zzled; they were blinded; they thrilled with
admiration and astonishment.

Agrippa spoke.

At the first sound of his accents, there was a whisper of awe among the
multitude--it increased--it grew louder--it arose to the heavens in one
prolonged and jubilant shout of adoration.

"It is a God!" they cried--"it is a God that speaketh, not a man!"

As the language of that impious homage saluted the ears of Herod, his
mouth curled with a smile of satisfaction, his soul expanded with an
inexpressible tumult of emotions, he drank in the blasphemous flatteries
of the rabble, and assumed to himself the power and the dignity of the
Most High God. Yet in the very ecstasy of those sensations, his
countenance became ghastly, his lips writhed, his eyes beheld with
unutterable dismay the omen of his dissolution--the visible phantom of
an avenging Nemesis.[14] He staggered from his throne, crying aloud in
the extremity of his anguish; a sudden corruption had seized upon his
body--he was being devoured by worms.

The heart of Cagliostro quailed within him at the lamentations of the
people of Samaria, as they beheld their idol smitten down by death in
the midst of his surpassing pomp. Even the Jewish hagiographer tells us,
with pathetic simplicity, that King Agrippa himself wept at the wailings
of the adoring mob.

Again the Alchemist found himself enveloped in darkness, again the
unearthly Voice stole into his brain.

"Lo!" it said, "how the frame rots in the ermine: how the body and soul
are polluted by vicious passions! Such, Balsamo, are the penalties of
the lusts of the flesh."

MILTON.

Another scene then revealed itself to the Rosicrucian, but one
altogether different from those he had already witnessed. Instead of
being in an Oriental amphitheatre, he was standing in a rural lane;
instead of tumult he found tranquillity; instead of regal pageantries an
almost primitive simplicity. He inhaled the sweet smells of clover and
newly-turned mould with a zest hitherto unexperienced. The gurgling of a
brook by the wayside saluted his ears, as it struggled through the
rushes and tinkled over the pebbles, with a sound more agreeable than he
ever remembered to have heard from the instruments of court musicians.
For the first time nature seemed to disclose her real loveliness to his
comprehension. Every where she appeared to abound with beauties: in the
bee that lit upon the nettle and sucked the honey out of its blossom; in
th