"From

to her dear niece ——."

A niece! we exclaimed, reverently closing the book. A niece! And the next moment our hand grasped the bellrope. We were going to summon the waiter to give us a sofa, or three chairs, in the parlor, rather than deprive a person, evidently of tender years, and, no doubt, delicate sensibilities, of her lodging, when suddenly our eye fell on a little poem, entitled Live by the Way, which had been cut from a newspaper, and pinned on the wall. It ran on after this fashion:

"In the youth of the heart, ere the glorious ray,

That was born of life's morning, has faded away;

While the light lingers yet in the eyes that are dear,

And the voices we love still remain with us here;

While the wine is yet red, and the stars are yet bright,

And the winds and the waves bring us music by night;

When the warm blood leaps up, when the forests resound,

With the tread of the horse and the bay of the hound,

O! ever and always, as long as we may, As we journey through life, let us live by the way."

This hit us pat.

It at once calmed every nerve, and we said, Yes! this is the true philosophy of life. Especially let a man on his travels live as he goes along, and sleep where he can, giving God thanks first, and next, to woman. We will even lay us down and sleep. happy in the belief that some good soul has gladly yielded her couch to the stranger, and is enjoying a beautiful satisfaction in the thought that the favored one will never know unto whom to return his thanks-except to God only. And so we actually laid our head on the pillow, likening ourselves to a Mungo Park succored by the hand of woman in a strange land, where there was none else to help him. We slept well. And the next morning, on opening our window, which looked, as all bed-chambers should, towards the east, and seeing the dear Cape lie stretched out far into the sea before us, we gave to the sands our parting benedictionnot forgetting the fair ones who inhabit them, but wishing them all sorts of good things we could think of, down, even, to lots of whalebone, and plenty of cranberries with which to make their naturally red cheeks still redder

MR.

[R. MORLEY, of London, England, who is well known, in the world of letters, as the author of two scholarly and highly finished biographies, the one of Palissy the potter, and the other of Cardan the physician, has just completed his trilogy" by telling us

the truth about the famous Cornelius Agrippa, the friend of Erasmus, the expositor of Reuchlin, the alley of Luther and Zuingle, and the author of one of the most learned works on magic that we have.

Where Agrippa is known, he is known as a magician. In the sixteenth century, everybody knew that he was in commerce with the devil, to whom he had sold his soul. Charitable Butler only says that

"Agrippa kept a Stygian pug

I' th' garb and habit of a dog,
That was his tutor, and the cur
Read to the occult philosopher,

And taught him subtly to maintain
All other sciences are vain."

But Southey copies a monkish tale describing his study:

"The letters were written with blood therein, And the leaves were made of dead man's skin."

And there was no doubt, in the days of Sir Walter Raleigh, that such was the fact, and that the wretched sorcerer had been better burnt. We shall now see, under the guidance of Mr. Morley, what basis underlay this opinion. The task should be the more grateful. as it must incidentally open up a page in the world's history which we, at all events, in fast America, are hastening to forget; also, because it can hardly fail to shed some not uncertain light upon the commencement of that great struggle for freedom of thought and

opinion which we call the Reformation. Viewed from so lofty an eminence as the life of Agrippa-who, sorcerer or not, was a scholar, not second to Erasmus, a theologian of high degree, a learned physician, a famous soldier, a lawyer of note, and, perhaps, the first physicist of his day-that memorable passage in history cannot but be seen to advantage.

Three years after the birth of Luther, and nearly twelve months before that of Zuingle, a son was born to the noble house of Nettesheim, of Cologne, poor but faithful servants of the Emperor of Germany. This son was named Cornelius, and, as it appears, the further name of Agrippa was added, in obedience to ancient custom, because the child had entered the world feet foremost. Cologne, where the boy received his education, was a place of much trade and intellectual movement. Exercised now for many years by a fierce strife between handicraft and priestcraft, to the utter discomfiture of the latter at last-from having been priestridden, the people rode their priests. A place, too, of strange humor in letters out of five hundred and thirty books printed there, between 1463when the first printing office was established-and 1500, fourteen only were Latin classics, and five hundred and sixteen canonists, scholastics, and the like. Such was the food on which the mind of young Cornelius Agrippa was reared.

