calls it in his slyly ceremonious introduction, and "I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words before a lady:" so "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." What the Count of Gabalis has introduced into literature and Mr. Pope into poetry, Monsieur J. F. Marmontel[1] has shown as entering into the most intimate thoughts of the fanciful ladies of the age. Pope's delightful "machinery" made the sylphs the fashion. "La fable des Sylphes étoit à la mode." The "Airy Beings "who wait upon Belinda become of the very texture of the dreams of the fair Elise when she quits the convent to be the wife of the Marquis de Volange, persuaded that next to a lover the most dangerous being in all nature is a husband. So "il lui étoit tombé sous la main quelques-uns de ces romans où l'on peint le commerce délicieux de ces esprits avec les mortelles; et pour elle ces brillantes chimeres avoient tout le charme de la vérite." Belinda, or Mrs. Arabella Fermor, must needs be informed of the gentle spirits who wait upon her; as that "the four elements are inhabited by spirits, which they call Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Salamanders. The gnomes, or Dæmons of Earth, delight in mischief, but the Sylphs, whose habitation is in the air, are
- ↑ Contes Moraux, "Le Mari Sylphe."
