve trampling the Dragon.

PP

The "Labarum."

CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

THE HERMETIC BRETHREN.

HE following passages occur in a letter published by some anonymous members of the R.C., and are

adduced in a translation from the Latin by one of the most famous men of the order, who addressed from the University of Oxford about the period of Oliver Cromwell; to which university the great English Rosicrucian, Robertus de Fluctibus (Robert Flood), also belonged, in the time of James the First and Charles the First. We have made repeated visits to the church where Robert Flood lies buried.

"Every man naturally desires superiority. Men wish for treasures, and to seem great in the eyes of the world. God, indeed, created all things to the end that man might give Him thanks. But there is no individual thinks of his proper duties; he secretly desires to spend his days idly, and would enjoy riches without any previous labour or danger. When we" (professors of abstruse sciences) "speak, men either revile or contemn, they either envy or laugh. When we discourse of gold, they assume that we would assuredly produce it if we could, because they judge us by themselves; and when we debate of it, and enlarge upon it, they imagine we shall finish by teaching them how to make gold by art, or furnish them with it already made.

D

And wherefore or why should we teach them the way to these mighty possessions? Shall it be to the end that men may live pompously in the eyes of the world; swagger and make wars; be violent when they are contradicted; turn usurers, gluttons, and drunkards; abandon themselves to lust? Now, all these things deface and defile man, and the holy temple of man's body, and are plainly against the ordinances of God. For this dream of the world, as also the body or vehicle through which it is made manifest, the Lord intended to be pure. And it was not purposed, in the divine arrangement, that men should grow again down to the earth. It is for other purposes that the stars, in their attraction, have raised man on his feet, instead of abandoning him to the 'all-fours' that were the imperfect tentatives of nature until life, through the supernatural impulse, rose above its original condemned level-base and relegate.

"We of the secret knowledge do wrap ourselves in mystery, to avoid the objurgation and importunity of those who conceive that we cannot be philosophers unless we put our knowledge to some worldly use. There is scarcely one who thinks about us who does not believe that our society has no existence; because, as he truly declares, he never met any of us. And he concludes that there is no such brotherhood because, in his vanity, we seek not him to be our fellow. We do not come, as he assuredly expects, to that conspicuous stage upon which, like himself, as he desires the gaze of the vulgar, every fool may enter: winning wonder, if the man's appetite be that empty way; and, when he has obtained it, crying out, 'Lo, this is also vanity !'"

Dr. Edmund Dickenson, physician to King Charles the Second, a professed seeker of the hermetic knowledge, produced a book entitled, De Quinta Essentia Philosophorum; which was printed at Oxford in 1686, and a second time in