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of the Healing Fraternity: (the most general abstraction of the pretensions made for the Rosicrucians being-that they healed both the body and mind).-All this, in a young man and a professed satirist, was natural and excusable. But in a few years Andrea was shocked to find that the delusion had taken firm root in the public mind. Of the many authors who wrote with a sincere design to countenance the notion of a pretended Rosicrucian society I shall here mention a few of the most memorable. 1. A writer calling himself Julianus à Campis wrote expressly to account for the Rosicrucians not revealing them selves, 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. The Rosicrucian wisdom was to be more extensively diffused in future, but still not to be hawked about in market-places. -2. Julius Sperber, of Anhalt-Dessau, (according to common repute) wrote the "Echo of the divinely illuminated fraternity of the admirable order of the R. C." In this there is a passage which I recommend to the especial notice of Free-masons:Having maintained the probability of the Rosicrucian pretensions on the ground that such magnalia Dei had from the creation downwards been confided to the keeping of a few individuals, agreeably to which he affirms that Adam was the first Rosicrucian of the Old Testament and Simeon the last, he goes on to ask whether the Gospel put an end to the secret tradition? By no means, he answers; Christ established a new "college of magic" amongst his disciples, and the greater mysteries were revealed to St. John and St. Paul.-In this passage, which I shall notice farther on, we find the GrandMaster, and the St. John of masonry. -3. Radtich Brotoffer was not so much a Cabbalist, like Julius Sperber, as an Alchemist. He under

stood the three Rosicrucian books not in a literal or historical sense, but allegorically as a description of the art of making gold and finding the Philosopher's stone. He even favoured the public with an interpretation of it: so that both "materia et præparatio lapidis aurei" were laid bare to the prophane. With this practical test of his own pretensions, it might have been supposed that Brotoffer would have exposed himself as an impostor: but on the contrary his works sold well, and were several times reprinted.-4. A far more important person in the history of Rosicrucianism was Michael Maier: he it was that first transplanted it into England, where (as we shall see) it led ultimately to more lasting effects than in Germany. He was born in Holstein, and was physician to the Emperor Rudolph II., who, being possessed by the mystical phrenzy of the age, sent for him to Prague. In 1622 he died at Magdeburg, having previously traveled extensively and particularly to England.-His works are among the rarities of bibliography, and fetch very high prices. The first of them, which concerns our present inquiry, is that entitled Jocus Severus: Francof. 1617. It is addressed (in a dedication written on his road from England to Bohemia), "omnibus veræ chymiæ amantibus per Germaniam," and amongst them more especially "illi ordini adhuc delitescenti, at Famâ Fraternitatis et Confessione suâ admirandâ et probabili manifestato." This work, it appears, had been written in England: on his return to Germany he became acquainted with the fierce controversy on the Rosicrucian sect; and, as he firmly believed in the existence of such a sect, he sought to introduce himself to its notice; but, finding this impossible, 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 (which indeed had previously been done by the author of the Echo). From the principal work which he wrote on this subject, en

This was printed at Dantzig in 1616. Nicolai however cites an edition printed in 1615.-Whether Sperber was the author, is a point not quite settled. Katzauer, in his Dissert. de Rosicrucianis, p. 38, takes him for the same person as Julianus à Campis: but from internal grounds this is very improbable.

