sandro Caglicstro, as in dim fluctuating outline indubitably appears, was bewritted, arrested, fleeced, hatchelled, bewildered, and bedevilled, till the very Jail of King's Bench seemed a refuge from them. A wholly obscure contest, as was natural; wherein, however, to all candid eyes the vulturous and falconish character of our Isle fully asserts itself; and the foreign Quack of Quacks, with all his thaumaturgic Hemp-silks, Lottery-numbers, Beauty-waters, Seductions, Phosphorus boxes, and Wines of Egypt, is seen matched, and nigh throttled, by the natural unassisted cunning of English Attorneys. Whereupon the bustard, Jeeling himself so pecked and plucked, takes wing, and flies to foreign parts. The Inquisition Biographer, with deadly fear of heretical and democratical and black-magical Freemasons before his eyes, has gone into the matter to boundless depths: commenting, elucidating, even confuting: a certain expository masonic Order-Book of Cagliostro's, which he has laid hand on, opens the whole mystery to him. The ideas he declares to be Cagliostro's; the composition all a Disciple's, for the Count had no gift that way. What then does the Disciple set forth? or, at lowest, the Inquisition Biographer say that he sets forth? Much, much that is not to the point. Understand, however, that once inspired, by the absolutely unknown George Cofton, with the notion of Egyptian Masonry, wherein as yet lay much "magic and superstition," Count Alessandro resolves to free it of these impious ingredients, and make it a kind of Last Evangile, or Renovator of the Universe,-which so needed renovation. "As he did not believe any thing in matter of Faith,” says our wooden Familiar, "nothing could arrest him." True enough: how did he move along then? to what length did he go? One good thing he has carried with him, notwithstanding: initiation into some primary arcana of Free-masonry. The Quack of Quacks, with his primitive bias towards the supernatural-mystificatory, must long have had his eye on Masonry; which, with its blazonry and mummery, sashes, drawn sabres, brothers Terrible, brothers Venerable, (the whole so imposing by candle-light,) offered the choicest element for him. All men profit by Union "In his system he promises his followers with men; the quack as much as another; nay to conduct them to perfection, by means of a in these two words Sworn Secrecy alone has he physical and moral regeneration; to enable them not found a very talisman! Cagliostro then by the former (or physical) to find the prime determines on Masonship. It was afterwards matter, or Philosopher's Stone, and the acacia urged that the lodge he and his Seraphina got which consolidates in man the forces of the admission to (for she also was made a Mason, most vigorous youth and renders him immoror Masoness; and had a riband-garter solemnly tal; and by the latter (or moral) to procure bound on, with order to sleep in it for a night) | them a Pentagon, which shall restore man to was of low rank in the social scale; number- his primitive state of innocence, lost by original ing not a few of the pastrycook and hairdresser sin. The Founder supposes that this Egypspecies. To which it could only be replied, that these alone spoke French; that a man and mason, though he cooked pastry, was still a man and mason. Be this as it might, the apt Recipiendary is rapidly promoted through the three grades of Apprentice, Companion, Master; at the cost of five guineas. That of his being first raised into the air, by means of a rope and pulley fixed in the ceiling, "during which the heavy mass of his body must assuredly have caused him a dolorous sensation;" and then being forced blindfold to shoot himself (though with privily disloaded pistol) in sign of courage and obedience: all this we can tian Masonry was instituted by Enoch and Elias, who propagated it in different parts of the world: however, in time, it lost much of its purity and splendour. And so, by degrees, the Masonry of men had been reduced to pure buffoonery; and that of women been almost entirely destroyed, having now for most part no place in common Masonry. Till at last, the zeal of the Grand Cophta (so are the Highpriests of Egypt named) had signalized itself by restoring the Masonry of both sexes to its pristine lustre." With regard to the great question of constructing this invaluable Pentagon, which is esteem an apocrypha,-palmed on the to abolish Original Sin: how you have to Roman Inquisition, otherwise prone to delu- choose a solitary mountain, and call it Sinai; sion. Five guineas, and some foolish froth- and build a Pavilion on it to be named Sion, speeches (delivered over liquor, and otherwise) with twelve sides, in every side a window, and was the cost. If you ask now, In what London three stories, one of which is named Ararat; Lodge was it? Alas, we know not, and shall and with Twelve Masters, each at a window, never know. Certain only that Count Ales- yourself in the middle of them, go through unsandro is a master-mason; that having once speakable