which have engaged the students of immaterial philosophy in my own age.

Affixed to the "Note" with which this work concludes, and which treats
of the distinctions between type and allegory, the reader will find,
from the pen of one of our most eminent living writers, an ingenious
attempt to explain the interior or typical meanings of the work now
before him.




INTRODUCTION.

It is possible that among my readers there may be a few not unacquainted
with an old-book shop, existing some years since in the neighbourhood
of Covent Garden; I say a few, for certainly there was little enough to
attract the many in those precious volumes which the labour of a life
had accumulated on the dusty shelves of my old friend D--. There were to
be found no popular treatises, no entertaining romances, no histories,
no travels, no "Library for the People," no "Amusement for the Million."
But there, perhaps, throughout all Europe, the curious might discover
the most notable collection, ever amassed by an enthusiast, of the works
of alchemist, cabalist, and astrologer. The owner had lavished a fortune
in the purchase of unsalable treasures. But old D-- did not desire to
sell. It absolutely went to his heart when a customer entered his shop:
he watched the movements of the presumptuous intruder with a vindictive
glare; he fluttered around him with uneasy vigilance,--he frowned, he
groaned, when profane hands dislodged his idols from their niches. If
it were one of the favourite sultanas of his wizard harem that attracted
you, and the price named were not sufficiently enormous, he would not