Maria, the sea, is the water mystically appointed for the washing away of sin." (p. 30, Clothed in the Sun. Anna Kingsford.)

It may be noted how alike the name Mariana is to Maria. It is Mariana's substitution by the Duke in place of Isabella that saves Angelo from the fall he intended, the sin he conceived. Like Eve, Maria, and the sea, are mystical synonyms for the soul, which is called "Bitterness of the Deep." (Clothed in the Sun, p. 30.) All this is closely connected with the flood, and creation. One of the days appointed to the Eleusinian mysteries was dedicated to a visit to the sea, as allotted to purification.

It is highly probable Angelo's reconciliation to his wife, Mariana, is a symbolical hint for the Atonement. The authors of the Perfect Way write:

"The uniting of the human will with the Divine Will, or, as it is sometimes called, the Reconciliation, which is but another word for the Atonement." (p. 3.)

I am convinced the author intended something akin to this in the way Angelo is reconciled by the Divine Will of the invisible ubiquitous Duke to his wife Mariana. I am certain Angelo is a generic name for man in a collective sense.

There is a vast moral in all this if we chose to see it rightly. The author's seeming intention is to show how universal, how powerful this peculiar vice is, and how all ages, all times smack of it. Authority being even unable to act from falling under the same indictment. The fact that one so high in position as Angelo, set up to represent what seems an invisible, ubiquitous godhead as viceregent, should fall a prey to the offense he is to root out, shows how wide, how radical was this sin, in the author's mind,—a universal fall, a general declension from the Divine injunction. Man is incapable of dealing with it, because no one can show the example; that is, the moral. And against all this in high relief, like some alabaster statue of purity, set against a dark background, stands that perfect picture of chastity — Isabella! The author's intention here can hardly be mistaken. He sets purity or chastity at a higher figure than life or death,- outweighing even a brother's execution. The authors of The Perfect Way write:

"It is through the soul, and the soul only, that man learns the Divine will, and, learning it, saves himself. And the clearness with which the soul, on her part, discerns and transmits that will depends upon her purity. In the word purity lies the essence of all religion. It is the burden of the whole Bible, and of all Bibles.

Always is purity insisted on as the means to salvation; always impurity as the cause of condemnation. To this uniformity of doctrine the parable of the Fall is no exception. With the soul pure man dwells in Eden and 'sees God.' With the soul unpure, he is driven forth into the wilderness." (p. 184.)

Bacon writes in his Confession of Faith:

"That God created man in his own image, in a reasonable soul, in innocency, in free-will, and in sovereignty. That He gave him a law and commandment, which was in his power to keep, but he kept it not. That man made a total dejection from God, presuming to imagine that the commandments and prohibitions of God were not the rules of good and evil, but that good and evil had their own principles and beginnings.

"That upon the fall of man, death and vanity entered by the justice of God, and the image of God in man was defaced, and heaven and earth, which were made for man's use, were subdued to corruption by his fall." (p. 97, part 1, Resuscitatio, 1671.)

In the virgin chastity of Isabella may be seen the hint, that it is chastity alone which can bring about the atonement of Angelo. In the action concerning the Duke, his pretended journey, his disguise as a friar, and his ubiquitous, though invisible, presence overruling the entire plot of the play, we may easily perceive the parable of the Steward, who made a journey into a far country, and to each of his servants gave so many talents. That is, it is the parable of Divine Providence, invisible but ubiquitous, searching out the hearts of men, and overriding, with Divine action, individual good and evil. The Duke is a type of God as spirit, bringing about the atonement and restitution of fallen man,― pictured in the character of Angelo,—the fallen angel man!

Isabella is, I am convinced, the HEAVENLY VIRGIN of the Hermetic philosophers; that is, the soul and intellect, whom we find represented in Beatrice, as Dante's guide. Therefore, in seeking to seduce her, Angelo is conspiring against himself, that is, employing his will, or worse self, to debase and defile that which is truly divine in him, and god-like. In like manner, the student may observe, it is through Isabella the reconciliation or at-one-ment (atonement) between Angelo and Mariana is effected. That is to say, it is through the virtues of Isabella and all she symbolizes, that fallen man can, like Angelo, be restored once more to divine grace and pardon. With regard to my theory of the occasion of the fall, the reader may be referred to Saint Augustine, where he will find the same idea inculcated in The City of God. Sir Thomas Brown,

the author of the Religio Medici, hints at the same doctrine, and all the Cabalists are as one upon this point. Robert Fludd, the great English Rosicrucian, "detects the origin of evil in the union of the sexes; the sensual organs of the mother of mankind were first opened by the fruit which blasted the future human race. (D'Israelis' Amenities of Literature." Fludd.)