formalities, vigils, removals, fasts, crossed the threshold, his plastic genius will not toils, distresses, and hardly get your Pentagon stop there. Behold, accordingly, he has bought after all, we shall say nothing. As little from a "Bookseller" certain manuscripts be- concerning the still grander and painfuller longing to "one George Cofton, a man abso-process of Physical Regeneration, or growing lutely unknown to him" (and to us,) which treat of the "Egyptian Masonry!" In other words, Count Alessandro will blow with his new five-guinea bellows; having always occasion to raise the wind. With regard specially to that huge soapbubble of an Egyptian Masonry which he blew, and as conjuror caught many flies with, It is our painful duty to say a little; not much. young again; a thing not to be accomplished without a forty-days' course of medicine, pur gations, sweating-baths, fainting-fits, root-diet, phlebotomy, starvation, and desperation, more perhaps than it is all worth. Leaving these interior solemnities, and many high moral precepts of union, virtue, wisdom, and doctrines of Immortality and what not, will the reader care to cast an indifferent glance on certain esoteric ceremonial parts of this Egyptian Masonry, as the Inquisition Biographer, if we miscellaneously cull from him, may enable us? "In all these ceremonial parts," huskily avers the wooden Biographer, "you find as much sacrilege, profanation, superstition, and idolatry, as in common Masonry: invocations of the holy Name, prosternations, adorations lavished on the Venerable, or head of the Lodge; aspirations, insufflations, incense-burnings, fumigations, exorcisms of the Candidates and the garments they are to take; emblems of the sacro-sanct Triad, of the Moon, of the Sun, of the Compass, Square, and a thousand thousand other iniquities and ineptitudes, which are now well known in the world." "We above made mention of the Grand Cophta. By this title has been designated the founder or restorer of Egyptian Masonry. Cagliostro made no difficulty in admitting" (to me the Inquisitor) "that under such name he was himself meant: now in this system the Grand Cophta is compared to the Highest: the most solemn acts of worship are paid him; he has authory over the Angels; he is invoked on all occasions; every thing is done in virtue of his power: which you are assured he derives immediately from God. Nay more: among the various rites observed in this exercise of Masonry, you are ordered to recite the Veni Creator spiritus, the Te Deum, and some Psalms of David: to such an excess is impudence and audacity carried, that in the Psalm, Memento, Domine, David et omnis mansuetudinis ejus, every time the name David occurs, that of the Grand Cophta is to be substituted. "No Religion is excluded from the Egyptian Society: the Jew, the Calvinist, the Lutheran, can be admitted equally well with the Catholic, if so be they admit the existence of God and the immortality of the soul." "The men elevated to the rank of master take the names of the ancient Prophets; the women those of the Sibyls." "Then the Grand Mistress blows on the face of the female Recipiendary, all along from brow to chin, and says: "I give you this breath, to cause to germinate and become alive in your heart the Truth which we possess; to fortify in you the," &c., &c.--"Guardian of the new Knowledge which we prepare to make you partake of, by the sacred names of Helios, Mene, Tetragramma on." Or would the reader wish to see this Columb in action? She can act in two ways; either behind a curtain, behind a hieroglyphicallypainted Screen with "table and three candles;" or as here "before the Caraffe," and showing face. If the miracle fail, it can only be be cause she is not“ in the state of innocence,"an accident much to be guarded against. This Scene is at Mittau;-we find, indeed, that it is a Pupil affair, not a Columb one; but for the rest that is perfectly indifferent: "Cagliostro accordingly (it is his own story still) brought a little Boy into the Lodge; son of a nobleman there. He placed him on his knees before a table, whereon stood a Bottle of pure water, and behind this some lighted can dles: he made an exorcism round the Boy, put his hand on his head; and both, in this attitude, addressed their prayers to God for the happy accomplishment of the work. Having then bid the child look into the Bottle, directly the child cried that he saw a garden. Knowing hereby that Heaven assisted him, Cagliostro took Courage, and bade the child ask of God the grace to see the Angel Michael. At first the child said: 'I see something white; I know not what it is.' Then he began jumping, stamping like a possessed creature, and cried: There now! I see a child, like myself, that seems to have something angelical.' All the assembly, and Cagliostro himself, remained speechless with emotion. The child being anew exorcised, with the hands of the Venerable on his head, and the customary prayers addressed to Heaven, he looked into the Bottle, and said, he saw his sister at that moment coming down stairs, and embracing one of her brothers. That appeared impossible, the brother in question being then hundreds of miles off: however, Cagliostro felt not disconcerted; said they might send to the country-house (where the sister was) and see."