inner man. Cunning in the supreme degree | ing them.-By such soliloquies can Count he has; intellect next to none. Nay, is not Front-of-brass Pinchbecko-stom, in rare atracunning (couple it with an esurient character) biliar hours of self-questioning, compose himthe natural consequence of defective intellect. self. For the rest, such hours are rare: the It is properly the vehement exercise of a short, Count is a man of action and digestion, not of poor vision; of an intellect sunk, bemired; self-questioning; usually the day brings its which can attain to no free vision, otherwise abundant task; there is no time for abstracit would lead the esurient man to be honest. tions,-of the metaphysical sort. Meanwhile gleams of muddy light will occa- Be this as it may, the Count has arrived at sionally visit all mortals; every living creature Strasburg; is working higher wonders than (according to Milton, the very Devil) has some ever. At Strasburg, indeed, (in the year 1783,) more or less faint resemblance of a Con- occurs his apotheosis: what we can call the science; must make inwardly certain auricular culmination and Fourth Act of his Life-drama. confessions, absolutions, professions of faith, He was here for a number of months; in full --were it only that he does not yet quite blossom and radiance, the envy and admiraloathe, and so proceed to hang himself. What tion of the world. In large hired hospitals, such a Porcus as Cagliostro might specially he with open drug-box, (containing “Extract feel, and think, and be, were difficult in any of Saturn,") and even with open purse, recase to say; much more when contradiction lieves the suffering poor; unfolds himself and mystification, designed and unavoidable, lamblike, angelic to a believing few, of the so involve the matter. One of the most rich classes; turns a silent minatory lion-face authentic documents preserved of him is the to unbelievers, were they of the richest. MediPicture of his Visage. An Effigies once uni-cal miracles have in all times been common: versally diffused; in oil-paint, aquatint, marble, but what miracle is this of an Oriental or Ocstucco, and perhaps gingerbread, decorating cidental Serene-Excellence that, "regardless millions of apartments: of which remarkable of expense," employs himself not in preserving Effigies one copy, engraved in the line-manner, game, but in curing sickness, in illuminating happily still lies here. Fittest of visages; ignorance? Behold how he dives, at noonworthy to be worn by the Quack of Quacks! day, into the infectious hovels of the mean; A most portentous face of scoundrelism: a fat, and on the equipages, haughtinesses, and even snub, abominable face; dew-lapped, flat-nosed, dinner-invitations, turns only his negatory greasy, full of greediness, sensuality, oxlike front-of-brass! The Prince Cardinal de Rohan, obstinacy; a forehead impudent, refusing to Archbishop of Strasburg, first-class Peer of be ashamed; and then two eyes turned up France, of the Blood-royal of Brittany, intiseraphically languishing, as in divine con- mates a wish to see him; he answers: "If templation and adoration; a touch of quiz Monseigneur the Cardinal is sick, let him too: on the whole, perhaps the most perfect come, and I will cure him if he is wel', he quack-face produced by the eighteenth cen- has no need of me, I none of him."* Heaven, tury. There he sits, and seraphically lan- meanwhile, has sent him a few disciples; by a guishes, with this epigraph: nice tact, he knows his man; to one speaks only of Spagiric Medicine, Downfal of tyranny, and the Egyptian Lodge; to another, of quite high matters, beyond this diurnal sphere; of visits from the Angel of Light, visits from him A probable conjecture were that this same of Darkness; passing a Statue of Christ, he Theosophy, Theophilanthropy, Solacement of will pause with a wondrously accented plainthe Poor, to which our Archquack now more tive" Ha!" as of recognition, as of thousandand more betook himseif, might serve not only years remembrance; and when questioned, as bird-lime for external game, but also half-sink into mysterious silence. Is he the Wanunconsciously as salve for assuaging his own spir tual sores. Am not I a charitable man? could the Archquack say: if I have erred myself, have I not, by theosophic unctuous discourses, removed much cause of error? The lying, the quackery, what are these but the method of accommodating yourself to the temper of men; of getting their ear, their dull long ear, which Honesty had no chance to Let the curious reader look at him, for an catch? Nay, at worst, is not this an unjust instant or two, through the eyes of two eyeworld; full of nothing but beasts of prey, four-witnesses; the Abbé Georgel, (Prince Louis's footed or two-footed? Nature has commanded, saying: Man, help thyself. Ought not the man of my gesins, s. nce he was not born a Prince, since in these scandalous times he has not been elected a Prince, to make himself one? If not by open violence, (for which he wants nilitary force ;) then surely by superior science, exercised in a private way. Heal the diseases of the Poor, the far deeper diseases of the ignorant: in a word, found Egypuan Lodges, and get the means of found

De l'Ami des Humains reconaissez les traits:
Tous ses jours sont marqués par de nouveaux bienfaits,
Il prolonge la vie, il secourt l'indigence;
Le plaisir d'etre utile est seul sa récompense.

