unexpectedly light upon in Arabia, which will prove a restoration of health to all that are afflicted with sickness which we ordinarily call natural, and all other diseases. These men have no small insight into the body: Walford, Williams, and others of the Fraternity now living, may bear up in the same likely equipage with those noble Divine Spirits their Predecessors; though the unskilfulness in men commonly acknowledges more of supernatural assistance in hot, unsettled fancies, and perplexed melancholy, than in the calm and distinct use of reason; yet, for mine own part, I look upon these Rosie Crucians above all men truly inspired, and more than any that professed themselves so this sixteen hundred years, and I am ravished with admiration of their miracles and transcendant mechanical inventions, for the solving the Phænomenon of the world. I may, without offence, therefore, compare them with Bezaliel, Aholiab, those skilful workers of the Tabernacle, who, as Moses testifies, were filled with the Spirit of God, and therefore were of an excellent understanding to find out all manner of curious work.' The plain fact is that Heydon's books are fictionspurely imaginative work, based on some rough and ready knowledge of the old alchemy and the new magic; partly allegorical and mystical, such as a quick invention might readily conceive under the influence of theosophic study, and partly borrowed from Henry More, and other writers of the same stamp. The island inhabited by Rosicrucians, which he describes in the introduction to The Holy Guide,' 6 was evidently suggested by Sir Thomas More's 'Utopia,' and Bacon's New Atlantis.' It would be easy to point out his obligations elsewhere. I may add, in bringing this chapter to a close, that Dr. Edmund Dickenson, one of Charles II.'s physicians, professed to be a member of the brotherhood, and wrote a book upon one of their supposed doctrines, entitled 'De Quinta Essentia Philosophorum,' which was printed at Oxford in 1686. Whatever may be our opinion of Rosicrucianism, which, I believe, still finds some believers and adepts in this country, we must acknowledge that the literature of poetry and fiction is indebted to it considerably. The machinery of Pope's exquisite poem, The Rape of the Lock,' was borrowed from Paracelsus and Jacob Böhmen-not directly, it is true, but through the medium of the Abbé de Villars' sparkling romance, Le Comte de Gabalis.' 'According to those gentlemen,' says Pope, 'the four elements are inhabited by spirits, which they call sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and salamanders.' The Rosicrucian water-nymph supplied La Motte Fouqué with the idea of that graceful and lovely creation, Undine,' and Sir Walter Scott has invested his 'White Lady of Avenel' with some of her attributes. William Godwin's romance of St. Leon' turns on the Rosicrucian fancy of immortal life; while Lord Lytton's 'Zanoni' is practically a Rosicrucian fiction. The influence of the Rosicrucian writers is also apparent in the same author's A Strange Story.' CHAPTER I. EARLY HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT IN ENGLAND. To various conspicuous and easily intelligible causes the witch and the warlock, like the necromancer and the astrologer, owed their power with the multitude. First, there was the eager desire which humanity not unnaturally feels to tear aside the veil of Isis, and obtain some knowledge of that Other World which is hidden so completely from it. Next must be taken into account man's greed for temporal advantages, his anxiety to direct the course of events to his personal benefit; and, lastly, his malice against his fellows. Thus we see that the influence enjoyed by the sorcerer and the magician had its origin in the unlawful passions of humanity, in whose history the pages that treat of witches and witchcraft are painful and humiliating reading. To define the limit between the special functions of the magician and the witch is somewhat difficult, more especially as the position of the witch gradually decreased in reputation and importance. There is a great gulf between the witch of Endor, or the witch of classical antiquity, or the witch of the Norse Sagas, |