* Wonderful enough. Here, however, a fact rather sudden transpires, which (as the Inquisition Biographer well urges) must serve to undeceive all believers in Cagliostro; at least, call a blush into their cheeks. It seems: "The Grand cophta, the restorer, the propagator of Egyptian Masonry, Count Cagliostro himself, testifies, in most part of his System, the profoundest respect for the Patriarch Moses: and yet this same Cagliostro affirmed before his judges that he had always felt the insurmount "In the Essai sur les Illuminés, printed at Paris ablest antipathy to Moses; and attributes this in 1789, I read that these latter words were sug-hatred to his constant opinion, that Moses was gested to Cagliostro as Arabic or Sacred ones by a Sleight-of-hand Man, who said that he was assisted by a spirit, and added that this spirit was the Soul of a Cabalist Jew, who by art-magic had killed his pig before the Christian Advent." **They take a young lad, or a girl who is in the state of innocence: such they call the Pupil or the Columb; the Venerable communi- But to finish off this Egyptian Mascnic busicates to him the power he would have had be-ness, and bring it all to a focus, we shall now, fore the Fall of Man; which power consists mainly in commanding the pure Spirits; these Spirits are to the number of Seven: it is said they surround the Throne; and that they govern the seven Planets: their names are Anael, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel, Zobiachel, Anachiel." a thief for having carried off the Egyptian vessels; which opinion, in spite of all the luminous arguments that were opposed to him to show how erroneous it was, he has conti nued to hold with an invincible obstinacy!" How reconcile these two inconsistencies' Aye, how? for the first and for the last time, peep one moment through the spyglass of Monsieur de Luchet, in that Essai sur les Illuminés of his. The whole matter being so much of a chimera, how Vie de Joseph Balsamo; traduite d'après l'originai Italien. (Paris, 1791.) Ch. ii îîî. can it be painted otherwise than chimerically? | Brandy-and-water!—An unfeeling world may Of the following passage one thing is true, that laugh; but ought to recollect that, forty years a creature of the seed of Adam believed it to ago, these things were sad realities,-in the be true. List, list, then; O list! heads of many men. "The Recipiendary is led by a darksome path, into an immense hall, the ceiling, the walls, the floor of which are covered by a black cloth, sprinkled over with red flames and menacing serpents: three sepulchral lamps emit, from time to time, a dying glimmer; and the eye half distinguishes, in this lugubrious den, certain wrecks of mortality suspended by funereal crapes: a heap of skeletons forms in the centre a sort of altar; on both sides of it are piled books; some contain menaces against the perjured; others the deadly narrative of the vengeances which the Invisible Spirit has exacted; of the infernal evocations for a long time pronounced in vain. "Eight hours elapse. Then Phantoms, trailing mortuary veils, slowly cross the hall, and sink in caverns, without audible noise of trapdoors or of falling. You notice only that they are gone, by a fetid odour exhaled from them. "The Novice remains four-and-twenty hours in this gloomy abode, in the midst of a freezing silence. A rigorous fast has already weakened his thinking faculties. Liquors, prepared for the purpose, first weary, and at length wear out his senses. At his feet are placed three cups, filled with a drink of greenish colour. Necessity lifts them towards his lips; involuntarily fear repels them. As to the execrable oaths, this seems the main one: "Honour and respect Aqua Toffana, as a sure, prompt, and necessary means of purging the Globe, by the death or the hebetation of such as endeavour to debase the Truth, or snatch it from our hands." And so the catastrophe ends by bathing our poor half-dead Recipiendary first in blood, then, after some genuflections, in water; and "serving him a repast composed of roots,-we grieve to say mere potatoes-and-point. and foam had the Archquack now happily begun to envelope himself. Figure now all this boundless cunningly devised Agglomerate of royal-arches, death'sheads, hieroglyphically painted screens, Columbs "in the state of innocence;" with spa cious masonic halls, dark, or in the favourablest theatrical light-and-dark; Kircher's magic-lantern, Belshazzar hand-writings, (of phosphorus;) “plaintive tones," gong-beatings; hoary beard of a supernatural Grand Cophta emerging from the gloom;-and how it acts not only indirectly through the foolish senses of men, but directly on their Imagination; connecting itself with Enoch and Elias, with Philanthropy, Immortality, Eleutheromania, and