Documenta Latomica Inedita.

destination the true real image of the Supreme Being , is forced to participate in the decadence of the body , by the decree of Providence alone irremovable , of the Sovereign Master of Nature . In one wordaccording to those beautiful verses of Manilius—*

, Exntffl variant faciem per sascula gentes , At manet incolnmis mundus , suaque omnia servat , Qua ? nee longa dies auget , minuitque senectns , Nee motus puncto cm-rit , cursusque fatigat . Idem semper erit , quoniam semper fuit idem . Non alium videre patres , aliumve nepotes Aspicient , Dens est qui non mntatnr in ayvo .

These lines may be roughl y translated as follows : — Onr naked races change with every age , But safe the world remains with its nnalter'd page The world , which neither lengthened days increase , Nor old age lessens , whose courses never cease , Whose motions run not to an end , —the same 'twill be , Just as it was , shall our descendants see , Our fathers saw the same . Oh , thought sublime ! God alone is He who changes not by time .

But to return to Johnston , who is the learned man indicated at the commencement of this digression , he published in 1634 a little treatise entitled "De Naturos Constantia , " divided into five propositions , which are : 1 . The Constancy of Nature in its Entirety ; 2 . In that which concerns Heaven and the Heavenly Bodies ; 3 . In the Elements ; 4 . In Mixed Bodies and Animate and Inanimate Creatures , 5 . With relation to Man .

We need not now follow the writer of this article in what he himself terms a long digression , by giving these elemental propositions and disquisitions , which take us into matters far wide of our main subject , and which we do not even gather were Rosicrucian speculations . We are mainly concerned with the history of the Rose Croix , not their fancies or fallacies ; and so I will omit some long passages which have no possible interest for my readers , and take

them back to our writer , where he seems himself to resume the thread of his discourse , accepting his apology for having strayed away amid the fascinating bye-paths of philosophical and metaphysical speculation . We have thought that the reader would pardon us for a digression which is sufficient to overthrow the errors of the Rose Croix and their like , and the more willingly because for a moment it will have turned away the continual

attention which he is obliged to give to dogmata and other matters often entirely abstract . Morhof speaks of a diminutive society , or rather an offshoot of the Rose Croix , under the name of Collegium Rosianum , —Society of Rosay , —from the name of a visionary who endeavoured to form it in Savoy , near Dauphiny , about the year 1630 . This society only consisted of three persons . A certain

Mornius , who gave himself a good deal of trouble to be the fourth , was rejected . All the favour which he could obtain was to be admitted as a serving brother . The three chief secrets of the little confraternity weref the " perpetual motion , " the art of changing metals , and the universal medicine . With this brief description , what can we think of a societ y ! considered all perfect , and possessing the key of all the treasures and all the sciences , bat