:

dering Jew, then? Heaven knows! At Strasburg, in a word, Fortune not only smiles but laughs upon him: as crowning favour, he finds here the richest, inflammablest, most open-handed Dupe ever yet vouchsafed him; no other than this same many-titled Louis de Rohan; strong in whose favour, he can laugh again at Fortune.

diplomatic Factotum,) and Herr Meiners, the Göttingen Professor:

scula

"Admitted at length," says our too-prosing Jesuit Abbé, to the sanctuary of this pius, Prince Louis saw, according to his own account, in the incommunicative man's phy. siognomy, something so dignified, so imposing, that he felt penetrated with a religious awe, and reverence dictated his address.

* Mémoires de l'Abbe Georgel, ii. 48.

Their

interview, which was brief, excited more keenly | only till he felt strong enough to stand by him. than ever his desire of farther acquaintance. self: he soon gained the favour of the Prætor He attained it at length: and the crafty em- and the Cardinal; and through these the favour piric graduated so cunningly his words and of the Court, to such a degree that his adverprocedure, that he gained, without appearing saries cannot so much as think of overthrowto court it, the Cardinal's entire confidence, ing him. With the Prætor and Cardinal he is and the greatest ascendency over his will. said to demean himself as with persons who 'Your soul,' said he one day to the Prince, is were under boundless obligation to him, to worthy of mine; you deserve to be made par- whom he was under noue: the equipage of ticipator of all my secrets.' Such an avowal the Cardinal he seems to use as freely as his captivated the whole faculties, intellectual and own. He pretends that he can recognise Athemoral, of a man who at all times had hunted ists or Blasphemers by the smell; that the vaafter secrets of alchemy and botany. From pour from such throws him into epileptic fits; this moment their union became intimate and into which sacred disorder he, like a true jugpublic: Cagliostro went and established him- gler, has the art of falling when he likes. In self at Saverne, while his Eminence was re- public he no longer vaunts of rule over spisiding there; their solitary interviews were rits, or other magical arts; but I know, even long and frequent." "I remember once, as certainly, that he still pretends to evoke having learnt, by a sure way, that Baron de spirits, and by their help and apparition to heal Planta (his Eminence's man of affairs) had diseases, as I know this other fact, that he unfrequent, most expensive orgies, in the Árchi- derstands no more of the human system, or episcopal Palace, where Tokay wine ran like the nature of its diseases, or the use of the water, to regale Cagliostro and his pretended commonest therapeutic methods, than any wife, I thought it my duty to inform the Cardi- other quack. nal; his answer was, 'I know it; I have even authorized him to commit abuses, if he judge fit."" "He came at last to have no other will than Cagliostro's: and to such a length had it gone, that this sham Egyptian, finding it good to quit Strasburg for a time, and retire into Switzerland, the Cardinal, apprized thereof, despatched his Secretary as well to attend him, as to obtain Predictions from him; such were transmitted in cipher to the Cardinal on every point he needed to consult of."*—

"Before ever I arrived in Strasburg," (hear now the as prosing Protestant Professor,) "I knew almost to a certainty that I should not see Count Cagliostro: at least, not get to speak with him. From many persons I had heard that he, on no account, received visits from curious Travellers, in a state of health; that such as, without being sick, appeared in his audiences were sure to be treated by him, in the brutalest way, as spies."

"According to the crediblest accounts of persons who have long observed him, he is a man to an inconceivable degree choleric, (heftig,) heedless, inconstant; and therefore doubtless it was the happiest idea he ever in his whole life came upon, this of making himself inaccessible; of raising the most obstinate reserve as a bulwark round him; without which precaution he must long ago have been caught at fault.

