cious aspiration of philosophic benevolence to embalm even the idlest levities, as amber enshrines straws and insects!" (Ib.)

"Thus I have traced the history of Rosicrucianism from its birth in Germany; and have ended with showing that, from the energetic opposition and ridicule which it latterly incurred, no college or lodge of Rosicrucian brethren, professing occult knowledge, and communicating it under solemn forms and vows of secresy, can be shown from historical records to have been ever established in Germany. I shall now undertake to prove that Rosicrucianism was transplanted to England, where it flourished under a new name, under which name it has been since re-exported to us in common with the other countries of Christendom. For I affirm, as the main thesis of my concluding labors, THAT FREE-MASONRY IS NEITHER MORE NOR

LESS THAN ROSICRUCIANISM AS MODIFIED BY THOSE WHO TRANSPLANTED IT TO ENGLAND."

(Ib.)

This is a thesis difficult to prove, because there exists abundant evidence St. Alban cherished Free Masons, and that it existed in King Henry the Sixth's reign. I should here do well to caution the student against taking De Quincey as an absolute authority upon this subject. His essay upon the Rosicrucians and Free Masons seems a very recondite and exhaustive study to the uninitiated. So I once thought myself, and I dare say thousands have read the essay, with the idea, De Quincey had deeply read himself up upon the subject. I happened, however, to come across Buhle's famous Dissertation (read by the professor in 1803, to the Society of Göttingen) upon this subject, and I recognized at once the source of De Quincey's information and inspiration. In short, De Quincey's essay is entirely borrowed from Buhle, even to the learned foot-notes, and I question, De Quincey had ever read any of the genuine and real Rosicrucian literature for himself at all. De Quincey cuts up Buhle's dissertation, as the Abyssinian is reported to do with regard to the living animal, carves a steak, helps himself, and tortures his subject, without killing him. De Quincey contradicts himself, and is just as confused over his subject as Buhle whom he ridicules for this identical reason. De Quincey tells us of the lodge meeting at Warrington in 1646, but omits to state what Oliver (in his Discrepancies of Freemasonry) adds, that Bacon's New Atlantis was there discussed and his pillars adopted. This proves Bacon's Rosicrucian (or at least Masonic) affiliations, and it gives the evidence all in favor of Nicolai, Buhle and many other German writers on this subject.

In Bacon's Resuscitatio, 1671, there are certain psalms translated

by him, I am of the belief, with the purport of Masonic symbolism. For example, the 137th Psalm is translated by Bacon, and this psalm is part of the reception or rite of the degree of super-excellent master in cryptic Masonry:

"When as we sat all sad and desolate

By Babylon upon the river's side,

Eased from the tasks, which in our captive state
We were enforced daily to abide,

Our harps we had brought with us to the field

Some solace to our heavy souls to yield."

(Resuscitatio, 1671.)

In Mackey's Cryptic Masonry he gives this verse as part of the reception into the degree mentioned, thus:

By Babel's stream we sit and weep;

Our tears for Zion flow;

Our harps on drooping willows sleep;
Our hearts are filled with woe.

(p. 83 Cryptic Masonry Manual of the Council, 1867.)

Here, let me state, I am not a Freemason, and have never been one at any time, or taken any degree whatever. I am, therefore, under no consciousness of betraying any secrets of the craft.

THE ACORN ORNAMENT.

An Acorn ornament in the headpieces of Bacon's works is very frequent and conspicuous, found often with colon dots and 'notes of interrogation. A little work entitled Historical Memoirs on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James, fell into my hands, of date 1658, and in this work appears exactly the same head ornaments as in Tennyson's Baconiana (1679), with a single Acorn in the center. In the Epistle to Lucilius I found this (in curious mixture of italics and non-italicized words):

"So far as the stationer's mere zeal to gain, rather than any propensity to the advancement of learning, did for a while keep Bacon, Rawleigh and divers incomparable spirits more from perishing at the bottom of oblivion, good books (anciently written in the bark of trees,) and now turning in their progress, so exactly the fate of ACORNS, that if their chance be to withstand the swinish contamination of their own age, and trampling into the dirt of contempt, they do not seldom afterwards become the gods of the nations and have temples dedicated to their worship. As their authors, in this participate with other good men, who attain not to a state of glory till after this life."

Now this is very curious. Because the Acorn parable is the one of "cast not your pearls before swine," which we find so fully expressed in Sir Philip Sidney's frontispiece to the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, viz., the picture of a pig smelling some flowers; on a scroll of which is written: "Non tibi Spiro,"—I do

not breathe for thee.

