ired to
what, doubtless, I ought to be ashamed to confess, was once one of
my favourite haunts. But are there no errors and no fallacies, in the
chronicles of our own day, as absurd as those of the alchemists of old?
Our very newspapers may seem to our posterity as full of delusions as
the books of the alchemists do to us; not but what the press is the air
we breathe,--and uncommonly foggy the air is too!

On entering the shop, I was struck by the venerable appearance of a
customer whom I had never seen there before. I was struck yet more
by the respect with which he was treated by the disdainful collector.
"Sir," cried the last, emphatically, as I was turning over the leaves of
the catalogue,--"sir, you are the only man I have met, in five-and-forty
years that I have spent in these researches, who is worthy to be my
customer. How--where, in this frivolous age, could you have acquired
a knowledge so profound? And this august fraternity, whose doctrines,
hinted at by the earliest philosophers, are still a mystery to the
latest; tell me if there really exists upon the earth any book,
any manuscript, in which their discoveries, their tenets, are to be
learned?"

At the words, "august fraternity," I need scarcely say that my attention
had been at once aroused, and I listened eagerly for the stranger's
reply.

"I do not think," said the old gentleman, "that the masters of the
school have ever consigned, except by obscure hint and mystical parable,
their real doctrines to the world. And I do not blame them for their
discretion."

Here he paused, and seemed about to retire, when I said, somewhat
abruptly, to the collector, "I see nothing, Mr. D--, in this catalogue
which relates to the Rosicrucians!"

"The Rosicrucians!" repeated the old gentleman, and in his turn he
surveyed me with deliberate surprise. "Who but a Rosicrucian could
explain the Rosicrucian mysteries! And can you imagine that any members
of that sect, the most jealous of all secret societies, would themselves
lift the veil that hides the Isis of their wisdom from the world?"

"Aha!" thought I, "this, then, is 'the august fraternity' of which
you spoke. Heaven be praised! I certainly have stumbled on one of the
brotherhood."

"But," I said aloud, "if not in books, sir, where else am I to obtain
information? Nowadays one can hazard nothing in print without authority,
and one may scarcely quote Shakespeare without citing chapter and verse.
This is the ag