The lamp burned brightly during six years, eleven months, and some odd days, and then, unluckily, went out. Why it went out, the adept could never guess; but he was certain, that if the flame would only have burned to the end of the septenary cycle, his experiment must have succeeded.*

An excellent portrait of one of these smitten sages, during the delights of anticipation, the intenseness of operation, and under the surprise of disappointment, is given us by a lively writer in a periodical publication.

"All the sad experience which he obtains cannot suffice for his instruction. Retorts burst; crucibles are shivered in the gleed; the projection evaporates in reak and fume ; but the alchymist is not to be roused from hist day-dream. Again he returns to the laboratory he refills the alembic and the aludel; and the bath of Mary is prepared anew. Salt, sulphur, and mercury are blended in proportioned measure; and once more the parched disciple of Geber watches the concoction of the tincture and the menstruum, whilst

• Quarterly Review, No. li.

he nourishes the slow reverberating flames of the athanor. His diligence abates not with his increasing age: his auburn air has become grey, his limbs are shrunken, but still he labours without intermission. Years roll on : the colours of the liquid change; it reflects the azure hue, which gradually softens into the play of the opal; and at length the iridescent tints concentrate into the gleam of the orient ruby. Breathless and feverish, he hails the appearances which the mystic sages of the East have taught him to consider as the tokens that the great work is fast approaching to its consummation. He rejoices. His toils are terminated; and the elixir is in his power. But, at the very moment of joy, he discovers again that fate denies the boon; and the transmutation is as ineffectual as when young in spirit he first read the perplexed allegories in which he has so long placed his trust. And yet he will not learn the truth; but with hopeless eagerness returns again to the madness, which lives in him even until he expires."*

* Ib.-Penotus, who died at ninety-eight years of age,

But while we deride or pity these devotees to an irrational and vain employ, followed up by the sacrifice of health, ease, and treasure, it is well for us to recollect, that modern science stands much indebted to their persevering labours. Chymistry is the fair offspring of its monstrous sire, Alchymy. The numberless and diversified experiments of these adepts produced something better than the gold of which they were in search. These efforts gave birth to the docimastic art. The indefatigable alchymist threw flashes of light on that which before was as dark and disordered as chaos. He penetrated" the palpable obscure;" and pointed out to those who followed him, either by his discoveries or mistakes, the path which would lead the son of true science to the bright and glorious day. in the hospital of Sierdon, in Switzerland, had spent nearly his whole time in the search of the philosopher's stone; and being at length from affluent circumstances reduced to beggary and reason, was accustomed to say, that if he had a mortal enemy that he durst not encounter openly, he would advise him, above all things, to give himself up to the study and practice of alchymy.-D'Israeli's Cur. Lit. vol. j. page 200.

Had the world never seen a Geber and a Paracelsus, and the train of alchymists included between the ages of the two, it is probable that it would never have boasted such ornaments of science, as Priestly, Watson, Beddoes, and the illustrious Davy.

AMUSEMENTS.

Nothing more decidedly marks the degree of refinement to which a nation has arrived, than the character of the amusements that are popular among the higher classes of its community. In proportion as these diversions are adapted to exercise the faculties of the understanding, or to interest the good feelings of the heart, in the same proportion will the country be found to have ascended in the scale of civilization. If we apply this test of relative improvement to the Elizabethan age, we shall form but a low opinion of the condition of society, as far as manners are concerned, in our own country, in the sixteenth

century. Nothing intellectual had, as yet, found its way into the fashionable pleasures of the courtly and the gay. There were, it is true, certain "master spirits" among the great, who cultivated, in private, the pursuits of mind; and who, probably, looked with a smile of contempt on the modes of amusement which were then almost universally resorted to; but it is clear that "the million,' with the queen at their head, sought their chief entertainment in sights and practices, as little sanctioned by taste and intellect, as they were by humanity and politeness. Even theatric exhibitions, which form the first stepping-stone in a nation's emersion from grossness and barbarism to general civility, met with but a cold and partial patronage. Several playhouses, indeed, had been established; Shakespeare was writing for their service; and the queen had a company of players, (or, as they were called, her chil dren,) who might perform his immortal productions; but so unrefined were the propensities of Elizabeth and her nobility, that the petition of Orson Pinnet, which prayed for an