Adam Weisshaupt's Illuminati, and so downwards to the infinite Deep: figure all this; and in the centre of it, sitting eager and "At last appears two men ; looked upon as alert, the skilfullest Panourgos, working the the ministers of death. These gird the pale brow mighty chaos, into a creation-of ready moof the Recipiendary with an auroral-coloured ri-ney. In such a wide plastic ocean of sham band, dipt in blood, and full of silvered characters mixed with the figure of Our Lady of Loretto. He receives a copper crucifix, of two inches length; to his neck are hung a sort of amulets, wrapped in violet cloth. He is stript of his clothes; which two ministering brethren deposit on a funeral pile, erected at the other end of the hall. With blood, on his naked body, are traced crosses. In this state of suffering and humiliation, he sees approaching with large strides five Phantoms, armed with swords, and clad in garments dropping blood. Their faces are veiled they spread a velvet carpet on the floor; kneel there; pray; and remain with outstretched hands crossed on their breasts, and face fixed on the ground, in deep silence. An hour passes in this painful attitude. After which fatiguing trial, plaintive cries are heard; the funeral pile takes fire, yet casts only a pale light; the garments are thrown on it and burnt. A colossal and almost transparent Figure rises from the very bosom of the pile. At sight of it, the five prostrated men fall into convulsions insupportable to look on: the too faithful image of those foaming struggles wherein a mortal at handgrips with a sudden pain ends by sinking under it. "Then a trembling voice pierces the vault, and articulates the formula of those execrable oaths that are to be sworn: my pen falters; I think myself almost guilty to retrace them." O Luchet, what a taking! Is there no hope left, thinkest thou? Thy brain is all gone to addled albumen; help seems none, if not in tha last mother's-bosom of all the ruined: Accordingly he goes forth prospering and to prosper. Arrived in any City, he has but by masonic grip to accredit himself with the Venerable of the place; and, not by degrees as formerly, but in a single night, is introduced in Grand Lodge to all that is fattest and foolishest far or near; and in the fittest arena, a gilt-pasteboard Masonic hall. There between the two pillars of Jachin and Boaz, can the great Sheepstealer see his whole flock (of Dupeables) assembled in one penfold; affec tionately blatant, licking the hand they are to bleed by. Victorious Acharat-Beppo! The genius of Amazement, moreover, has now shed her glory round him; he is radiant-headed, a supernatural by his very gait. Behold him everywhere welcomed with vivats, or in awe-struck silence: gilt-pasteboard Freemasons receive him under the Steel-Arch (of crossed sabres ;) he mounts to the Seat of the Venerable; holds high discourse hours long on Masonry, Morality, Universal Science, Divinity, and Things in general, with "a sublimity, an emphasis, and unction," proceding, it appears, "from the special inspiration of the Holy Ghost." Then there are Egyptian Lodges to be founded, corresponded with (a thing involving expense;) elementary frac tions of many a priceless arcanum (nay, if the place will stand it, of the Pentagon itself) can be given to the purified in life: how gladly would he give them, but they have to be brought from the uttermost ends of the world and cost money. Now, too, with what ten- should be at liberty to-morrow morning.' Be fold impetuosity do all the old trades of Egyp-ing desired to give these proofs then, he antian Drops, Beauty-waters, Secret-favours, ex-swered: To prove that I have been chosen pand themselves, and rise in price! Life- of God as an apostle to defend and propagate weary, moneyed Donothing, this seraphic religion, I say that as the Holy Church has Countess is Grand Priestess of the Egyptian instituted pastors to demonstrate in face of Female Lodges; has a touch of the supra- the world that she is the true Catholic faith, mundane Undine in her: among all thy in- even so, having operated with approbation and trigues, hadst thou ever yet Endymion-like an by the counsel of pastors of the Holy Church, intrigue with the lunar Diana,-called also I am, as I said, fully justified in regard to all Hecate? And thou, O antique, much-loving my operations; and these pastors have asfaded Dowager, this Squire-of-dames can (it sured me that my Egyptian Order was divine, appears probable) command the Seven Angels, and deserved to be formed into an Order sancUriel, Anachiel and Company; at lowest, has tioned by the Holy Father, as I said in anthe eyes of all Europe fixed on him!