is almost a
hopeless task to wade through the ridiculously lengthy terms of the
seventeenth century. But it may be said, in their defence, that the
method of verbose composition was not without some appearance of
utility. The intelligence of the reader could not be relied upon to such
an extent as now, and the eager eyes of so many opponents made it
necessary to guard every word of importance with a wall of sentences.

We have now to mention a fourth actor in the great drama of these
dangerous times, John Valentine Andreae. His mind was not of the serious
tone that marked the other writers of whom we have spoken. That he
looked deeply, calmly, and wisely into the surrounding evils no one can
doubt. Every work he wrote established this fact. But the method which
he adopted to cure them was of a totally different order from that
employed by others. His personal history bears all the evidences of
romance. He was the son of a poor widow, who, having spent all her
property to give him an education, found her boy at the conclusion of
his studies desirous of making the usual academic tour. She has but a
pittance left, so she puts into his hand twelve kreutzer, and a rusty
old coin, as a pocketpiece. Her eyes follow him until they are blinded
in a flood of tears. Years pass on and Valentine comes home, having
travelled, by dint of self-denial and perseverance, over the most
interesting portions of the Continent. He returns to the fatherland and
settles quietly down as an orthodox Lutheran pastor.

It is now that the evils of his generation loom up before him in
terrible blackness. He attacks them by satire. He sits down and writes a
little book, dedicated to all the great men of Europe, and entitled,
_The Discovery of the Brotherhood of the Honorable Order of the Holy
Cross_. This work aims to show that there had once lived a certain
Christian Rosenkranz. He was a man of remarkable learning, and
communicated his knowledge to eight disciples, who lived with him, in a
house called the Temple of the Holy Ghost. This building has come to
light, and behold the uncorrupted body of Rosenkranz, who has been dead
a hundred and twenty years! The various disciples whom he left, and who
are scattered throughout Germany, claim to be true Protestants, and call
upon all men to help them in their efforts to promote learning and
religion. They possess great secrets and the world ought to know them.
They are perfectly at home in bottling the el