dom prolix, he writes with grace, ease, and lucidity,
albeit in a style often opulent, and touched at times with lights and
jewels from old alchemists, antique liturgies, remote and haunting
romance, secret orders of initiation, and other recondite sources not
easily traced. Much learning and many kinds of wisdom are in his
pages, and withal an air of serenity, of tolerance; and if he is of
those who turn down another street when miracles are performed in the
neighborhood, it is because, having found the inner truth, he asks for
no sign.

Always he writes in the conviction that all great subjects bring us
back to the one subject which is alone great, and that scholarly
criticisms, folk-lore, and deep philosophy are little less than
useless if they fall short of directing us to our true end--the
attainment of that living Truth which is about us everywhere. He
conceives of our mortal life as one eternal Quest of that living
Truth, taking many phases and forms, yet ever at heart the same
aspiration, to trace which he has made it his labor and joy to essay.
Through all his pages he is following out the tradition of this Quest,
in its myriad aspects, especially since the Christian era, disfigured
though it has been at times by superstition, and distorted at others
by bigotry, but still, in what guise soever, containing as its secret
the meaning of the life of man from his birth to his reunion with God
who is his Goal. And the result is a series of volumes noble in form,
united in aim, unique in wealth of revealing beauty, and of unequalled
worth.[51]

Beginning as far back as 1886, Waite issued his study of the
_Mysteries of Magic_, a digest of the writings of Eliphas Levi, to
whom Albert Pike was more indebted than he let us know. Then followed
the _Real History of the Rosicrucians_, which traces, as far as any
mortal may trace, the thread of fact whereon is strung the romance of
a fraternity the very existence of which has been doubted and denied
by turns. Like all his work, it bears the impress of knowledge from
the actual sources, betraying his extraordinary learning and his
exceptional experience in this kind of inquiry. Of the Quest in its
distinctively Christian aspect, he has written in _The Hidden Church
of the Holy Graal_; a work of rare beauty, of bewildering richness,
written in a style which, partaking of the quality of the story told,
is not at all after the manner of these days. But the Graal Legend is
only