titled Silentium post clamores,* I shall make an extract; because in this work it is that we meet with the first traces of Masonry.-" Nature is yet but half unveiled. What we want is chiefly experiment and tentative inquiry. Great therefore are our obligations to the Rosicrucians for labouring to supply this want. Their weightiest mystery is a Universal Medicine. Such a Catholicon lies hid in nature. It is however no simple, but a very compound medicine. For out of the meanest pebbles and weeds, medicine, and even gold, is to be extracted."-" He, that doubts 'the existence of the R. C. should recollect that the Greeks, Egyptians, Arabians, &c. had such secret societies: where then is the absurdity in their existing at this day? Their maxims of self-discipline are these To honour and fear God `above all things; to do all the good in their power to their fellow men;" and so on. "What is contained in the Fama and Confessio is true. It is a very childish objection that the brotherhood have promised so much and performed so little. With them, as elsewhere, many are called but few chosen. The masters of the order hold out the rose as a remote prize, but they impose the cross on those who are entering."+ "Like the Pythagoreans and Egyptians the Rosicrucians exact vows of silence and secrecy. Ignorant men have treated the whole as a fiction: but this has arisen from the five years' probation to which they subject even well qualified novices before they are admitted to the higher mysteries: within this period they are to learn how to govern their tongues." In the same year with this book he published a work of Robert Fludd's (with whom he had lived on friendly terms in England) De vitâ, morté, et resurrectione. Of other works, which he published afterwards, I shall here say nothing neither shall I detain my reader with any account of his fellow-labourers in this path-Theophilus Schweig

:

hart of Constance, Josephus Stellatus, or Giles Gutmann. The books I have mentioned were enough to convince Andreä that his romance had succeeded in a way which he had never designed. The public had accredited the charlatanerie of his books, but gave no welcome to that for the sake of which this charlatanerie was adopted as a vehicle. The Alchemy had been approved, the moral and religious scheme slighted. And societies were forming even amongst the learned upon the basis of all that was false in the system to the exclusion of all that was true. This was a spectacle which could no longer be viewed in the light of a joke: the folly was becoming too serious; and Andreä set himself to counteract it with all his powers. For this purpose he now published his Chemi cal Nuptials of Christian Rosycross, which he had written in 1601-2 (when only in his sixteenth year), but not printed. This is a comic romance of extraordinary talent, the covert purpose of it being a refined and delicate banter of the Pedants, Theosophists, Goldmakers, and Enthusiasts of every class with whom Germany at that time swarmed. In his former works he had treated the Paracelsists with forbearance, hoping by such treatment to have won them over to his own elevated designs: but in this they were invested with the cap and bells. Unfortunately for the purpose of Andreä however, even this romance was swallowed by the public as true and serious history. Upon this in the following year he published a collection of satirical dialogues under the title of Menippus; sive dial. satyricorum centuria, inanitatum nostratium Speculum. this he more openly unveils his true design-revolution of method in the arts and sciences, and a general religious reformation. The efforts of Andreä were seconded by those of his friends; especially of Irenæus Agnostus and of Joh. Val. Alberti under the name of Menapius. Both wrote with great energy against the

In

Silentium post clamores, h. e. Tractatus Apologeticus, quo causæ non solum Clamorum (seu revelationum) Fraternitatis Germanica de R. C., sed et Silentii (seu non redditæ ad singulorum vota responsionis) traduntur et demonstrantur. Autore Michacle Maiero, Imp. Consist. Comite, et Med. Doct. Francof. 1617.

+ Ecce innumeri adsunt ex vocatis, seseque offerunt: at non audiuntur à magistris R. Crucis, qui rosas ostentant, at crucem exhibent. P. 77.

FEB. 1824.

