fatiguing the reader with irrelevant criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, as elucidating much of the design and character of the work which these prefatory pages introduce, that I should briefly observe, that he insisted as much upon the connection of the arts, as a distinguished author has upon that of the sciences; that he held that in all works of imagination, whether expressed by words or by colours, the artist of the higher schools must make the broadest distinction between the real and the true,—­in other words, between the imitation of actual life, and the exaltation of Nature into the Ideal.

“The one,” said he, “is the Dutch School, the other is the Greek.”

“Sir,” said I, “the Dutch is the most in fashion.”

“Yes, in painting, perhaps,” answered my host, “but in literature—­”

“It was of literature I spoke.  Our growing poets are all for simplicity and Betty Foy; and our critics hold it the highest praise of a work of imagination, to say that its characters are exact to common life, even in sculpture—­”

“In sculpture!  No, no!  There the high ideal must at least be essential!”

“Pardon me; I fear you have not seen Souter Johnny and Tam O’Shanter.”

“Ah!” said the old gentleman, shaking his head, “I live very much out of the world, I see.  I suppose Shakespeare has ceased to be admired?”

“On the contrary; people make the adoration of Shakespeare the excuse for attacking everybody else.  But then our critics have discovered that Shakespeare is so real!”

“Real!  The poet who has never once drawn a character to be met with in actual life,—­who has never once descended to a passion that is false, or a personage who is real!”

I was about to reply very severely to this paradox, when I perceived that my companion was growing a little out of temper.  And he who wishes to catch a Rosicrucian, must take care not to disturb the waters.  I thought it better, therefore, to turn the conversation.

“Revenons a nos moutons,” said I; “you promised to enlighten my ignorance as to the Rosicrucians.”

“Well!” quoth he, rather sternly; “but for what purpose?  Perhaps you desire only to enter the temple in order to ridicule the rites?”

“What do you take me for!  Surely, were I so inclined, the fate of the Abbe de Villars is a sufficient warning to all men not to treat idly of the realms of the Salamander and the Sylph.  Everybody knows how mysteriously that ingenious personage was deprived of his life, in revenge for the witty mockeries of his ‘Comte de Gabalis.’”

“Salamander and Sylph!  I see that you fall into the vulgar error, and translate literally the allegorical language of the mystics.”

With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a very interesting, and, as it seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of the tenets of the Rosicrucians, some of whom, he asserted, still existed, and still prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound researches into natural science and occult philosophy.