"For his own labour he takes neither payment nor present; when presents are made him of such sort as cannot without offence be refused, he forthwith returns some counterpresent, of equal or still higher value. Nay he not only takes nothing from his patients, but frequently admits them, months long, to his house and his table, and will not consent to the smallest recompense. With all this disinterestedness, (conspicuous enough, as you may suppose,) he lives in an expensive way, "Never-plays deep, loses almost constantly to ladies; so that, according to the very lowest estimate, he must require at least 20,000 livres a year. The darkness which Caligostro has, on purpose, spread over the sources of his income and outlay, contributes even more than his munificence and miraculous cures to the notion that he is a divine extraordinary man, who has watched Nature in her deepest operations, and among other secrets stolen that of Gold-making from her." "With a mixture of sorrow and indignation over our age, I have to record that this man has found acceptance, not only among the great, who from of old have been the easiest bewitched by such, but also with many of the learned, and even physicians and naturalists."*

theless, though I saw not this new god of Physic near at hand and deliberately, but only for a moment as he rolled on in a rapid carriage, I fancy myself to be better acquainted with him than many who have lived in his society for months." My unavoidable conviction is, that Count Cagliostro, from of old, has been more of a cheat than an enthusiast; and also that he continues a cheat to this day.

66

"As to his country, I have ascertained nothing. Some make him a Spaniard, others a Jew, or an Italian, or a Ragusan; or even an Arab, who had persuaded some Asiatic Prince to send his son to travel in Europe, and then murdered the youth, and taken possession of his treasures. As the self-styled Count speaks badly all the languages you hear from him, and has most likely spent the greater part of his life under feigned names far from home, it is probable enough no sure trace of his origin may ever be discovered.

"On his first appearance in Strasburg he connected himself with the Freemasons; but

Georgel, ubi supra.

*

Halcyon days; only too good to continue! All glory runs its course; has its culmination, and then its often precipitous decline. Eminence Rohan, with fervid temper and small instruction, perhaps of dissolute, certainly of dishonest manners, in whom the faculty of Wonder had attained such prodigious develop*Meine's: Briefe über die Schweiz, (as quoted in Mi rabeau.)

446

ment, was indeed the very stranded whale for | rived, and with it Commissary Chesnon, to jackals to feed on: unhappily, however, no one jackal could long be left in solitary possession of him. A sharper-toothed she-jackal now strikes in; bites infinitely deeper; stranded whale and he-jackal both are like to become her prey. A young French Mantuamaker, "Countess de La Motte-Valoise, descended from Henry II. by the bastard line," without Extract of Saturn, Egyptian Masonry, or any (verbal) conference with Dark Angels, -has genius enough to get her finger in the Archquack's rich Hermetic Projection, appropriate the golden proceeds, and even finally break the crucible. Prince Cardinal Louis de Rohan is off to Paris, under her guidance, to see the long-invisible Queen, (or Queen's Apparition;) to pick up the Rose in the Garden of Trianon, dropt by her fair sham-royal hand; and then-descend rapidly to the Devil, and drag Cagliostro along with him.

is shaven on the head, branded with red-hotiron, “V” (Volense) on both shoulders, and confined for life to the Salpetrière; her Count wandering uncertain, with diamonds for sale, over the British Empire; the Sieur de Villette (for handling a queen's pen) banished for ever; the too queenlike Demoiselle Gay d'Oli

