NTRODUCTION.

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
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 repa