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426
HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.
Its character can hardly have deceived the most credulous
of its postulants. Some of its members wrap themselves
in darkness and mystery, proclaiming themselves Kosi-
crucians with intent to deceive. These persons find a few-
very few feeble in truth very
feeble believers and
admirers. Others assert that the Society is a mask to
something else the last resource of cornered credulity and
exposed imposture.
There are similar associations in other
parts of Europe and also in America, e.g.,
the Societas
Eosicruciana of Boston. In concluding this notice of
modern Eosicrucian associations, I beg leave to warn my
readers that all persons, whether within or without the
magic circles of public libraries, who proclaim themselves to
be Kosicrucians are simply members of pseudo-fraternities,
and that there is that difference between their assertion and
the facts of the case " in which the essence of a lie consists."
Though the true Eosicrucians, supposing such a society
to have had at any period a tangible and corporate exist-
ence, disappeared very suddenly from the historical plane,
the glamour of the mystery which surrounded them proved
a prolific prima materia for the alchemical transfigura-
tions of romance and poetry, and insured them a place in
legend. Two curious traditions are noticed by Hargrave
Jennings, but his mental tortuosity has, in both cases, induced
him to pervert the story which he recounts by the
introduction of worthless and untruthful details manufac-
tured by his own imagination, and prudently ascribed to
other, of course unnamed,
sources of information. One of
these is the alleged discovery of the tomb of Eosicrucius.
Mr Jennings cites Plot's " History of Staffordshire " as his
authority for this legend ; I have carefully looked through