If the earlier part of “Cagliostro’s” life is unknown, the latter part is so overlaid with legends and lies, that it is almost impossible to get at the truth concerning it. In 1776 Cagliostro and his wife were in London, where “Cagliostro” became a Freemason, joining a lodge connected with “The Order of Strict Observance,” a secret society incorporated with Freemasonry, and which (on the Continent, at least) was concerned largely with occult subjects. “Cagliostro,” however, was unsatisfied with its rituals and devised a new system which he called Egyptian Masonry. Egyptian Masonry, he taught, was to reform the whole world, and he set out, leaving England for the Continent, to convert Masons and others to his views. We must look for the motive power of his extraordinary career in vanity and a love of mystery-mongering, without any true knowledge of the occult; it is probable, indeed, that ultimately his unbounded vanity triumphed over his reason and that he actually believed in his own pretensions. That he did possess hypnotic and clairvoyant powers is, we think, at least probable; but it is none the less certain that, when such failed him, he had no scruples against employing other means of convincing the credulous of the validity of his claims. This was the case on his visit to Russia, which occurred not long afterwards. At St. Petersburg a youthful medium he was employing, to put the matter briefly, “gave the show away,” and at Warsaw, where he found it necessary to turn alchemist, he was detected in the process of introducing a piece of gold in the crucible containing the base metal he was about to “transmute.” At Strasburg, which he reached in 1780, however, he was more successful. Here he appeared as a miraculous healer of all diseases, though whether his cures are to be ascribed to some simple but efficacious medicine which he had discovered, to hypnotism, to the power of the imagination on the part of his patients, or to the power of imagination on the part of those who have recorded the alleged cures, is a question into which we do not propose to enter. At Strasburg “Cagliostro” came into contact with the Cardinal de Rohan, and a fast friendship sprang up between the two, which, in the end, proved “Cagliostro’s” ruin. The “Count” next visited Bordeaux and Lyons, successfully founding lodges of Egyptian Masonry. From the latter town he proceeded to Paris, where he reached the height of his fame. He became extraordinarily rich, although he is said to have asked, and to have accepted, no fee for his services as a healer. On the other hand, there was a substantial entrance-fee to the mysteries of Egyptian Masonry, which, with its alchemistic promises of health and wealth, prospered exceedingly. At the summit of his career, however, fortune forsook him. As a friend of de Rohan, he was arrested in connection with the Diamond Necklace affair, on the word of the infamous Countess de