Launched into the world as secretary to the Emperor Maximilian the First, with barely a promise of beard to his chin, the youth won favor from his royal master by his vigor, zeal, and extraordinary proficiency as a linguist. He was employed on various diplomatic missions, in a subordinate rank, perhaps, before he was twenty; found himself at last, at Paris, in the heat of a controversy touching the regency of Castile, alike claimed by Ferdinand of Spain and Maximilian of Austria. The crown of Castile having passed, at the death of Isabella, to her daughter, Joanna and her husband, Philip, son of Maximilian, was suddenly vacated by the death of Philip at the age of twentyeight; and the question arose, which of the two fathers should be regent-the father of the late monarch Philip, or the father of Joanna, in whose right the sovereign title had lain. While each monarch was striving to carry his

point, the kingdom was abandoned to anarchy, which, spreading, shook all law and authority in Aragon and Catalonia, and opened a glorious field for so enterprising a sovereign as Maximilian.

On this, the student of twenty acted. High on a craggy spur of the Pyrenees stand the strong fort and town of Tarragon; this Cornelius with a small band seized, and held for his master the emperor. Then swiftly to a neighboring town, Villarodona, where the house of the emperor's chief agent in the province was to be protected against an army of rustics in open revolt: and here, a few days afterward, the scholar and his friends found themselves besieged. Disappointed in their hopes of support from without, they fled to a strong tower in the vicinity, whither the furious peasantry followed them, vowing that they must have the life of "the German," meaning, of course, poor Agrippa. Many perilous weeks the little band lay in the strong tower, listening o' nights to the shouts of their angry jailers in the valley beneath, and speculating with fearful anxiety on the probable duration of their scanty stock of provisions. On one side of the crag whereon stood the castle, a lake spread several miles northward. This lake, known to the castle-keeper as the Black Lake, was accessible from the castle by a narrow pathway which the besiegers had not guarded; if the besieged had but a boat, they might escape that way. Garrison and castlekeeper confessed that they knew no way of procuring a boat. Subtle Cornelius Agrippa undertook the business. There was a boy in the castle, son of the keeper, a lad of shrewdness and nerve : him, the German painted with milkthistle and juice of other herbs, befouled his skin with shocking spots to imitate leprosy, rubbed his hair into a rough bunch, and sent him forth in beggar's clothes, with a leper's bell round his neck-a dreadful picture of the outcast wretch to whom no home was open. The boy, well drilled, staggered along to the guards, uttering piteous prayers for charity; they, appalled at the wellknown spectacle, ran as from a wild beast, and flung him alms from a distance. Thus allowed to break the lines, the boy went on his errand, procured a boat, and bore off the beleaguered garrison in safety: whenoe comes the legend in Tarragon, that a

party of soldiers, closely besieged in a tower on the borders of the Black Lake, were, by the devilish arts of their German leader, enabled to escape through the air on conveyances especially provided by the Satanic power. Escaped, whole, Cornelius Agrippa seems to have abandoned the notion of conquering Tarragon for his master. He doffed the mail, and we next find him at Avignon, Lyons, and thereabouts, in close intercourse with the best scholars of the day, but few of whom would compare with him in erudition.

At Dôle-once called Dôle la joyeuse, but since its capture by a French army, thirty years before, Dôle la dolente-he found an opening. Mistress of Dôle and of Burgundy was Margaret, daughter of Maximilian. To her service the young scholar attached himself. As an introduction to her and the learned world at Dôle, he delivered a course of lectures on Reuchlin's " Mirific Word."

"When

This was a cabalistic work. Adam was in Paradise," said certain of the Rabbis, "the angel Raziel appeared to him and gave him a book containing all the secrets of nature, and all the divine wisdom." This book, handed down miraculously from generation to generation, reached the hands of Solomon, who learnt from it his matchless sagacity. It was lost, perhaps, or destroyed in some of the Jewish convulsions; but some stray scraps of its cunning floated down the tide of time to certain Jews of the middle ages, who embodied them in works of high and holy import. These works were said to relate to the cabala. They purported to furnish a key to the interpretation of the hidden meaning of scripture, which hidden meaning was to be discovered by a subtle study of the letters, words, and sentences of the chapters of the Old Testament. Especially vital was the spelling and pronunciation of names. It was by a right knowledge of names-which, the scripture tells us, are written in heaven-that the ancient prophets performed their miracles; and, above all other names in importance, was the name of Jehovah. "Whoever,' "1 said the cabalists, "knows the true pronunciation of the name Jehovah, has the world in his mouth." That" mirific word" is a spell by the aid of which all miracles can be performed.