The temptation and fall is a parable, applying itself to every individual life, that surrenders nobler gifts and future ends for present passions and pleasures. The entire parable of the garden is an allegory of man as angel, and pure spirit, living in comparative purity and peace with nature, and from this paradise he drives himself out, by losing control over his body and passions. In Measure for Measure we find exactly the same enunciation of the liberty of the will as lost with the purity of illumination, as Bacon enunciates. In reply to Isabella's entreaty for pardon for her brother Claudio's life, we find Angelo exclaiming:

Angelo. I will not do't.

Isab. But can you if you would?

Angelo. Look, what I will not, that I cannot do.

(Act. ii. sc. 2.)

Such was it given us by

Saint Augustine writes: "The will, therefore, is then truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and sins. God; and this being lost by its own fault, Him, who was able at first to give it." God.)

can only be restored by (Book, xiv. The City of

CHAPTER XII.

THE ROSICRUCIANS.

I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze
With forms of saints and holy men who died;
Here martyred and hereafter glorified;

And the GREAT ROSE upon its leaves displays
Christ's triumph, and the angelic roundelays,
With splendor upon splendor multiplied;
And Beatrice again at Dante's side

No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.

THE ROSE.

(Longfellow.)

"There can be little doubt that the Rose came from Damascus, probably introduced into Europe by the Crusaders or some of the early travelers in the East, who speak in glowing terms of the beauties of the gardens of Damascus. The author of Eothen, describing the gardens of Damascus, writes: High, high, above your head, and on every side all down to the ground, the thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the interlacing boughs that droop with the weight of Roses, and load the slow air with their damask breath. There are no other flowers. The Rose trees which I saw were all of the kind we call "Damask; "they grow to an immense height and size" (Eothen, ch. xxvii.). It was not till long after the Crusades that the Damask Rose was introduced into England, for Hakluyt in 1582, says: 'In time of memory many things have been brought in that were not here before, as the Damask Rose by Doctor Linaker, King Henry the Seventh's, and King Henry the Eighth's physician' (Voyages, vol. ii.)" (p. 252. Plant Lore of Shakespeare. Ellacombe.)

It is interesting to note that the Rosicrucians, whose emblem was the Crucified Rose, evidently trace back their origins, or at least connect their secret lore with Damascus. In the Fama Fraternitatis we read of the founder of the society, Christian Rosy Cross:

"Hereby was that high and noble spirit of brother C. R. C. so stirred up, that Jerusalem was not so much now in his mind as Damasco. There the wise men received him not as a stranger (as he himself witnesseth), but as one whom they had long expected; they called him by his name, and showed him other secrets out of his cloyster, whereat he could not but mightily wonder."

(pp. 66, 67, History of the Rosicrucians. Waite.)

The Damask Rose figures as a drug in, "a bill of medicynes furnished for the use of Edward I., 1306-7:"-" Item pro aqua rosata de Damaso lb. xl, iiiili.” (Archæological Journal, vol. xiv. 271.)

Lord Bacon introduces roses into his receipt for the gout, and in the description of the chemist's shop, in Romeo and Juliet, we read: Remnants of pack-thread and old cakes of Roses Were thinly scattered to make up a show.

(Act v. sc. 1, p. 47.)

The Rev. Henry Ellacombe, in his Plant Lore and Garden Craft of Shakespeare, remarks:

"There is no flower so often mentioned by Shakespeare as the Rose, and he would probably consider it the queen of flowers, for it was so deemed in his time." (p. 248.)

There are over seventy introductions of the Rose in the plays. And there can be no doubt the Rose is introduced by the author often with an esoteric or masonic signification. There has been a dispute as to the origin of the word 'Rosicrucian,' some deriving it from a rose and cross, and others, like Mosheim, from ros dew and light or lux. But both these explanations are perfectly reconcileable with each other. It is common to find dew associated with roses in a profoundly mystic sense.

"The water that did spring from ground

She would not touch at all,

But washed her hands with dew of Heaven

That on sweet Roses fall."

(The Lamentable Fall of Queen Ellinor. Roxburghe Ballads.) It is evident the author of the plays alludes to the same connection of Dew and Roses.

So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not

To those fresh morning drops upon the Rose.

(Love's Labor's Lost, act iv. sc. 3.)

Many dictionaries write under the word 'Rosicrucians,'" not rosa crux, rose cross, but ros crux, dew cross." This is all very fine, but the emblem of the Rosicrucians, a Crucified Rose, mounted on a Calvary, with rays issuing from it, proves the Rose and Cross did play a first part in the imagery The truth is the Rose is one of the most ancient and most profound symbols in existence, and is connected by Dante with the ineffable Light of the Shekinah. We have only to recall how Apuleius regained his original shape, from that of an ass, by eating roses, to feel assured that in classical times the Rose had a recondite meaning, as we may indeed know by the fact