-The other interrogatory.' dog pockets money enough, and can seem to despise money. How then, in the name of wonder, said we, could such a babbling, bubbling Turkey-cock speak "with unction?" To us, much meditating on the matter, it seemed perhaps strangest of all, how Count Two things here are to be taken into account. Cagliostro, received under the Steel Arch, First, the difference between speaking and could hold Discourses, of from one to three public speaking; a difference altogether ge hours long, on Universal Science, of such neric. Secondly, the wonderful power of a unction, we do not say as to seem inspired by certain audacity, (often named impudence.) the Holy Spirit, but as not to get him lugged Was it never thy hard fortune, good Reader, out of doors, (after his first head of method,) to attend any Meeting convened for Public and drowned in whole oceans of salt-and- purposes; any Bible Society, Reform, Conwater. The man could not speak; only bab- servative, Thatched-Tavern, Hogg-Dinner, or ble in long-winded diffusions, chaotic circum- other such Meeting? Thou hast seen some volutions tending nowhither. He had no full-fed Long-ear, by free determination, or on thought for speaking with; he had not even a sweet constraint, start to his legs and give language. His Sicilian-Italian, and Laquais- voice. Well aware wert thou that there was de-Place French, garnished with shreds from not, had not been, could not be, in that entire all European dialects, was wholly intelligible ass-cranium of his any fraction of an idea: to no mortal; a Tower-of-Babel jargon, which nevertheless mark him. If at first an omimade many think him a kind of Jew. But nous haze flit round, and nothing, not even nonindeed, with the language of Greeks, or of sense, dwell in his recollection,-heed it not; Angels, what better were it? The man once let him but plunge desperately on, the spell is for all has no articulate utterance; that tongue broken. Common-places enough are at hand; of his emits noises enough, but no speech. "labour of love," "rights of suffering milLet him begin the plainest story, his stream lions," "throne and altar," "divine gift of stagnates at the first stage; chafes ("ahem! song," or what else it may be: the Meeting, by ahem!"); loses itself in the earth; or, burst- its very name, has environed itself in a given ing over, flies abroad without bank or chan-element of Common-place. But anon, behold nel,-into separate plashes. Not a stream, how his talking-organs gets heated, and the but a lake, a wide-spread indefinite marsh. friction vanishes; cheers, applauses (with the His whole thought is confused, inextricable; what thought, what resemblance of thought he has, cannot deliver itself, except in gasps, blustering gushes, spasmodic refluences, which made bad worse. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble: how thou bubblest, foolish “Bubbly- | jock!" Hear him once, (and on a dead-lift occasion,) as the Inquisition Gurney reports it: previous dinner and strong drink) raise him "I mean, and I wish to mean, that even as those who honour their father and mother, and respect the sovereign Pontiff, are blessed of God; even so all that I did, I did it by the order of God, with the power which he vouchsafed me, and to the advantage of God and of Holy Church; and I mean to give the proofs of all that I have done and said, not only phy-commit himself to his watery "element;" in sically but morally, by showing that as I have free daring, strike forth his four limbs from served God for God and by the power of God, him: then shall he not drown and sink, but he has given me at last the counterpoison to shoot gloriously forward, and swim, to the confound and combat Hell; for I know no admiration of bystanders. The ass, safe other enemies than those that are in Hell, and landed on the other bank, shakes his rough if I am wrong the Holy Father will punish hide, wonderstruck himself at the faculty that me; if I am right he will reward me, and if lay in him, and waves joyfully his long ears: the Holy Father could get into his hands to- so too the public speaker. Cagliostro, as we night these answers of mine, I predict to all know him of old, is not without a certain brethren, believers and unbelievers, that I blubbery oiliness, (of soul as of hody,) with vehemence lying under it; has the volublest, sal hubbub, shut their lips in sorrowful dis noisiest tongue; and in the audacity vulgarly dain; confident in the grand remedy, Time called impudence is without a fellow. The The Enchanter meanwhile rolls on his way, Common-places of such Steel-Arch Meetings are soon at his finger ends: that same blubbery oiliness and vehemence lying under it (once give them an element and stimulus) are the very gift of a fluent public speaker-to Dupeables. Here to let us mention a circumstance, not insignificant, if true, which it may readily enough be. In younger years, Beppo Balsamo once, it is recorded, took some pains to procure, “from a country vicar," under quite false pretences, "a bit of cotton steeped in holy oils." What could such bit of cotton steeped in holy oils do for him? An Unbeliever from any basis of conviction the unbelieving Beppo could never be; but solely from stupidity and bad morals. Might there not lie in that chaotic blubbery nature of his, at the bottom of all, a certain musk-grain of real Superstitious