It was upon this mirific word that the

This

"father of the reformation," the teacher of Luther and Melancthon, Reuchlin, . had composed his great cabalistic work, weaving the Jewish cabala into a sort of philosophical system, and intermingling with it whatever seemed consistent and beautiful in the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, together with not a little astrological science. was the work which the soldier, Corneli. us Agrippa, expounded with zealous encomium before the university of Dôle. His learning, his eloquence, his impressive delivery, carried everything before them. Margaret acknowledged him as her servant, and the university created him a doctor of divinity.

For the still higher honor of his noble mistress, Agrippa now composed his first great work to prove the superiority of woman over man. A few of his arguments illustrate the learning and habit of thought of the age. Man was called Adam, which means Earth; but woman Eva, which means Life. By as much, therefore, as life is better than earth, woman excels man. Next comes the idea which Burns has so prettily versified-that woman, being the last work of God, was necessarily the perfection of the adornment of the heavens and the earth. Passing to physical considerations, Agrippa asserts that woman is made of purer matter than man, as is shown by her never turning giddy from whatever height she may look down-by her superior buoyancy to man's in water-by the fact that, when a woman is washed, if she wash in a second water she will not soil it, whereas a man, if he wash in ten successive waters, will soil them all. Natural history, likewise, proves the superiority of the female sex. Among the eagles, the queens of the air, there never was a male found; while no female basilisk, the most pestilent of serpents, was ever hatched. With such arguments, intermingled with copious quotations from sacred and profane writers, gallant Agrippa undertook to prove that the lord of creation was really a lady. What success the thesis may have had with his royal mistress, we are left to conjecture; but it probably answered the author's purpose in another quarter, for we find that, within a few weeks of its completion, he married a gentle and beautiful Genevoise, Jane Louisa Tyssie.

It was during the honey-moon that the

young philosopher, wholly unconscious of impending danger, began the laborious work of gathering all the magical lore, he had acquired, into a book. It was almost a forbidden topic. The church disapproved of it; witches were hanged or burnt; still, Cornelius Agrippa set about his task. "I know not," says he, "whether it be an unpardonable presumption in me that Ì, a man of so very little judgment and learning, should, in my very youth, set upon a business so difficult, so hard, and so intricate as this. Wherefore, whatsoever things have here been already, and shall afterwards be, said by me, I would not have any one assent to them, nor shall I myself, any further than they shall not suffer the reprobation of the universal church and congregation of the faithful."

He divided the subject into three heads -the elementary, the celestial, and the terrestrial world. After having, in the first book, discoursed upon earth, air, fire, and water, as the four elements, and disserted upon their qualities, he goes on to show how all bodies possess occult powers," which powers may be detected by signs. The grand principle for their detection is that "like turns to like." Therefore, "if we would obtain any property or virtue, let us look for things or animals in which such property or virtue is largely developed and use them." Thus, to promote love, take a dove; to increase boldness, take the heart or eyes of a lion or cock; to make a woman tell her secrets, lay the heart of a screech-owl over her heart when she is asleep; to live long, eat a viper. Parts of animals that are used should be taken from them while they are alive. A live duck applied to the pit of the stomach will cure colic, but the duck will die. The eye of a serpent, if the serpent be allowed to ascape alive after losing his eye, will cure ophthalmia; and the tooth of a mole, which runs away alive after leaving the dentist's hands, is certain to take away toothache. The author next proceeds to show the influence of the various planets over each other, and over the earth"not only vital, but angelical and intellectual gifts may be drawn from above." How they are to be drawn is left in some obscurity; the planets are classed and reclassed; the necessity of placing one's self in conjunction with the one whose influence it is desired to con

ciliate, is strongly insisted upon; but the actual modus operandi is not so clear. However, by "a right understanding of things celestial and terrestrial," notable truths may be discovered. Thus the hidden virtues of the civet-cat may be detected, namely, the power of her blood, which, sprinkled on 8 door, is a talisman against sorcery; the power of her eye, which, administered in a decoction, renders the person who takes it odious to all; and the power of her bowel, which, taken internally in a decoction, is a charm against the tyranny of princes. So of swords: a bit, made out of a sword wherewith a man has been killed, will tame the fiercest horse, and wine, into which has been dipped a sword with which men have been beheaded, will cure fever and ague. The stars operate on fumes and give to them occult powers. Thus, the liver of a chameleon, burnt on the top of a house, raises showers and lightnings; the burnt hoof of a horse drives away mice; while the fume of spermaceti and lignum aloes, pepperwort, musk, saffron, and red styrax, tempered with the blood of a lapwing, will, if it be used about the graves of the dead, gather together spirits and ghosts.

