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the dead appear in mirrors and the quick in carafes. He knew how to turn ugliness into beauty, age into youth, hemp into silk, and lead into gold. He knew how to be two thousand years old. He knew how to hide beneath the plumage of a peacock, the beak and talons of a bird of prey.

Charming and cruel, he could captivate and coerce. One of his conquests was Louis XVI. By royal edict it was treasonable to speak ill of him. A greater conquest was Paris. Released from the Bastile, where he had been put because of that tiresome old story of the diamond necklace, festivals were given, streets were illuminated, Paris went mad. Boulogne did, too. When he took ship there, five thousand people implored his benediction on their knees. His release was felt to be a blessing, his departure a curse. The multitude called him the Benefactor of Mankind—big words which he rewarded by foretelling the fall of the Bastile. He foretold what would occur the following week, the following month, the ensuing year or ten years later in Madrid, in Vienna, in Pekin. He foretold everything, except, indeed, that the Seer of Chelsea would write him down and the Smart Set write him up.

Clairvoyance has its limits; so, too, has cheek. Cagliostro possessed both, and with them a secret—that of not having any, and yet appearing to have one. It is the greatest of all. His predecessors, Flamel & Co., were more inventive. Their discoveries are lost, thank fortune, yet—barring the probable—everything being possible, science may find them again, and perhaps, too, the ability to radiate that atmospheric seduction which Bloomsbury calls the je ne sais quoi.

We hope not. Smartness, restricted to the few, now disturbs the many. With a different kettle of fish the words of Flamel would be fulfilled. The possession of youth and gold would be universal, the pasturing of cattle ditto. That is not a consummation to be wished. Though smartness and its appanages would then be common, human nature, being invariable, would remain unchanged. People would want, as people have ever wanted, just what they have not got. Instead of trying to be smart, everybody would succeed in being stupid. Youth and its loveliness would no longer allure and poverty be the world's desire.

In view of which, but particularly in view of this periodical, we hope that, should Science happen on the little secret, she will follow the precedent of the Landgrave of Hesse and punctiliously and privately destroy it. However the middle classes may feel, it would be extremely distasteful to us to have an adoration of the Fatted Calf usurp the worship of the Golden.