In succeeding interviews the Count de Gabalis further explains to his interlocutor the nature and pursuits of the elementary spirits; asserts that it was they only, and not the vile gods of the Greeks and Romans, that delivered the oracles of old; that they continually kept watch over man to do him service, and to warn him of approaching evil. It was they who sent omens and furnished him with the understanding to interpret them, and who filled his mind with presentiments when some great calamity was impending over him, that he might perchance avoid it. They also sent him dreams for the regulation of his fate. But "alas," continues the Count, "men ignorantly misunderstand and reject their kindness. A poor Sylph hardly dares to shew himself lest he should be mistaken for an imp of evil; an Undine cannot endeavour to acquire an immortal soul, by loving a man, without running the risk of being considered a vile, impure phantom; and a Salamander, if he shews himself in his glory, is taken for a devil, and the pure light which surrounds him considered the fire of hell. It is in vain that, to dispel these unworthy suspicions, they make the sign of the cross when they appear, and bend their knees when the Divine name is uttered. All their efforts are useless. Obstinate man persists in considering them enemies of that God whom they know, and whom they adore more religiously than men do. The prayer which you will find preserved by Porphyne, and which was offered up in the Temple of Delphos for the enlightenment of the Pagans, was the prayer of a Salamander." In short without continuing to quote the words of the Count de Gabalis, he asserted that all the supernatural appearances with which the history of every age and nation was full, were to be, and could only be, explained by the agency of these elemental sprites; that the deeds attributed to devils, imps and witches, were the creations of a false and degrading superstition, unworthy to be believed by philosophers. There were no fiends with "----'aery tongues that syllable mens' names On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses." but beneficent spirits, the friends of man. The _peris_ of eastern romance, the _fees_, the _fatas_, and the fairies of European legends, were names which, in their ignorance, the people of different countries had given to the Sylphs. Vulcan, Bacchus, and Pan, though the Greeks did not know it, were Gnomes; Neptune and Venus, and all the Naiads and Nereids, were but the Undines of the Rosicrucians; Apollo was a Salamander, and Mercury a Sylph; and not one of the personages of the multifarious mythology of the Greeks and Romans, but could be ranged under one or other of these classes. CHAPTER VII. _The Hermetick Romance; or Chymical Wedding._