it, this wonderful society daily vanished, and the rumours, which had been spread concerning it, ceased. The whole was probably a contrivance to ridicule the pretenders to secret wisdom and wonderful power, particularly the chemists, who boasted that they were possessed of the philosopher's stone. It has been conjectured--and the satirical turn of his writings, and several particular passages in his works, favour the conjecture--that this farce was invented and performed, in part at least, by John Valentine Andrea of Wartenburg."[2] Pope, in the dedication of his Rape of the Lock to Mrs. Arabella Fermor, wrote:--"I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words before a lady; but it is so much the concern of a poet to have his works understood--and particularly by your sex--that you must give me leave to explain two or three difficult terms. "The Rosicrucians are a people I must bring you acquainted with. The best account I know of them is in a French book called Le Comte de Gabalis, which, both in its title and size, is so like a novel, that many of the fair sex have read it for one by mistake. According to these gentlemen, the four elements are inhabited by spirits, which they call sylphs, gnomes, nymphs and salamanders. The gnomes, or demons of earth, delight in mischief; but the sylphs, whose habitation is in the air, are the best conditioned creatures imaginable; for they say any mortals may enjoy the most intimate familiarities with these gentle spirits, upon a condition very easy to all true adepts, an inviolate preservation of chastity." On the lines (verse 20, canto 1):-- "Belinda still her downy pillow prest, Her guardian sylph prolonged the balmy rest." in Pope's Rape of the Lock, Warburton thus comments:--