‘When I arrived, my surprise was by no means diminished. I found in three different chambers three cabinets, a large chest, and a glass case of china wide open, the locks not picked, but forced, and the doors of them broken to pieces. You will wonder that this should surprise me, when I had been prepared for it. Oh, the miracle was that I did not find, nor to this time have found, the least thing missing! In the cabinet of modern medals there were, and so there are still, a series of English coins, with downright John Trot guineas, half-guineas, shillings, sixpences, and every kind of current money. Not a single piece was removed. Just so in the Roman and Greek cabinet, though in the latter were some drawers of papers, which they had tumbled and scattered about the floor. A great exchequer desk, that belonged to my father, was in the same room. Not being able to force the lock, the philosophers (for thieves that steal nothing deserve the title much more than Cincinnatus or I) had wrenched a great flapper of brass with such violence as to break it into seven pieces. The trunk contained a new set of chairs of French tapestry, two screens, rolls of prints, and a suit of silver stuff that I had made for the King’s wedding. All was turned topsy-turvy, and nothing stolen. The glass case and cabinet of shells had been handled as roughly by these impotent gallants. Another little table with drawers, in which, by the way, the key was left, had been opened too, and a metal standish, that they ought to have taken for silver, and a silver hand-candlestick that stood upon it, were untouched. Some plate in the pantry, and all my linen just come from the wash, had no more charms for them than gold or silver. In short, I could not help laughing, especially as the only two movables neglected were another little table with drawers and the money, and a writing-box with the bank-notes, both in the same room where they made the first havoc. In short, they had broken out a panel in the door of the area, and unbarred and unbolted it, and gone out at the street-door, which they left wide open at five o’clock in the morning. A passenger had found it so, and alarmed the maids, one of whom ran naked into the street, and by her cries waked my Lord Romney, who lives opposite. The poor creature was in fits for two days, but at first, finding my coachmaker’s apprentice in the street, had sent him to Mr. Conway, who immediately despatched him to me before he knew how little damage I had received, the whole of which consists in repairing the doors and locks of my cabinets and coffers.
‘All London is reasoning on this marvellous adventure, and not one argument presents itself that some other does not contradict. I insist that I have a talisman. You must know that last winter, being asked by Lord Vere to assist in settling Lady Betty Germaine’s auction, I found in an old catalogue of her collection this article, “The Black Stone into which Dr. Dee used to call his spirits.” Dr. Dee, you must know, was a great conjurer in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and has written a folio of the dialogues he held with his imps. I asked eagerly for this stone; Lord Vere said he knew of no such thing, but if found, it should certainly be at my service. Alas, the stone was gone! This winter I was again employed by Lord Frederick Campbell, for I am an absolute auctioneer, to do him the same service about his father’s (the Duke of Argyll’s) collection. Among other odd things, he produced a round piece of shining black marble in a leathern case as big as the crown of a hat, and asked me what that possibly could be? I screamed out, “Oh, Lord! I am the only man in England that can tell you!... It is Dr. Dee’s ‘Black Stone.’” It certainly is; Lady Betty had formerly given away or sold, time out of mind, for she was a thousand years old, that part of the Peterborough collection which contained natural philosophy. So, or since, the Black Stone had wandered into an auction, for the lotted paper was still on it. The Duke of Argyll, who bought everything, bought it. Lord Frederick (Campbell) gave it to me; and if it was not this magical stone, which is only of high-polished coal, that preserved my chattels, in truth I cannot guess what did.’35
At the great Strawberry Hill sale, in 1842, which dispersed the Walpole Collection, it was described in the catalogue as ‘a singularly interesting and curious relic of the superstition of our ancestors—the celebrated Speculum of Kennel Coal, highly polished, in a leathern case. It is remarkable for having been used to deceive the mob (!) by the celebrated Dr. Dee, the conjurer, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,’ etc.
The authorities of the British Museum purchased this ‘relic of the superstition of our ancestors’ for the sum of twelve guineas. It is neither more nor less than what it has been described, a polished piece of cannel-coal, and thus explains the allusion in Butler’s ‘Hudibras’:
‘Kelly did all his feats upon
The devil’s looking-glass—a stone.’
FOOTNOTE
35. Horace Walpole (Earl of Orford), ‘Letters,’ v. 290, et seq.
Chapter VI.
English Rosicrucians
It is not very easy to trace the origin of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. It is not easy, indeed, to get at the true derivation of the name ‘Rosicrucian.’ Some authorities refer it to that of the ostensible founder of the society, the mysterious Christian Rosenkreuse, but who can prove that such an individual ever existed? Others borrow it from the Latin word ros, dew, and crux, a cross, and explain it thus: ‘Dew,’ of all natural bodies, was esteemed the most powerful solvent of gold; and ‘the cross,’ in the old chemical language, signified light, because the figure of a cross exhibits at the same time the three letters which form the word lux. ‘Now, lux is called the seed, or menstruum, of the red dragon; or, in other words, that gross and corporeal light, which, when properly digested and modified, produces gold.’ So that, according to this derivation, a Rosicrucian is one who by the intervention and assistance of the ‘dew’ seeks for ‘light’—that is, the philosopher’s stone. But such an etymology is evidently too fanciful, and assumes too much to be readily accepted, and we try a third derivation, namely, from rosa and crux; in support of which may be adduced the oldest official documents of the brotherhood, which style it the ‘Broederschafft des Roosen Creutzes,’ or Rose-Crucians, or ‘Fratres Rosatæ Crucis;’ while the symbol of the order is ‘a red rose on a cross.’ Both the rose and the cross possess a copious emblematic history, and their choice by a secret society, which clothed its beliefs and fancies in allegorical language, is by no means difficult to understand. ‘The rose,’ says Eliphas Levi, in his ‘Histoire de la Magie,’ ‘which from time immemorial has been the symbol of beauty and life, of love and pleasure, expressed in a mystical manner all the protestations of the Renaissance. It was the flesh revolting against the oppression of the spirit; it was Nature declaring herself to be, like Grace, the daughter of God; it was Love refusing to be stifled by celibacy; it was Life desiring to be no longer barren; it was Humanity aspiring to a natural religion, full of love and reason, founded on the revelation of the harmonies of existence of which the rose was for initiates the living and blooming symbol....’ The reunion of the rose and the cross—such was the problem proposed by supreme initiation, and, in effect, occult philosophy, being the universal synthesis, should take into account all the phenomena of Being. It may be doubted, however, whether this ingenious symbolism has anything at all to do with Rosicrucianism; but it is not the less a fact that the rose and the cross were chosen because they were recognised emblems. And probably because the rose typified secrecy, while the cross was a protest against the tyranny and superstition of the Papacy.
We hear nothing of Rosicrucianism until the beginning of the seventeenth century. The earlier alchemists knew nothing of its theosophic doctrines; and the earlier Rosicrucians did not dabble in alchemy. The connection between the two was established at a later date; when the quest