lodge the whole unholy Brotherhood, from Cardinal down to Sham-queen, in separate cells of the Bastille! There, for nine long months, let them howl and wail (in bass or treble ;) and emit the falsest of false Mémoires; among which that Mémoire pour le Comte de Cagliostro, en presence des autres Co-Accuses, with its Trebisond Acharats, Scherifs of Mecca, and Nature's unfortunate Child, all gravely printed with French types in the year 1786, may well bear the palm. Fancy that Necklace or Diamonds will nowhere unearth themselves; that the Tuileries Palace sits struck with astonishment, and speechless chagrin; that Paris, that all Europe, is ringing with the wonder. That Count Front-of-brass Pinchbecko-stom, coufronted, at the judgment bar, with a shrill, glib Circe de La Motte, has need of all his eloquence; that nevertheless the Front-of-brass prevails, and exasperated Circe "throws a The intelligent reader observes, we have candlestick at him." Finally, that on the 31st now arrived at that stupendous business of the of May, 1786, the assembled Parliament of Diamond Necklace: into the dark complexities Paris, "at nine in the evening, after a sitting of which we need not here do more than of eighteen hours," has solemnly pronounced glance: who knows but, next month, our His- judgment: and now that Cardinal Louis is torical Chapter, written specially on this sub-gone "to his estates;" Countess de La Motte ject, may itself see the light? Enough, for the present, if we fancy vividly the poor whale Cardinal, so deep in the adventure that GrandCophtic "predictions transmitted in cipher" will no longer illuminate him; but the Grand Cophta must leave all masonic or other business, happily begun in Naples, Bourdeaux, Lyons, and come personally to Paris with pre-va (with her unfathered infant) "put out of dictions at first hand. "The new Calchas," says poor Abbé Georgel, "must have read the entrails of his victim ill; for, on issuing from these communications with the Angel of Light and of Darkness, he prophesied to the Cardinal that this happy correspondence" (with the Queen's Similitude) “would place him at the highest point of favour; that his influence in the Government would soon become paramount; that he would use it for the propagation of good principles, the glory of the Supreme Being, and the happiness of Frenchmen." The new Calchas was ind1 at fault: but how could he be otherwise? Let these high Queen's Arrived here, and lodged tolerably in "Sloane favours, and all terrestrial shiftings of the wind, turn as they will, his reign, he can well Street, Knightsbridge," by the aid of Mr. (Broken see, is appointed to be temporary: in the mean Wine-merchant Apothecary) Swinton, to whom while, Tokay flows like water; prophecies of he carries introductions, he can drive a small good, not of evil, are the method to keep it trade in Egyptian pills, (sold in Paris at thirty flowing. Thus if, for Circe de La Motte-Valoise, shillings the dram;) in unctuously discoursing the Egyptian Masonry is but a foolish enchanted to Egyptian Lodges; in "giving public audicup to turn her fat Cardinal into a quadruped ences as at Strasburg,"-if so be any one will withal, she herself converse-wise, for the bite. At all events, he can, by the aid of amaGrand Cophta, is one who must ever fodder nuensis-disciples, compose and publish his said quadruped (with Court Hopes,) and stall- Lettre au Peuple Anglais; setting forth his unfeed him fatter and fatter,—it is expected for heard-of generosities, unheard-of injustices suf the knife of both parties. They are mutually fered (in a world not worthy of him) at the hands useful; live in peace, and Tokay festivity, of English Lawyers, Bastille Governors, French though mutually suspicious, mutually con- Counts, and others; his Lettre aux Français, temptuous. So stand matters, through the singing to the same tune, predicting too (what spring and summer months of the year 1785. many inspired Editors had already boded) that But fancy next that,-while Tokay is flow-"the Bastille would be destroyed" and "a ng within doors, and abroad Egyptian Lodges are getting founded, and gold and glory, from Paris as from other cities, supernaturally coming in, the latter end of Augu. t has ar

Court ;"-and Grand Cophta Cagliostro liberated, indeed, but pillaged, and ordered forthwith to take himself away. His disciples illuminate their windows; but what does that avail! Commissary Chesnon, Bastille-Governor Lau nay cannot recollect the least particular of those priceless effects, those gold-rouleaus, repeating watches of his: he must even retire to Passy that very night; and two days afterwards, sees nothing for it but Boulogne and England. Thus does the miserable pickleherring tragedy of the Diamond Necklace wind itself up, and wind Cagliostro once more to inhospitable shores.

King would come who should govern by States-General." But, alas, the shafts of Criti cism are busy with him; so many hostile eyes look towards him: the world, in short, is get

