ante-chamber, and desired to speak with her on matters of importance-"What was the nature of his communication?"-he could tell no one but herself. "What was

he like?"— something very strange and awful, and his figure cast no reflection upon the mirrors as he past. The lady was visibly alarmed, as well she might be, at this account; she turned pale, and it was with infinite difficulty she could so far master her feelings as to desire her abigail to entreat the gentleman, in her name, that he would defer his very agreeable visit till another time. Upon this message being duly conveyed to him, he replied in a tone expressive of any thing but satisfaction, that if the lady would not come to him, he must be under the necessity of going to her, which he apprehended might not prove quite so pleasant. The noble dame seemed to be much of the same opinion; if she had little fancy for a private interview, she had still less for one in public, and therefore, though with visible reluctance she at length made up her mind to comply with an invitation, which, to say the truth, had very much the nature of a royal request-that is of a command.

Who the stranger was, or what passed at the meeting, was never known except by conjecture, and as every one can conjecture for himself it will not be necessary to repeat, even if we knew, all that was imagined upon this occasion. History should only deal with facts. Enough therefore that when the lady returned to her friends she was bathed in tears and seemed half dead with terror. In a few hurried words she assured them that she should never see them more, and scarcely was the sad prophecy spoken than she was seized with the most frightful convulsions, to the general alarm of all present. Her face, once so remarkable for beauty, in a few minutes underwent a change that was truly terrific; the art of the

physicians availed nothing; in three days she died, leaving some suspicious folks to imagine she was poisoned, and the wiser part of the world to believe that she had departed by virtue of a previous contract with the archfiend himself.

Such in substance is the story which Lawes has repeated in his Memorials, and which, not being able to imitate his laudable gravity, I have therefore told after my own fashion.

134

THE LIFE AND DOCTRINES OF
PARACELSUS.

IT is wonderful how Paracelsus has so long escaped being made the hero of a romance. He had all the qualifications for such a part, being an inextricable compound of credulity and knavishness, vanity and talent, a firm believer in the cabbala, yet an enemy to the established absurdities of science, and, to the boot of all, a vagabond of the first order, who had visited almost every country, and associated with every class of people, from the learned and the noble, to the most ignorant and humble. Yet justice has hardly been done by any writer to this singular personage. His alchemy and his astrology have always stood in the way of a fair estimate of his character, though there seems to be good reason for concluding that in these matters he did but believe with his age, and was only not wiser than the rest of the world in which he lived. Even Philip Melancthon was skilful in casting nativities, holding astrology to be a part of medicine and equally well grounded as the science itself, though he allows that the physicians went rather too far when they derived all changes in the human body from the stars. Nay, even his most violent opponents

are not free from his errors. The learned and distinguished Sennert,* while bitterly reproaching him for that he thought to overturn the ancient art of medicine, which he never thoroughly understood, yet allows he had done something in the transmutation of metals. With infinite gravity he relates, on the authority of a certain Franciscan, how Paracelsus made gold out of lead and quicksilver; and as the story may be of some use in the present age, when the precious metal is not too abundant, we shall give it in few words, hoping that whoever makes his fortune by the experiment will not forget from whom he

* Vide Sennerti Op. p. 192. Lugduni, 1676: which edition contains the whole six volumes compressed into one, but with con. siderable improvements. This eminent scholar and physician was born at Breslaw, the capital of Silesia, on the 25th of November, 1572. His father pursued the humble occupation of a shoemaker, but seems to have given him an excellent education, for we find him at the age of one-and-twenty studying medicine and philosophy at the university of Wittemberg, where he took his degree of Doctor of Physic, and at a year's end was made professor of the same faculty. It is said in his life prefixed to the folio, that he was the first who introduced the study of chemistry into that university, and throughout his works we find him almost as bold in denying the authority of the ancients as Paracelsus himself whom he censured. His heresy on this point gave great offence to the schoolmen, though their outcries do not appear to have diminished either his practice or his reputation. But he did not rest here: he wrote upon the Nature and Origin of Souls in Brutes-" De Origine et Natura animarum in Brutis;" p. 285,-and as this doctrine fairly led to the conclusion that an immortal spirit was not confined to man alone, he was in consequence accused of blasphemy and impiety, those vague words which have sent so many to the faggot. There is an excellent article in Bayle upon this subject which will save much time and labour to those who are too indolent to wade through Sennert's own defence of his creed, though it is well worth reading, if it were only to learn what strange fancies can possess themselves of the human brain. Amongst other things he maintained that metals and minerals were formed by intelligent and spiritual beings. He died of the plague at Wittemberg on the 21st of July, 1637.

acquired the recipe. Thus then it is:-Paracelsus being one day in want of money, a mishap very common to philosophers of all kinds, he gave a florin to one of his pupils, and desired him to fetch a pound of quicksilver from the chemist's. Having obtained what he required, he flung it into a crucible, and set it upon the fire; and when the mercury began to emit fumes, he gave a certain globule to the Franciscan, directing him to hold it immerged in the preparation by means of a pair of forceps, till such time as it should deliquesce. When this took place, he again placed them both upon the stove. They then all quitted the room; for it seems the devil of goldmaking is a modest devil, and objects to work before strangers; but upon their return, in about half an hour, they found he had faithfully done his duty: the crucible was broken, and the composition transmuted into nearly a pound of the precious metal, for which a neighbouring goldsmith did not hesitate to give an equivalent in coin. What was the precise nature of the globule, the Franciscan never could find out; nor whether his preceptor made it or bought it; but he describes it as being of moderate size, something like a filbert, and enclosed in red sealing-wax.

The birth and parentage of our learned doctor, like those of many other great personages, has been a subject of much controversy. He chose to call himself, or he duly inherited the name of, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast von Hohenheim;* but there were not wanting unbelievers to call in question his claim to this constellation of titles, of which the Bombast seems to have been peculiarly applicable, considering the style of many

Properly Philip Bombast von Hohenheim; but he added Theophrastus and Paracelsus as if he were something more than celsus,— high, or lofty,-para being a favourite prefix of his to express preeminence of any quality.