Metallurgia_, and
has the slight merit of being the least obscure of his compositions.
Another was called _The Temporal Mirror of Eternity_; and the last his
_Theosophy revealed_, full of allegories and metaphors,

"All strange and geason,
Devoid of sense and ordinary reason."

Boehmen died in 1624, leaving behind him a considerable number of admiring
disciples. Many of them became, during the seventeenth century, as
distinguished for absurdity as their master; amongst whom may be mentioned
Gifftheil, Wendenhagen, John Jacob Zimmermann, and Abraham Frankenberg.
Their heresy rendered them obnoxious to the Church of Rome; and many of
them suffered long imprisonment and torture for their faith. One, named
Kuhlmann, was burned alive at Moscow, in 1684, on a charge of sorcery.
Boehmen's works were translated into English, and published, many years
afterwards, by an enthusiast named William Law.

MORMIUS.

Peter Mormius, a notorious alchymist and contemporary of Boehmen,
endeavoured, in 1630, to introduce the Rosicrucian philosophy into
Holland. He applied to the States-General to grant him a public audience,
that he might explain the tenets of the sect, and disclose a plan for
rendering Holland the happiest and richest country on the earth, by means
of the philosopher's stone and the service of the elementary spirits. The
States-General wisely resolved to have nothing to do with him. He
thereupon determined to shame them by printing his book, which he did at
Leyden the same year. It was entitled _The Book of the most Hidden Secrets
of Nature_, and was divided into three parts; the first treating of
"perpetual motion;" the second of the "transmutation of metals;" and the
third of the "universal medicine." He also published some German works
upon the Rosicrucian philosophy, at Frankfort, in 1617.

Poetry and romance are deeply indebted to the Rosicrucians for many a
graceful creation. The literature of England, France, and Germany contains
hundreds of sweet fictions, whose machinery has been borrowed from their
day-dreams. The "delicate Ariel" of Shakspeare stands pre-eminent among
the number. From the same source Pope drew the airy tenants of Belinda's
dressing-room, in his charming _Rape of the Lock_; and La Motte Fouque,
the beautiful and capricious water-nymph Undine, around whom he has thrown
more grace and loveliness, and for whose imaginary woes he has excited
more sympathy, than ever were bes