ting too hot for him. Mark, nevertheless, how the brow of brass quails not; nay a touch of his old poetic Humour, even in this sad crisis, unexpectedly unfolds itself. One Morande, Editor of a Courier de l'Europe published here at that period, has for some time made it his distinction to be the foremost of Cagliostro's enemies. Cagliostro (enduring much in silence) happens once, in some " public audience," to mention a practice he had witnessed in Arabia the Stony: the people there, it seems, are in the habit of fattening a few pigs annually, on provender mixed with arsenic; whereby the whole pig-carcase by and by becomes, so to speak, arsenical; the arsenical pigs are then let loose into the woods; eaten by lions, leopards, and other ferocious creatures; which latter naturally all die in consequence, and so the woods are cleared of them. This adroit practice the Sieur Morande thought a proper subject for banter; and accordingly, in his Seventeenth and two following Numbers, made merry enough with it. Whereupon Count Front of-brass, whose patience has limits, writes as Advertisement (still to be read in old files of the Public Advertiser, under date September 3, 1786) a French Letter, not without causticity and aristocratic disdain; challenging the witty Sieur to breakfast with him, for the 9th of November next, in the face of the world, on an actual Sucking Pig, fattened by Cagliostro, | but cooked, carved, and selected from by the Sieur Morande,-under bet of Five Thousand Guineas sterling that next morning thereafter, he the Sieur Morande shall be dead, and Count Cagliostro be alive! The poor Sieur durst not cry, Done; and backed out of the transaction, making wry faces. Thus does a kind of red coppery splendour encircle our Archquack's decline; thus with brow of brass, grim smiling, does he meet his destiny.

"So said the Clerk. However, as I could not abandon my purpose, we after some study concerted that I should give myself out for an Englishman, and bring the family news of Cagliostro, who had lately got out of the Bastille, and gone to London.

"At the appointed hour, it might be three in the afternoon, we set forth. The house lay in the corner of an Alley, not far from the mainstreet named Il Casaro. We ascended a miserable stair, and came straight into the kitchen. A woman of middle stature, broad and stout, yet not corpulent, stood busy washing the kitchen dishes. She was decently dressed; and, on our entrance, turned up the one end of her apron, to hide the soiled side from us. She joyfully recognised my conductor, and said: 'Signor Giovanni, do you bring us good news? Have you made out any thing?'

"He answered: In our affair, nothing yet: but here is a Stranger that brings a salutation from your Brother, and can tell you how he is at present.'

"The salutation I was to bring stood not in our agreement: meanwhile, one way or other, the introduction was accomplished. You know my Brother?' inquired she.-' All Europe knows him,' answered I; and I fancied it would gratify you to hear that he is now in safety and well; as, of late, no doubt you have been anxious about him.'-Step in,' said she, I will follow you directly;' and with the Clerk I entered the room.

"It was large and high; and might, with us, have passed for a saloon; it seemed, indeed, to be almost the sole lodging of the family. A single window lighted the large walls, which had once had colour; and on which were black pictures of saints, in gilt frames, hanging round. Two large beds, without curtains, stood at one wall; a brown press, in the form of a But suppose we should now, from these writing-desk, at the other. Old rush-bottomed foreign scenes, turn homewards, for a moment, chairs, the backs of which had once been gilt, into the native alley in Palermo! Palermo, stood by; and the tiles of the floor were in with its dinginess, its mud or dust; the old many places worn deep into hollows. For the black Balsamo House, the very beds and chairs, rest, all was cleanly; and we approached the all are still standing there: and Beppo has family, which sat assembled at the one winaltered so strangely, has wandered so far away.dow, in the other end of the apartment. Let us look; for happily we have the fairest opportunity.

In April, 1787, Palermo contained a Traveller of a thousand; no other than the great Goethe from Weimar. At his Table-d'hote he heard much of Cagliostro; at length also of a certain Palermo Lawyer, who had been engaged by the French Government to draw up an authentic genealogy and memoir of him. This Lawyer, and even the rude draught of his Memoir, he with little difficulty gets to see; inquires next whether it were not possible to see the actual Balsamo Family, whereof it appears the mother and a widowed sister still survive. For this matter, however, the Lawyer can do nothing; only refer him to his Clerk; who again starts difficulties: To get at those genealogic Documents he has been obliged to invent some story of a Government Pension being in the wind for those poor Balsamos and now that the whole matter is finished, and the Paper sent off to France, has nothing so much at heart as to keep out of their way:

;

"Whilst my guide was explaining, to the old Widow Balsamo, the purpose of our visit, and by reason of her deafness must repeat his words several times aloud, I had time to ob serve the chamber and the other persons in it. A girl of about sixteen, well formed, whose features had become uncertain by small-pox, stood at the window; beside her a young man, whose disagreeable look, deformed by the same disease, also struck me. In an easy-chair, right before the window, sat or rather lay a sick, much disshapen person, who appeared to labour under a sort of lethargy.