L

Rosicrucians; the former indeed, from having ironically styled himself "an unworthy clerk of the Fraternity of the R. C.," has been classed by some learned writers on the Rosicrucians as one of that sect; but it is impossible to read his writings without detecting the lurking satire. Soon after these writers, a learned foreigner placed the Rosicrucian pretensions in a still more ludicrous light: this was the celebrated Thomas Campanella. In his work upon the Spanish Monarchy, which was translated into German-publishedand universally read in Germany some time before the original work appeared, the Italian philosopherspeaking of the follies of the age thus expresses himself of the R. C. "That the whole of Christendom teems with such heads, (viz. Reformation-jobbers,) we have one proof more than was wanted in the Fraternity of the R. C. For scarcely was that absurdity hatched, when-notwithstanding it was many times declared to be nothing more than a lusus ingenii nimium lascivientis, a mere hoax of some man of wit troubled with a superfluity of youth ful spirits-yet, because it dealt in reformations and in pretences to mystical arts, straitway from every country in Christendom pious and learned men, passively surrendering themselves dupes to this delusion, made offers of their good wishes and services; some by name; others anonymously, but constantly maintaining that the brothers of the R. C. could easily discover their names by Solomon's mirror or other cabbalistic means. Nay, to such a pass of absurdity did they advance-that they represented the first of the three Rosicrucian books (the Universal Reformation) as a high mystery, and expounded it in a chemical sense as if it had contained a cryptical account of the art of gold-making, whereas it is nothing more than a literal translation, word for word, of the Parnasso of Boccalini." The effect of all this ridicule and satire was-that in Germany, as there is the best reason to believe, no regular lodge of Rosicrucians was ever established.

Des Cartes, who had heard a great deal of talk about them in 1619 during his residence at Frankfurt on the Mayn, sought to connect himself with some lodge (for which he was afterwards exposed to the ridicule of his enemies); but the impossibility of finding any body of them formally connected together, and a perusal of the Rosicrucian writings, satisfied him in the end that no such order was in existence. Many years after Leibnitz came to the same conclusion. He was actually connected in early life with a soi-disant society of the R. C. in Nuremberg: for even at this day there is obviously nothing to prevent any society in any place from assuming that or any other title: but that they were not connected traditionally with the alleged society of Father Rosycross, Leibnitz was convinced. "Il me paroit," says he in a letter to a friend published by Feller in the Otium Hannoveranum (p. 222)" il me paroit que tout ce, que l'on a dit des Freres de la Croix de la Rose, est une pure invention de quelque personne ingenieuse." And again, so late as the year 1696, he says in another letter-"Fratres Roses Crucis fictitios fuisse suspicor; quod et Helmontius mihi confirmavit.' Adepts there were here and there, it is true, and even whole clubs of swindlers who called themselves Rosicrucians: thus Ludov. Conr. Orvius, in his Occulta Philosophia, sive Cœlum sapientum et Vexatio stultorum, tells a lamentable tale of such a society, pretending to deduce themselves from Father Rosycross, who were settled at the Hague in 1622, and after swindling him out of his own and his wife's fortune amounting to eleven thousand dollars, 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." There is a well-known story also in Voltaire's Diction. Philosoph. Art. Alchimiste, of a rogue who cheated the Duke of Bouillon of 40,000 dollars

It was published in 1620, at which time Campanella was confined in prison at Naples. The publishers had obtained the original copy, either from some traveller, or during their own residence in Italy.

under the masque of Rosicrucianism.
But these were cases for the police-
office, and the gross impostures of
jail-birds. As the aberration of
learned men, and as a case for the
satirist, Rosicrucianism received a
shock from the writings of its acci-
dental father Andreä and others, such
as in Germany it never recovered.
And hence it has happened that, what-.
ever number there may have been of
individual mystics calling themselves
Rosicrucians, no collective body of
Rosicrucians acting in conjunction
was ever matured and actually esta-
blished in Germany. In England
the case was otherwise: for there, as
I shall show, the order still subsists
under a different name. But this
will furnish matter for a separate
chapter. Meantime one word re-
mains to be said of Andrea's labours
with respect to the Rosicrucians. He
was not content with opposing grave-
ly and satirically the erroneous so-

cieties which learned men were attempting to found upon his own romance of the Fama Fraternitatis, but laboured more earnestly than ever to mature and to establish that genuine society for the propagation of truth, which had been the real though misinterpreted object of his romance and indeed of his whole life. Such a society he lived to see accomplished: and, in order to mark upon what foundation he placed all hopes of any great improvement in the condition of human nature, he called it by the name of the Christian Fraternity. This fact I have recorded, in order to complete the account of Andrea's history in relation to Rosicrucianism: but I shall not further pursue the history of the Christian Fraternity, as it is no ways connected with the subject of my present inquiry.