It shows that this Acorn mark was a sign for the initiated of some secret society, who cast their pearls (acorns) before the swine, guarded by a cipher, written within, of which this Acorn was probably the emblem. This little book (by Francis Osborn) contains some" Political Deductions from the History of the Earl of Essex, executed under Queen Elizabeth." Seeing that Bacon played a great part as the friend of Essex, and finally was his state prosecutor, and further seeing Bacon's name is introduced in context with the Advancement of Learning, and the Acorn simile, it must indeed strike the profound critic that this Acorn mark, which we refind only in particular works (like Boccalini's Ragguagli di Parnasso) has something in it. The reader will find this Acorn ornament in many works of Lord Bacon's, and on page 271, Advancement of Learning, with cipher context.

CHAPTER XIII.

GORHAMBURY AND VERULAM.

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

(Sonnet LXXIII.)

Ruskin writes of the stars of Virgil, or of the Spring:

"Those stars are called not only Pleiades, but Vergiliæ, from a word mingling the ideas of the turning and returning of spring-time with the outpouring of rain. The mother of Virgil, bearing the name of Maia, Virgil himself received his name from the seven stars, and he in forming first the mind of Dante, and through him that of Chaucer, became the fountain-head of all the best literary power connected with the love of vegetative nature among civilized races of men. Take the fact for what it is worth; still it is a strange seal of coincidence, in word and in reality, upon the Greek dream of the power over human life, and its purest thoughts, in the stars of spring. But the first syllable of the name of Virgil has relation also to another group of words, of which the English ones, Virtue and Virgin bring down the force to modern days. It is a group containing mainly the idea of spring or increase of life in vegetation,-the rising of the new branch of the tree out of the bud, and of the new leaf out of the ground. It involves secondarily the idea of greenness and of strength, but, primarily, that of living increase of a new rod from a stock, stem or root; (There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse'), and chiefly the stem of certain plants—either of the rose tribe, as in the budding of the almond rod of Aaron; or of the olive tribe." (The Queen of the Air, pp. 43-44.)

It is very curious to find Bacon's home on the banks of the river Ver (or the spring), and his title of Lord Verulam connected with it. For Verulam (the modernized form of the Latin Verulamium) simply means the town on the river Ver.. Indeed, during Bacon's lifetime, he built himself a house upon the river itself, behind the Byzantine fish ponds, which were fed by the river. And he gave this mansion the name of Verulam House. It was here he wrote his Sylva Sylvarum, and spent the greater part of the last five years of his life, in the company of men like Hobbes and Rawley, his chaplain. One wing or gable of the house still stands. The Pleiades, or the stars of spring, are a group of stars closely connected with the lost island of Atlantis. For their names are each called after one of the seven daughters of Atlas, known as the Atlantides. Bacon writes:

"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Where the settled and immovable configuration of

the first stars, ever standing at equal distance, is with great elegancy described." So in another place, "Which maketh Arcturus, Orion and Pleiades, and the secret chambers of the south. Where he (Job) again points at the depression of the Southern Pole, designing it by the name of the Secrets of the South." (p. 44 Advancement of Learning, 1640.)

Halliwell Phillips writes: "According to Matthew Paris, the story of St. Catherine was dramatized about the commencement of the twelfth century, by one Geoffrey, a learned Norman then in England, in a play which was acted at Dunstable at that period. This is the earliest notice of the drama in this country which has been discovered." (p. 321, Outlines of Shakespeare's Life.) This Geoffrey was Geoffrey de Gorham, a bishop of St. Albans, who built Gorhambury Abbey, and from which Bacon's seat and park borrowed its name. In fact, the earliest notice of the drama in England takes us to Temple House, Bacon's home, built within a stone's throw of the site of Geoffrey de Gorham's abbey. This, to those who believe in the Baconian theory of the authorship of the plays, must appear very remarkable, almost fatality. Indeed, there are many trifles in the history of St. Albans connected with Bacon, which appear as almost omens or portents pointing to Bacon. His final title, Viscount St. Albans, appears to have impressed itself upon his mind, for he wrote, just after obtaining it in 1621, "I may now be buried in Saint Albans habit, as he lived," probably a profound hint for Bacon's literary and political martyrdom, as a parallel for the death of the martyr saint, who was put to death on the site of the abbey.

The man who possessed the best head that the world has as yet seen, and whose brain was actually concentric with the universe, died under a strange roof, almost alone and friendless.

"No ministering hands of feminine love soothed his fevered brow, moistened his parched lips; no gentle woman's voice, modulated by sympathy and sorrow, fell upon his ear. He was worse

than wifeless, for the alderman's daughter, the 'handsome maiden to his liking,' had not shared his sorrows; she was gone from him, living upon an allowance spared with difficulty from his narrow means. It is said she was faithless; at any rate, she honored the memory of the great philosopher, by marrying 'her gentlemanusher', ere the funeral baked meats grew cold. Bacon was not only worse than wifeless; he was without children."

This opinion rests upon the following extract from his will, the inference of his biographer, and perhaps, traditional gossip: