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In the year 1665, at the house of the rector of Albury, a chemical experiment with mercury cost the Welsh alchemist his life, and he was buried in the churchyard of that village in Oxfordshire. It is clear, therefore, that the wonderful archives in the possession of Miss Vaughan give a bogus history of Eugenius Philalethes, but they are also untrue of Eirenæus.
The care imprinted in the lines of Caleb's face, and his absorbed and dreamy manner, which would have sat well on some alchemist or abstruse student, were at first sight an odd contrast to his occupation, and the trivialities about him.
He had a laboratory at Poplar. Addisoniana, vol. i. p. 10. The readers of Washington Irving's Brace-Bridge Hall will recollect a pleasing and popular exposition of the alternately splendid and benevolent, and always passionate reveries of the Alchemist, in the affecting story of the Student of Salamanca.
Now there lived in the Duke's house a wise and learned man named Paul, an alchemist, who knew the courses of the stars and the virtues of plants, and many other secret things; and the Duke delighted much in his conversation, which was ingenious and learned. But Robert heard him vacantly, thinking that such studies were fit only for children.
These, and scores of other similar experiments, seemed so easily explained, and to accord so well with the "four elements" theory, that they were seldom questioned until a later age of inductive science. But there was one experiment to which the alchemist pinned his faith in showing that metals could be "killed" and "revived," when proper means were employed.
I remember that I once heard a mesmerist, at Madame d'Espard's, undertake to prove by very specious historical deductions, that this old man, if put under the magnifying glass, would turn out to be the famous Balsamo, otherwise called Cagliostro. According to this modern alchemist, the Sicilian had escaped death, and amused himself making gold for his grandchildren.
It is, perhaps, possible to conceive of animals or plants possessing souls, but the early alchemist attributed the same thing or something kin to it to metals also. Furthermore, just as plants germinated from seeds, so metals were supposed to germinate also, and hence a constant growth of metals in the ground.
His great desire was that Vincent should become a Mohammedan like himself, a desire which, needless to say, remained unfulfilled, in spite of the large sums of money he promised if his slave would only oblige him in this matter. The old alchemist, however, had a certain reputation in his own country.
But long before the belief in the philosopher's stone had died out, the methods of the legerdemain alchemist had been investigated and reported upon officially by bodies of men appointed to make such investigations, although it took several generations completely to overthrow a superstition that had been handed down through several thousand years.
The ancients believed that the alchemists could create rose blooms out of their ashes. We are prone to believe it for, at the close of a fair New England day we have seen the Master Alchemist, the sun, beneath his spacious workshop of July skies, transmuting the gray mists and vapors into sunset's glow; and lo! we had the blooming roses there.
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