rience, has at length, banished the study of Alchymy; and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.

Elias Ashmole writes in his diary-" May 13, 1653. My Father Backhouse (an astrologer, who had adopted him for his son-a common practice with these men) lying sick in Fleet-Street, over against Saint Dunstan's church, and not knowing whether he should live or die, about eleven of the clock, told me in syllables the true matter of the philosopher's stone, which he bequeathed to me as a legacy." By this we learn that a miserable wretch knew the art of making gold, yet always lived a beggar; and that Ashmole really imagined he was in possession of the syllables of a secret! he has however built a curious monument of the learned follies of the last age, in his "Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum." Though Ashmole is rather the historian of this vain science, than an adept, it may amuse literary leisure to turn over this quarto volume, in which he has collected the works of several English alchymists, subjoining his commentary. It affords a curious specimen of Rosicrucian mysteries, and Ashmole relates stories, which vie for the miraculous, with the wildest fancies of Arabian invention. Of the philosopher's stone, he says, he knows enough to hold his

tongue, but not enough to speak. This stone has not only the power of transmuting any imperfect earthy matter, into its utmost degree of perfection, and can convert the basest metals into gold, flints into stone, &c. but it has still more occult virtues, when the arcana has been entered into, by the choice fathers of hermetick mysteries. The vegetable stone has power over the natures of man, beast, fowls, fishes and all kinds of trees and plants, to make them flourish and bear fruit at any time. The magical stone discovers any person whenever he is, or was concealed, while the angelical stone gives the apparitions of angels, and a power of conversing with them. These great mysteries are supported by occasional facts, and illustrated, by prints of the most divine and incomprehensible designs which however, were no doubt intelligible, to the initiated. It may be worth shewing however how liable even the latter were to blunder on these mysterious hieroglyphics. Ashmole, in one of his chemical works, prefixed a frontispiece, which in several compartments, exhibited Phœbus on a lion, and opposite to him a lady, who represented Diana, with the moon in one hand and an arrow in the other, sitting on a crab. Mercury on a tripod, with the scheme of the heavens in one hand, and his caduceus in the other. These were intended to express the materials of the stone, and

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the season for the process; upon the altar is the bust of a man, his head covered by an astrological scheme dropped from the clouds; and on the altar are these words, Mercuriophilus Anglicus, i. e. the English lover of hermetic philosophy. There is a tree, and a little creature gnawing the root, a pillar adorned with musical and mathematical instruments, and another with military ensigns. This strange composition created great enquiry among the chemical sages. Deep mysteries were conjectured to be veiled by it. Verses where written in the highest strain of the Rosycrucian language. Ashmole confessed he meant nothing more than a kind of pun on his own name, for the tree was the ash, and the creature was a mole. One pillar tells his love of music and free-masonry, and the other his military preferment, and astrological studies. He afterwards regretted that no one added a second volume to his work, from which he himself had been hindered, for the honor of the family of Hermes, and " to shew the world what excellent men we had once of our nation, famous for this kind of philosophy, and masters of so transcendent a

secret."

Modern chemistry is not without a hope, not to say a certainty, of verifying the golden visions of the Alchemists. Dr. Girtanner of Gottingen, has lately adventured the following prophecy:

"In the nineteenth century the transmutation of metals will be generally known and practised, Every Chemist and every Artist will make gold; Kitchen utensils will be of silver, and even gold, which will contribute more than any thing else to prolong life, poisoned at present by the oxyds of copper, lead, and iron, which we daily swallow with our food." Phil. Mag. vol. vI. p. 383. This sublime chemist, though he does not venture to predict that universal elixir, which is to prolong life at pleasure, yet approximates to it. A chemical friend writes to me, that "The metals seem to be composite bodies, which nature is perpetually preparing; and it may be reserved for the future researches of science to trace, and perhaps to imitate, some of these curious operations."

TITLES OF BOOKS,

If it were enquired of an ingenious writer what page of his work had occasioned him most perplexity, he would often point to the title page. That curiosity which we would excite, is most fastidious to gratify. Yet such is the perversity of man, that a modest simplicity will fail to attract; we are only to be allured by paint and patches, and yet we complain that we are duped!

Among those who appear to have felt this irksome situation, are most of our periodical writers. The "Tatler" and the "Spectator" enjoying

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priority of conception, have adopted titles with characteristic felicity; but perhaps the invention of the authors begins to fail in the "Reader," the "Lover," and the "Theatre!" Succeeding writers were as unfortunate in their titles, as their works; such are the "Universal Spectator," and the "Lay Monastry." The copious mind of Johnson, could not discover an appropriate title, and indeed in the first " Idler," acknowledged his despair. The "Rambler" was so little understood, at the time of its appearance, that a French journalist has translated it "Le Chevalier Errant," and when it was corrected to L'Errant, a foreigner drank Johnson's health one day, by innocently addressing him, by the appellation of Mr. Vagabond. The "Adventurer," cannot be considered as a fortunate title; it is not appropriate to those pleasing miscellanies, for any writer is an adventurer. The "Lounger," the "Mirror," and even the "Connoisseur," if examined accurately, present nothing in the titles, descriptive of the works. As for the "World," it could only have been given by the fashionable egotism of its authors, who considered the world as merely a little circuit round Saint James's Street. When the celebrated father of all Reviews, Le Journal des Sçavans was first published, the very title repulsed the public. The author was obliged in his succeeding volumes to soften