other is the Greek."

"Sir," said I, "the Dutch is the most in fashion."

"Yes, in painting, perhaps," answered my host, "but in literature--"

"It was of literature I spoke. Our growing poets are all for simplicity
and Betty Foy; and our critics hold it the highest praise of a work of
imagination, to say that its characters are exact to common life, even
in sculpture--"

"In sculpture! No, no! THERE the high ideal must at least be essential!"

"Pardon me; I fear you have not seen Souter Johnny and Tam O'Shanter."

"Ah!" said the old gentleman, shaking his head, "I live very much out of
the world, I see. I suppose Shakespeare has ceased to be admired?"

"On the contrary; people make the adoration of Shakespeare the excuse
for attacking everybody else. But then our critics have discovered that
Shakespeare is so REAL!"

"Real! The poet who has never once drawn a character to be met with in
actual life,--who has never once descended to a passion that is false,
or a personage who is real!"

I was about to reply very severely to this paradox, when I perceived
that my companion was growing a little out of temper. And he who wishes
to catch a Rosicrucian, must take care not to disturb the waters. I
thought it better, therefore, to turn the conversation.

"Revenons a nos moutons," said I; "you promised to enlighten my
ignorance as to the Rosicrucians."

"Well!" quoth he, rather sternly; "but for what purpose? Perhaps you
desire only to enter the temple in order to ridicule the rites?"

"What do you take me for! Surely, were I so inclined, the fate of the
Abbe de Villars is a sufficient warning to all men not to treat idly
of the realms of the Salamander and the Sylph. Everybody knows how
mysteriously that ingenious personage was deprived of his life, in
revenge for the witty mockeries of his 'Comte de Gabalis.'"

"Salamander and Sylph! I see that you fall into the vulgar error, and
translate literally the allegorical language of the mystics."

With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a very
interesting, and, as it seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of the
tenets of the Rosicrucians, some of whom, he asserted, still existed,
and still prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound researches into
natural science and occult philosophy.

"But this fraternity," said he, "however respectable and
virtuous,--virtuous I say, for no monastic order is more severe in the
practice of moral precepts, or mo