Such skillful manoeuvres were more than once employed for sinister purposes. Thus it is a well-known historical fact that the men who obtained control over King Frederick William II., after his ascension to the throne, and held it for a time by the visions which they showed him, employed means like these to summon the spirits he wished to see. The master in this branch of black magic was undoubtedly Joseph Balsamo, the Count Cagliostro of French history. He was neither a magician in the true sense of the word, nor even a religious enthusiast, but merely an accomplished juggler and swindler, who had acquired, by natural endowment, patient study, and consummate art, a great power over the minds of others. He played upon the imagination of men as upon a familiar instrument, and the greatest philosophers were as easily victimized by him as the most clear-sighted women, in spite of the natural instinct which generally protects the latter against such imposition. His secret--as far as the summoning of the spirits of the departed is concerned--has died with him, but that enlightened, conscientious men candidly believed they had been shown disembodied spirits, is too well established by memories of French and Dutch writers to be doubted. In the meetings of his "lodges of Egyptian Freemasons" he, as Grand Cophtha, or those whom he had qualified by breathing upon them, employed a boy or a girl, frequently called up at haphazard from the street, but at other times carefully prepared for the purpose, to look into the hand or a basin of water. The poor child was, however, first made half-unconscious, being anointed with the "oil of wisdom," no doubt an intoxicating compound, and after numerous ceremonies, carried into a recess called the Tabernacle, and ordered to look into the hand or a basin of water. After the assembly had prayed for some time, the "Dove," as they called the child, was asked what he saw. Ordinarily he beheld first an angel or a priest--probably the image of Cagliostro himself in his sacerdotal robes--but frequently also monkeys, the offspring of a skeptical imagination. Then followed more or less interesting revelations, some utterly absurd, others of real interest, and at times actual predictions of future events. Cagliostro himself, during his last trial before the Inquisition of Rome, while readily confessing a large number of impostures, stoutly maintained the genuineness of these communications and insisted that they were the effects of a special power granted by God. His assertion has some value, as the shrewd man knew very well how much more he was likely to gain by a prompt avowal than by such a denial; his wife, also, although his accomplice in former years, and now by no means disposed to spare her quasi-husband, always stated that this was a true mystery which she had never been able to fathom. If we add to these considerations the fact that numerous masters of lodges, even in Holland and England, obtained