towed on a supernatural being. Sir Walter
Scott also endowed the White Lady of Avenel with many of the attributes of
the undines or water-sprites. German romance and lyrical poetry teem with
allusions to sylphs, gnomes, undines, and salamanders; and the French have
not been behind in substituting them, in works of fiction, for the more
cumbrous mythology of Greece and Rome. The sylphs, more especially, have
been the favourites of the bards, and have become so familiar to the
popular mind as to be, in a manner, confounded with that other race of
ideal beings, the fairies, who can boast of an antiquity much more
venerable in the annals of superstition. Having these obligations to the
Rosicrucians, no lover of poetry can wish, however absurd they were, that
such a sect of philosophers had never existed.

BORRI.

Just at the time that Michael Mayer was making known to the world the
existence of such a body as the Rosicrucians, there was born in Italy a
man who was afterwards destined to become the most conspicuous member of
the fraternity. The alchymic mania never called forth the ingenuity of a
more consummate or more successful impostor than Joseph Francis Borri. He
was born in 1616, according to some authorities, and in 1627 according to
others, at Milan; where his father, the Signor Branda Borri, practised as
a physician. At the age of sixteen Joseph was sent to finish his education
at the Jesuits' college in Rome, where he distinguished himself by his
extraordinary memory. He learned every thing to which he applied himself
with the utmost ease. In the most voluminous works no fact was too minute
for his retention, and no study was so abstruse but that he could master
it; but any advantages he might have derived from this facility were
neutralised by his ungovernable passions and his love of turmoil and
debauchery. He was involved in continual difficulty, as well with the
heads of the college as with the police of Rome, and acquired so bad a
character that years could not remove it. By the aid of his friends he
established himself as a physician in Rome, and also obtained some
situation in the pope's household. In one of his fits of studiousness he
grew enamoured of alchymy, and determined to devote his energies to the
discovery of the philosopher's stone. Of unfortunate propensities he had
quite sufficient, besides this, to bring him to poverty. His pleasures
were as expensive as his studies, and both were of a natur