(To be continued.)

In France it never had even a momentary success. It was met by the ridicule of P. Garasse and of Gabriel Naudé in his Instruction à la France sur la verité de l'histoire des Frères de la Rose-Croix: Paris: 1623; and in Le Mascurat, a rare work printed in 1624, and of which the 2nd edit. 1650 is still rarer. Independently of these works, France was at that time the rival of Italy in science and had greatly the start of Germany and England in general illumination. She was thus sufficiently protected from such a delusion. Thus far Professor Buhle. But pace tuâ, worthy Professor, Ithe translator of your book-affirm that France had not the start of England, nor wanted then or since the ignobler elements of credulity, as the history of Animal Magnetism and many other fantastic follies before that have sufficiently shown. But she has always wanted the nobler (i. e. the imaginative) elements of credulity. On this account the French have always been an irreligious people. And the scheme of Father Rosy-cross was too much connected with religious feelings, and moved too much under a religious impulse, to recommend itself to the French. This reason apart, however, accident had much to do with the ill fortune of Rosicrucianism in France.

+ See the Invitatio Fraternitatis Christi ad Sacri amoris candidatos: Argentor: 1617;-the Christianæ societatis idea: Tubingæ : 1624;-the Veræ unionis in Christo Jesu specimen: Norimb: 1628; and other works on the same subject. A list of the members composing this Christian Brotherhood, which continued its labours after Andreä's death, is still preserved.

SONG OF THE MAIDENS.

"Ye ladies all of England,

Now wring your hands and mourn,

For many a lord and lover

Will fall at Bannockburn;
To win their spurs of silver
Go all your gallant grooms,
I see the gloves of ladye-loves
Dance 'mid their dancing plumes.
Weep all ye dames of England,
Your mirth has lasted long;
Now in your looks be sadness,
And sorrow in your song.”

!

"And why should we have sadness,
And wherefore should we sigh?
Saint George for merry England!
I hear our horsemen cry;
And see their war plumes waving,
Black as the raven's wings;
Our fatal shafts are flying,

Hark to the thrilling strings:
And see King Edward's standard
Floats on the buxom breeze-
Now all is merry England's
That's girdled by the seas."

"Here comes your lordly chivalry
All charging in a row,

And there your gallant bowmen
Let fly their shafts like snow;

Look how yon old man clasps his hands,
And hearken to his cry;

Alas, alas, for Scotland,

When England's arrows fly!

Yet weep ye dames of England,

For twenty summers past

Ye danced and sung while Scotland wept ;
Such mirth can never last."

"And how can I do less than laugh,

When England's lords are nigh?

It is the maids of Scotland

Must learn to wail and sigh-
For here spurs princely Hereford,
Hark to his clashing steel;
And there's Sir Philip Musgrave,
All gore from helm to heel;
And yonder is stout Argentine,
And here comes with a sweep
The fiery speed of Gloucester-
Say wherefore should I weep?"
"Weep all ye English maidens,

Lo! Bannock brook's in flood,
Not with its own sweet waters,
But England's noblest blood.
For see your arrow-shower has ceased,
The thrilling bowstring's mute,
And where rides fiery Gloucester?
All trodden underfoot.

Wail all ye dames of England,

No more shall Musgrave know
The sound of the shrill trumpet-
And Argentine is low.

Thy chivalry, proud England,
Have turn'd the rein to fly,

And on them rushes Randolph,
Hark Edward Bruce's cry;

'Mid reeking blood the Douglas rides,
As one rides in a river,

And here the good king Robert comes,
And Scotland's free for ever.

Now weep ye dames of England,

And let your sons prolong

The Bruce-the Bruce of Bannockburn,
In many a sorrowing song."

C.

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