So much for Vaughan; now for another “authority.” Under the letter “R,” in the American Encyclopedia, occurs the word “Rosicrucians,” followed by--“Members of a society, the existence of which became unexpectedly known at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its object was ostensibly the reformation of Church, State, and individuals, but closer examination showed that the discovery of the Philosophers’ Stone was the true object of the fully initiated. A certain Christian, Rosenkrauze, who was said to have lived long among the Brahmins in Egypt, etc., was pretended to have founded the Order in the fourteenth century; but the real founder is believed to have been one Andrea, a German scholar, of the beginning of the sixteenth century, whose object, as is thought, was to purify Religion, which had been degraded by Scholastic Philosophy. Others think that he only gave a new character to a society founded before him by Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim. Krause, the author, says, that Andrea occupied his time from early youth with the plan of a secret society for the improvement of mankind. In 1614 he published his famous “Reformation of the Whole Wide World,” and his “Fama Fraternitas.” Christian enthusiasts and alchemists considered the poetical society, partially described in these books, as having a real existence, and thus Andrea became the author of the later Rosicrucian fraternities which extended over Europe. After a number of books had been written on the Rosicrucian system, and the whole exploded, the interest in it was revived in the latter half of the eighteenth century, in consequence of the abolition of the Order of Jesuits, and the story of their machinations, as well as of the frauds of Cagliostro and other notorious impostors.” So much for the wiseacre who wrote this account at so much a line for the “American Encyclopedia.” In juxta-position to the above, I quote part of pages 132-3-4 and 5, _verbatim_, of the autobiography of Heinrich Jung Stilling, late Aulic Counsellor to the Grand Duke of Baden. London: 1858. James Nisbet, Berners street. 3d Edition. Says this incomparable man: