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auspices of one whose resignation of a title for the assumption of a mere name soon after occurred, and divided an eternal infamy between the memory of Philippe duc D'Orleans and that of Philippe Egalitè.

We find a grave publication from an anonymous pen in 1786 entitled," Memoires authentiques pour servir a l'histoire Du Comte Cagliostro," in which our hero is asserted to have invited five of his friends to supper-twelve covers were laid, and he demanded of each guest, "what departed spirit he wished for the society of?" The result produced was, the presence at this happy party of D'Alembert, Le duc de Choiseul, Diderot, Voltaire, L'Abbé de Voisenon and Montesquieu, and the author professes to give the table-talk of the night, in which it would certainly seem as if the minds of the portion of the company that had come on "short notice" had been affected by the inanimate state of their bodies, and become like them.

"Dull, stale, flat and unprofitable."

Another author gives an account with affected precision, of Cagliostro and his wife at St. Petersburgh, in which we are informed that the lady appeared to be about twenty-six years of age and was of surpassing beauty.-She formed an extensive acquaintance amongst the Russian ladies, to whom she occasionally spoke of her son, a captain in the Dutch service.This excited their curiosity, and they eagerly enquired how the mother of a Dutch captain could look so very young? Madame communicated to some of them, a profound secret, that a few days after her marriage, her husband had given her an elixir which fired her constitution, so that age left no trace and effected no visible alteration. The profound secret produced a most extraordinary demand for the firing elixir, and the departure of the practitioner precluded the necessity of any future explanations with the dissatisfied

recipients.

A Russian officer, decorated with the order of St. Vladimir and a wooden leg, had offended Cagliostro, who caused the leg to be purloined from the delinquent's bed-room. It was rubbed with a peculiar ointment, conveyed to the garden and planted; such was the revivifying quality of the unction that the leg took root, budded and acquired a new existence totally incompatible with its future employment as a timber shin! Alas! if we believe the French pamphleteer, medical science

has retrograded since the days of Cagliostro, for even Holloway's ointment will not now resuscitate a wooden leg.

*

From these absurdities we pass to the most extraordinary publication connected with the fate of this or perhaps any other unfortunate being that has ever come under our observation. Compendio della vita e delle geste di Guiseppe Balsamo denominato Il Conte Cagliostro, che si é estratto dal processo contro di lui formato in Roma, L'anno 1790, e che puo servire di scorta per conoscere l'indole della Setta dé Liberi Muratori. In Roma 1791. Nella Stamperia della Rev. Camera Apostolica.* By this book, printed under the authority of the Holy Inquisition of Rome, it appears that Cagliostro was arrested in that city, on the evening of the 27th December 1789, his papers examined and sealed up, and himself conducted to the castle of Santo Angelo. The work consists of four parts; the first refers to the life of Cagliostro from his birth until his arrest; the second professes to give a brief detail of Masonry in general, and a special account of Egyptian Masonry, of which he is stated to have professed himself the restorer and propagator. In the third is given a detail of his proceedings in such restoration and propagation; and the fourth contains an account of a particular lodge of Freemasons stated to have been discovered in Rome. In the preface to this work it is pronounced to be sinful to pursue a chemical research for the "Philosopher's stone," on the grounds that its discovery would remove the primal curse from its possessor, and abrogate the divine sentence, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." We shall not stop to argue the subject, but content ourselves with waiting patiently until some wretched sinner incurs the guilt by making the gold. We find from the book in question, that Cagliostro was born at Palermo of humble parents, on the 8th of June 1743. That his father's name was Pietro Balsamo, that by the death of his parents the care of our hero devolved upon his maternal aunts, and then there follows an account of his life, too minute to be credited, even coming from the press of the Holy Inquisition, but certainly well adapted to reconcile the ignorant or careless to the sentence ultimately awarded against

*"An Abridgment of the Life and Actions of JosephBalsamo, commonly called the Count Cagliostro, which has been extracted from the process instituted against him in Rome in the year 1790, and which may serve as a guide to a knowledge of the nature of the society of Freemasons.— Rome, 1791. From the press of the Rev. Apostolic Chamber."

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him. We are informed that at the age of thirteen he took the habit of a novice in the Monastery of Cartagirone, where he gave early indications of a depraved mind, defacing the records of martyrology and substituting the names of some naughty females for those of the saints. Having fled from the monastery and returned to Palermo, he associated with the most thorough scape-graces; he carried messages between lovers and embezzled the presents with which he was entrusted, forged a will-was accused of murdering a friar, defrauded a monk, and having pretended to a certain silver-smith, that he knew where a treasure was hidden, and having procured some money "on account" from his dupe, he directed him to a cave where he was cudgelled by some associates of Balsamo disguised as devils. The silver-smith threatened to assassinate him and he fled from Palermo, betook himself to Messina, where he met Althotas and proceeded with him to Alexandria, where they practised the art of adulterating raw silk. From thence to Rhodes where chemistry was the pursuit, and then to Malta, where they worked in the laboratory of Pinto, the grand master. Having gone to Naples where he was accused of female violation, he left for Rome where he married Lorenza Felichiani. now come to many pages of allegations imputing to him the basest and most thoroughly infamous proceedings of obtaining money by the charms of his wife, and these practices are stated with circumstantial exactness to have been followed in various parts of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. We next find him in Loudon, and are informed that here he induced another foreigner to assist him in promoting and afterwards detecting an assignation between Signora Balsamo and a Quaker, by which means he extorted one hundred pounds from the duped broad brim. The confederate having pressed for a share of this money, Balsamo made excuses for some days, but in the mean time left in his friend's way some well counterfeited topazes, which the other stole, and decamped with his worthless booty: on the authority of the inquisition, we are told that Balsamo had numerous amours with English ladies, but the writer adds, that inasmuch as he was by no means a handsome man, it is extremely probable the ladies were old and ugly. He next visited France, where his wife manifested a preference for another man, and was confined as a disorderly character, at her husband's instance, in the prison of St. Pelagie, whilst he manufactured a water supposed to preserve the freshness of the

human skin, professed alchymy, and cheated "an illustrious personage" of five-hundred Louis; he then with his wife left. Paris, arrived at Brussels, and after travelling through Germany and Italy, arrived again at Palermo.

In the further account of Cagliostro's travels there is little or no variety, but the most suspicious exactness of details; his inquisitorial biographers profess to trace him on from Palermo to Malta, thence to Naples, Marseilles, Barcelona, Alicant, Cadiz, and London. Here his ordinary avocation of forgery, fortune-telling and miscellaneous swindling, are diversified by the introduction of freemasonary, the institution of a new system, and a complete reform of the existing one, in which we are told that he made great progress: he is also represented as cheating a certain Mrs. Fry of sixty-two small diamonds and a gold box, by undertaking to soften the diamonds and weld. them all into one magnificent gem. From London to the Hague, Brussels, Venice, Mittau, St. Petersburgh, Frankfort, and Strasburgh, and finally to Paris, his progress is noted by the scribe of the inquisition with a particularity perfectly astonishing if true. The affair of "The Diamond Necklace" is noticed only to adopt as correct all the imputations thrown out against Cagliostro, and to give us the assurance of his guilt, and that he would certainly have been convicted, but for his wily conduct in corrupting his guards at the Bastille, and concocting with his fellow prisoners statements which misled the court. It is worthy of remark, that in the work to which we refer, the Prince of the Church, the Cardinal de Rohan, is never named, he is only mentioned as "the victim" lured to the brink of ruin, by love, ambition and freemasonrywhat a frightful trio for a Cardinal to encounter!

After his escape he resided some days at Passy, about a league from Paris, and we are gravely informed, that there, he initiated some fine ladies into freemasonry, that one of them forfeited her reputation with our hero, and that she was a very ugly American, (un Americana brutissima.)-He left France for London, where in 1786 he published "a letter to the French people," dated the 20th June in that year, in which he predicted" that the Bastille would be destroyed and its site become a public highway" of the authenticity of this extraordinary letter there is no doubt; the prediction was verified exactly by the events which commenced July 14, 1789. But the fearful fact of being believed to be a freemason

threw all the enormities imputed to Cagliostro into a comparative insignificance, and of his participation in the proceedings of the mystic craft the Holy Inquisition had no doubt. As to the Egyptian masonry, they have put forward many documents from which we extract the obligations of a gentleman and a lady. We have heard of an Irish lady having been concealed in the case of a clock, whence she overheard the secrets of a lodge, but if she had the good luck to have met Cagliostro, he would have initiated her into masonry without subjecting her to such inconvenience.

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"In Egyptian masonry no religion is excluded. Jews, Calvinists, Lutherans, or Catholics, are all admissible, provided they believe in the existence of a God and the immortality of the soul, and have been initiated in ordinary masonry. Men elevated to the degree of Master are denominated Ancient Prophets.' The women termed Sybils.' The oath of the former is as follows:- I promise, pledge myself, and swear never to reveal the secrets which may be communicated to me in this Temple, and implicitly to obey my superiors.' The female oath is longer:-'I swear in presence of the great, eternal God, in that of my mistress and of all persons who now hear me, never to reveal or make known, write, or cause to be written, whatever may here happen before my eyes, condemning myself, in any case of imprudence, to be punished according to the laws of the Great Founder and of all my superiors; I equally promise the most exact observance of all the other commands which are imposed upon me; love towards God, respect to my sovereign, veneration for religion and the laws of the state, love of my associates, an attachment without reserve to this order, and an implicit submission to its regulations and laws as they shall be communicated to me by my mistress."

Whether our hero was or was not a freemason we presume not to pronounce, but we close by giving the judicial announcement of his fate :

"The deliberative judgment upon his destiny was before persons full of humanity and clerical benignity, for such are the council of the Holy Inquisition; and the definitive judgment was reserved for the Great Pius the Sixth, who, in his glorious pontificate, has known well how to unite in himself the characteristics of a just and merciful prince. He did not wish the death of a sinner, but rather to leave him a future field for true contrition. It was therefore resolved, not merely in reference to the case of Joseph Balsamo, but also as regarding fully the interests of justice, equity, and prudence, of religion and the public tranquillity, not merely of the Pontifical State, but of the entire world, that Joseph Balsamo, the accused, having confessed and been convicted of many offences, is obnoxious to the censures and punishments promulgated against formal Heretics, Dogmatizers, Heresiarchs, masters and followers of magical superstitions, and also to the censures and punishments set forth as well

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