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"It is Christianus Rosencrux, then," he said to himself, "whom I have inquired for whom I am to see and who will dissolve the spell that has been placed upon me. But where shall I seek him? whither shall I go to find his secret abode?"

Father John Davidius, the Jesuit, wrote a book entitled Veridicus Christianus, which is like a kind of Bibliomancy, where one takes passages at random, after the pattern of the Tolle, lege of St. Augustine, and it is like a devotional game. But the chances to which, in spite of ourselves, we are subject, play only too large a part in what brings salvation to men, or removes it from them.

But the one which gains most general credence is that the brotherhood was founded by a certain Christianus Rosencrux, a German philosopher, who fancied that the arts and sciences might be developed in such a manner as to confer the greatest possible blessings on the human race." "Then the aims of Rosencrux are entirely good and philanthropic?" said Wagner, interrogatively.

He answered in Latin, Christianus; but was so weak and faint, that he could scarce stand, or speak; I took my bottle out of my pocket, and gave it him, making signs that he should drink, which he did; and I gave him a piece of bread, which he ate; then I asked him, what countryman he was? and he said, Espagnole; and, being a little recovered, let me know, by all the signs he could possibly make, how much he was in my debt for his deliverance.

"Quam pulchrum spectaculum Deo, cum Christianus cum dolore congueditur? cum adversus minas, et supplicia, et tormenta componitur? cum libertatem suam adversus reges ac Principes erigit." Disappointed of a fellowship at Cambridge, he turned actor; failed upon the stage, but prospered as a writer for it. His career as a dramatist began with 'Nero', in 1675, and he wrote in all eleven plays.

Thomas Chalonerus patria Londinensis, studio Cantabrigensis, educatione aulicus, religione pius, veréque Christianus fuit. Itaque cum iuuenilem ætatem, mentémque suam humanioribus studijs roborasset, Domino Henrico Kneuetto

And so, till I am convinced either of ghosts or of telepathy, I must accord an impartial incredulousness to both. Credat Christianus, F. W. Myers or W. T. Stead! For I gather that the Psychical Society assert that they must exist. But as yet je n'en vois pas la necessite.

"How long ago is Christianus Rosencrux reported to have lived?" demanded Wagner, suddenly interrupting the garrulous and narrow-minded Sicilian. "There we are again!" he ejaculated. "The credulous declare that Rosencrux discovered in the East the means of prolonging existence, and though he was born as far back as the year 1359, he is still alive."

So says the legend; and it goes on to recite that Christianus Rosencrux then founded the order of the Rosy Cross, which was nothing more or less than a brotherhood of wise men whom he initiated in all his secrets, with the intention that they should reveal from time to time small portions thereof, and thus give to the world by very slow degrees that immense amount of knowledge which he supposed would have stupefied and astounded everybody if made public all at once."

Thus, finally, the people had its life even in Germany and England, where real liberty, though of later birth, afterward remained more deeply rooted in social life. In all those countries, it was called populus Christianus; it had its associations, its guilds, its Christian customs, its privileges, its rights.