The second book of magic begins with an inquiry into numbers. The Pythagoreans Pythagoreans preferred before all others the number four; Agrippa does not condemn the choice. It signifies solidity, as the origin of a square. There are four elements, four seasons, four qualities of things, heat, cold, dryness, and moisture; four letters in the name of God, in most languages; four evangelists in the Bible, four beasts standing round the throne in Revelations. Five is the sign of wedlock, being composed of a female number, two, and a male number, three. Six stands for the world. Seven was entitled the vehicle of life, as containing body and soul, that is to say, the four elements of the body, spirit, flesh, bone, and humor, and the three elements of the soul, reason, passion, and desire. Man's life is divided into stages of seven years; with the tenth seven it ends. There are seven main parts of the body beyond seven days, life cannot be sustained without food; beyond seven hours, it cannot continue without health. Seven is the number of rest, as the Lord rested on the seventh day: whence, it was a sacred number among

the Jews in Hebrew, to seven meant to swear. There are seven planets; seven angels round the throne; seven openings in the head. Eight signifies justice, because, when divided, it forms perfect and equal halves, each of which may be subdivided equally. So on to one hundred, each number has a signi ficance of its own, which, rightly interpreted, and considered in conjunction with the stars, may help the understanding of many things which seem obscure or accidental.

The third and last book treats of magic as connected with religion. The creed, which the author professes, is that of the Christian church of his day, somewhat etherealized and refined. But with this he intermingles the cabala of the Hebrews, and adopts the cabalistic opinion, that certain sacred names, and others profane, such as Abracadabra, when written or pronounced in a particular manner, possess the occult power of curing diseases, evoking spirits, and performing other wonderful works.

In brief, this work of Agrippa's was an olla-podrida made of the Pythagorean, the Platonic, and the Cabalistic philosophies; an attempt to fuse them into a consistent system, and to reconcile them with the crude popular notions of the time, touching natural science-the whole designed to teach spiritual virtues, and point man heavenward. It contained, of course, many statements which one can hardly read without a smile; but, as compared with its cotemporaries, it was a prodigy of learning; and, however mistaken in many of the tenets it proposed, its main object was worthy and honorable. The whole purport of the book was expressed in a passage which occurs in one of the chapters devoted to astrology. "For," says Agrippa, "accident can, in no case, be a prime sufficient cause, and we must, in all things, look higher, and find out a cause which may know and govern the effect. This is not material but immaterial, and may be in men's souls; in departed spirits; in celestial intelligences; or in God himself. The power of man's mind, strongly exerted, may control dead matter, and govern even the throwing of the dice aright." That is, a doctrine which, if I mistake not, has been advanced by persons who have never been called magicians.

The work, not printed but fairly

transcribed, was handed to the most learned men of the day-Trithemius, among others, then at the height of his fame all with one accord praised it, pronounced it almost beyond praise. Agrippa, chosen regent of the university at Dole, rising in favor with the court, happy at home, famous already where fame was most dearly earned, saw a very bright and fair life in prospect before him.

At Ghent, that year, the Lent sermons preached to Margaret of Burgundy, were from the mouth of a Franciscan monk, of narrow mind and small heart, whose name was Catilinet. "A mere scratch," says Mr. Morley, "has this man left upon the annals of his time; but that scratch was the wrong he did to Agrippa; for, moved in part by jealousy of the learned doctor in divinity, in part by monkish dread of free thought and free speech in anywise, Catilinet made the direful mischiefs of magic the burden of his sermons, and denounced the author of the lectures on the Mirific Word' as a cabalist, and consequently an infidel.' The onslaught was merciless, and irresistible. At a blow, Agrippa was dashed from his eminence, injured in character, thrown back in study, and turned out of Dôle."

will say, by your leave, that you, by many falsehoods poured out before public assemblies, have not feared, indeed, have striven your utmost, to excite envy and hatred against me upon a matter wherein I deserved no blame." And so on through some dozen pages of Christian rebuke and manly indignation-excellent preaching, as Mr. Morley says, to a rock-an earnest defense against the charge of infidelity—which, perhaps, confirmed Catilinet in his preconceived notions. However, this mattered little now. In 1511, the doctor of divinity was in Italy at the head of a regiment, doing battle stoutly for his master, the emperor. "In many conflicts," says he, "I gave no sluggish help. Before my face went death, and I followed the minister of death, my right hand soaked in blood, my left