The Globe Encyclopaedia, under article Rosicrucians, says:--"A mystic brotherhood revealed to the outer world in the _Fama Fraternitatis R. C._ (1614), the _Confessio Fraternitatis R. C._ (1615), and the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosenkreuz (1616), which last was acknowledged by, as the two former works were commonly ascribed to, Johann Valentin Andreae. From them we learn that a German noble of the 14th century, one Christian Rosenkreuz, after long travel in the East, founded on his return a brotherhood of seven adepts, the R., and dying at the age of 106 was buried in their temple--the 'House of the Holy Spirit,' with the inscription on his grave--'Post CXX. annos patebo.' The laws of the order, thus made known in the fulness of time, were that its members should heal the sick gratis, should meet once every year in a certain secret place, should adopt as their symbol R. C. (_i.e. Rosea Crux_), or a rose springing from a cross (the device, be it observed, of Luther's seal), and should assume the habit and manners of whatsoever country they might journey to. It is now supposed that Andreae simply intended a hoax upon the credulity of the age, and that Christian Rosenkreuz and all the attendant mysteries were wholly the coinage of his fertile brain. However, the hoax, if hoax there were, was taken seriously, and as early as 1622, societies of alchemists at the Hague and elsewhere assumed the title R., while Rosicrucian tenets powerfully influenced Cabalists, Freemasons, and Illuminati, and were professed by Cagliostro and similar impostors. Even to-day a Rosicrucian lodge is said to exist in London, whose members claim by asceticism to live beyond the allotted age of man, and to which the late Lord Lytton sought entrance vainly." "I was once engaged in discourse with a Rosicrucian about the 'great secret.' As this kind of men, I mean those of them who are not professed cheats, are over-run with enthusiasm and philosophy, it was very amusing to hear this religious adept descanting on his pretended discovery. He talked of the secret as of a spirit which lived within an emerald, and converted everything that was near it to the highest perfection it is capable of. 'It gives a lustre,' says he, 'to the sun, and water to the diamond. It irradiates every metal, and enriches lead with all the properties of gold. It heightens smoke into flame, flame into light, and light into glory.' He further added, that a single ray of it dissipates pain, and care, and melancholy, from the person on whom it falls. In short, says he, 'its presence naturally changes every place into a kind of heaven.' "After he had gone on for some time in this unintelligible cant, I found that he jumbled natural and moral ideas together in the same discourse, and that his great secret was nothing else but content." CHAPTER II. _Historical Notices of the Rosicrucians._