instead of benefits on the heads of those who extinguished the light of reason that was in them by gluttony, debauchery, and other appetites of the body."[3] Great as was the excitement produced in the French capital by these placards, pamphlets and reports, it lasted after all but a very few months. The accumulating absurdities became too much, even for the most superstitious, and their fears were overcome by that sense of the ridiculous which speedily manifested itself. Instead of trembling as before, men laughed and derided, and the detection, arrest and summary punishment of a number of swindlers who tried to pass off lumps of gilded brass as pure gold made by the processes of alchemy, aided by a smartly written exposure of the follies of the sect by Gabriel Naude, soon drove the whole thing clean off the French territory. CHAPTER III. _Early Leaders--Literature--Romantic Stories._ We now proceed to speak of some of the more prominent of the Rosicrucian leaders and teachers, and to call attention to the literature from which we obtain our only reliable information. In the sixteenth century lived that extraordinary man Theophrastus Paracelsus, whose writings exercised a greater influence, perhaps, over the minds of his fellow creatures than any other author of his time. No man it is certain had contributed so much as he, to the diffusion of the Cabbalism, Theosophy and Alchemy which had flooded Germany and flowed over a greater part of Western Europe. Now it was generally believed that in the seventeenth century a great and general reformation amongst the human race would take place, as a necessary fore-runner to the day of judgment. In connection with this, Paracelsus made several prophecies which took a very firm hold of the public mind. He declared that the comet which made its appearance in 1572 was the sign and harbinger of the coming revolution, and he prophesied that soon after the death of the Emperor Rudolph, there would be found three treasures that had never been revealed before that time. In the year 1610 there were published at the same time three books which led to the foundation of the Rosicrucian order as a district society. One was called "_Universal Reformation of the Whole Wide World_." De Quincey summarises its contents thus: "The Seven Wise Men of Greece, together with M. Cato and Seneca, and a secretary named Mazzonius, are summoned to Delphi by Apollo, at the desire of the Emperor Justinian, and there deliberate, on the best mode of redressing human misery. All sorts of strange schemes are proposed. Thales advised to cut a hole in every man's breast, and place a little window in it, by which means it would become possible to look into the heart, to detect hypocrisy and vice, and thus to extinguish it. Solon proposes an equal partition of all possessions and wealth. Chilo's opinion is that the readiest way to the end in view would be to banish out of the world the two infamous and rascally metals gold and silver.