unfrequently double the sum. Demur, and in brisk delight he snatched the
venerable charmer from your hands; accede, and he became the picture of
despair,--nor unfrequently, at the dead of night, would he knock at your
door, and entreat you to sell him back, at your own terms, what you had
so egregiously bought at his. A believer himself in his Averroes and
Paracelsus, he was as loth as the philosophers he studied to communicate
to the profane the learning he had collected.

It so chanced that some years ago, in my younger days, whether of
authorship or life, I felt a desire to make myself acquainted with
the true origin and tenets of the singular sect known by the name of
Rosicrucians. Dissatisfied with the scanty and superficial accounts to
be found in the works usually referred to on the subject, it struck
me as possible that Mr. D--'s collection, which was rich, not only in
black-letter, but in manuscripts, might contain some more accurate and
authentic records of that famous brotherhood,--written, who knows?
by one of their own order, and confirming by authority and detail the
pretensions to wisdom and to virtue which Bringaret had arrogated to the
successors of the Chaldean and Gymnosophist. Accordingly I repaired to
what, doubtless, I ought to be ashamed to confess, was once one of
my favourite haunts. But are there no errors and no fallacies, in the
chronicles of our own day, as absurd as those of the alchemists of old?
Our very newspapers may seem to our posterity as full of delusions as
the books of the alchemists do to us; not but what the press is the air
we breathe,--and uncommonly foggy the air is too!

On entering the shop, I was struck by the venerable appearance of a
customer whom I had never seen there before. I was struck yet more
by the respect with which he was treated by the disdainful collector.
"Sir," cried the last, emphatically, as I was turning over the leaves of