Belief? How wonderfully such a musk-grain of Belief will flavour, and impregnate with seductive odour, a whole inward world of Quackery, so that every fibre thereof shall smell musk, is well known. No Quack can persuade like him who has himself some persuasion. Nay, so wondrous is the act of Believing, Deception and Self-deception must, rigorously speaking, coexist in all Quacks; and he perhaps were definable as the best Quack, in whom the smallest musk-grain of the latter would sufficiently flavour the largest mass of the former. But indeed, as we know otherwise, was there not in Cagliostro a certain pinchbeck counterfeit of all that is golden and good in man, of somewhat even that is best? Cheers, and illuminated hieroglyphs, and the ravishment of thronging audiences, can make him maudlin; his very wickedness of practice will render him louder in eloquence of theory; and "philanthropy," "divine science," "depth of unknown worlds," "finer feelings of the heart," and such like shall draw tears from most asses of sensibility. Neither, indeed, is it of moment how few his elementary Commonplaces are, how empty his head is, so he but agitate it well; thus a lead drop or two, put into the emptiest dry-bladder, and jingled to and fro, will make noise enough; and even (if skilfully jingled) a kind of martial music. what boundless materials of Deceptibility (which are two mainly: first, Ignorance, espe cially Brute-mindedness, the natural fruit of religious Unbelief; then Greediness) exist over Europe, in this the most deceivable of modern ages, are stirred up, fermenting in his behoof. He careers onward as a Comet; his nucleus (of paying and praising Dupes) embraces, in long radius, what city and province he rests over; his thinner tail (of wondering and curious Dupes) stretches into remotest lands. Good Lavater, from amid his Swiss Mountains, could say of him: Cagliostro, a man; and a man such as few are; in whom, however, I am not a believer. O that he were simple of heart and humble, like a child; that he had feeling for the simplicity of the Gospel, and the majesty of the Lord (Hoheit des Herrn!) Who were so great as he? Cagliostro often tells what is not true, and promises what he does not perform. Yet do I nowise hold his operations as deception, though they are not what he calls them."* If good Lavater could so say of him, what must others have been saying! Comet-wise, progressing with loud flourish of kettledrums, everywhere under the Steel Arch, evoking spirits, transmuting metals (to such as could stand it,) the Archquack has traversed Saxony; at Leipsic has run athwart the hawser of a brother quack (poor Schröpfer, here scarcely recognisable as "Scieffert,”) and wrecked him. Through Eastern Germany, Prussian Poland, he progresses; and so now at length (in the spring of 1780) has arrived at Petersburgh. His pavilion is erected here, his flag prosperously hoisted: Mason-lodges have long ears; he is distributing (as has now become his wont) Spagiric Food, medicine for the poor; a train-oil Prince Potemkin (or something like him, for accounts are dubious) feels his chops water over a seraphic Seraphina: all goes merry, and promises the best. But in those despotic countries the Police is so arbitrary! Cagliostro's thaumaturgy must be overhauled by the Empress's Physician (Rogerson, a hard Annandale Scot;) is found naught, the Spagiric Food unfit for a dog and so, the whole particulars of his LordSuch is the Cagliostric palver, that bewitches ship's conduct being put together, the result is ali manner of believing souls. If the ancient that he must leave Petersburgh, in a given Father was named Chrysostom, or Mouth-of- brief term of hours. Happy for him that it was Gold, be the modern Quack named Pinch-so brief: scarcely is he gone, till the Prussian becko-stom, or Mouth-of-Pinchbeck; in an Age of Bronze such metal finds elective affinities. On the whole, too, it is worth considering what element your Quack specially works in: the element of Wonder! The Genuine, be he artist or artisan, works in the finitude of the Known; the Quack in the infinitude of the Unknown. And then how, in rapidest progression, he grows and advances, once start him! "Your name is up," says the adage, "you may lie in bed." A nimbus of Renown and preternatural Astonishment envelopes Cagliostro; enchants the general eye. The few reasoning mortals, scattered here and there, that see through him, deafened in the univer : Ambassador appears with a complaint, that he has falsely assumed the Prussian uniform at Rome; the Spanish Ambassador with a still graver complaint, that he has forged bills at Cadiz. However, he is safe over the marches: let them complain their fill. In Courland and in Poland great things await him; yet not unalloyed by two small reverses. The famed Countess von der Recke, (a born Fair Saint, what the Germans call Schöne Seele,) as yet quite young in heart and experience, but broken down with grief for de Lettre du Comte Mirabeau sur Cagliostro et Lavater (Berlin, 1786 P. 42.) |