te, and are made to have a moral application through some
arbitrary twisting of their meaning, as if I were to attempt expounding
the chaos on my writing-desk."

A rich harvest-field was an aristocracy in such a humour, for quacks of
every kind; richer even than that of France, in that the Germans were at
once more honest and more earnest, and therefore to be robbed more
easily. The carcass was there: and the birds of prey were gathered
together.

Of Rosa, with his lodge of the Three Hammers, and his Potsdam
gold-making;--of Johnson, alias Leuchte, who passed himself off as a
Grand Prior sent from Scotland to resuscitate the order of Knights
Templars; who informed his disciples that the Grand Master Von Hund
commanded 26,000 men; that round the convent (what convent, does not
appear) a high wall was erected, which was guarded day and night; that
the English navy was in the hands of the Order; that they had MSS.
written by Hugo de Paganis (a mythic hero who often figures in these
fables); that their treasure was in only three places in the world, in
Ballenstadt, in the icy mountains of Savoy, and in China; that whosoever
drew on himself the displeasure of the Order, perished both body and
soul; who degraded his rival Rosa to the sound of military music, and
after having had, like every dog, his day, died in prison in the
Wartburg;--of the Rosicrucians, who were accused of wanting to support
and advance the Catholic religion--one would think the accusation was
very unnecessary, seeing that their actual dealings were with the
philosopher's stone, and the exorcism of spirits: and that the first
apostle of the new golden Rosicrucian order, one Schropfer, getting into
debt, and fearing exposure, finished his life in an altogether
un-catholic manner at Leipsic in 1774, by shooting himself;--of Keller
and his Urim and Thummim;--of Wollner (who caught the Crown Prince
Frederick William) with his three names of Chrysophiron, Heliconus, and
Ophiron, and his fourth name of Ormesus Magnus, under which all the
brethren were to offer up for him solemn prayers and intercessions;--of
Baron Heinrich von Ekker and Eckenhofen, gentleman of the bed-chamber and
counsellor of the Duke of Coburg Saalfeld, and his Jewish colleague
Hirschmann, with their Asiatic brethren and order named Ben Bicca,
Cabalistic and Talmudic; of the Illuminati, and poor Adam Weisshaupt,
Professor of Canon and National Law at Ingoldstadt in Bavaria, who set up
wha