votions, and their breasts were filled with the most grateful transporting adorations and affections. So much beautiful religion I had not often seen in any assembly. They had a true sense indeed of the love and goodness of God, and of the grace and charity of Jesus Christ. They had all been carefully instructed by a wise and excellent man, who was not long since removed from them by death; and his daughter, the admirable AZORA, in conjunction with his niece, the amiable ANTONIA, took all possible pains, since the decease of Mr. Burcot, to maintain the power of religion in their community, and keep the people hearty and steady in the principles and practice of it. This brings me again to the history of Azora.

AZORA BURCOT was the daughter of a gentleman who was once possessed of a very great fortune, but by a fatal passion for the grand operation, and an opinion of the possibility of finding the philosopher's stone, he wasted immense sums in operations to discover that preparation, which forces the fæces of infused metals to retire immediately on its approach, and so turns the rest of the mass into pure gold; communicating the malleability and great ductility of that metal, and giving it true specific gravity, that is, to water, as eighteen and one half is to one. His love of that fine, ancient art, called chymistry,

brought him into this misfortune. For improvement and pleasure, he had been long engaged in various experiments, and at last, an adept came to his house, who was a man of great skill in the labours and operations of spagyrists, and persuaded him it was possible to find the stone; for he, the adept, had seen it with a brother, who had been so fortunate as to discover it, after much labour and operation. The colour of it was a pale brimstone and transparent, and the size that of a small walnut. He affirmed that he had seen a little of this scraped into powder, cast into some melted lead, and turn it into the best and finest gold. This had the effect the adept desired, and from chymistry brought Mr. Burcot to alchymy. Heaps of money he wasted in operations of the most noble elixir by mineral and salt; but the stone after all he could not find: and then, by the adept's advice, he proceeded in a second method, by maturation, to subtilize, purify, and digest quicksilver, and thereby convert it into gold*. This

* There is a third way to make gold, to wit, by separation, for every metal contains some quantity of gold; but the quantity is so small that it bears no proportion to the expense of getting it out: this last way the Spagyrists never attempt; and as for the two other methods, maturation, and transmuting by the grand elixir, the happy hour will never come, though so many ingenious

likewise came to nothing, and instead of the gold he expected, he had only heaps of mercury fixed with

are,

men have often thought it drawing nigh. To console them for the loss of their fortunes they have had some comfortable moments of reflection, that they have been within some minutes of success, when crack! all is gone and vanished on a sudden, and they have nothing before them but cinders and broken crucibles. It is very strange then, that a man of Dr. Dickenson's great veracity and skill in chymistry, should affirm the thing was actually done in his presence by an adept; and the more so, as his friend, the Honourable Robert Boyle, told him the thing was an impossibility. Dickenson's words "Nec potui sane quantacunque mihi fuerit opinio de ista re, quin aliquoties animi penderem donec illustris ea demonstratio quam vestra excellentia, biennio jam elapso, coram exhibuit, omnem ansam dubitandi mihi præcidisset." And again "Placuit dominationi vestræ claro experimento ante oculos facto animum meum ad opus accendere atque; etiam quæstionum mearum solutiones, quantum licerat, promittere." Vide Epistola ad Theod. Mundanum Philosophum Adeptum, de Quintessentia Philosophorum, de Vera Physiologia, &c. Oxon. 1686. This is very surprising; and the more so, as the greatest watchings and closest application, in searching after the stone, are all in vain, unless the stars shed a propitious influence on the labours of the Spagyrist: the work must be begun and advance in proper planetary hours, and

verdegrease, which gives it a yellow tinge, and more deeply coloured with turmeric. Gold it seemed,

depends as much on judicial astrology, as on fire, camphire, salt, labour and patience: but judicial astrology is no science. It is a mere farce. I must conclude then, that the hands of Mundanus the adept, were too quick for the doctor's eyes, and he deceived him by legerdemain: that all the books on the subject are fraudulent descriptions to deceive the credulous; and what Mundanus told Dickenson of Sir George Ripley, canon of Bridlington, in Yorkshire, in the reign of Edward the Fourth, and of Raymund Lully, was mere invention. He affirmed that Ripley sent the knights of Rhodes an hundred thousand pounds to support them in their wars against the Turks and that Lully assisted Edward 1. king of England, with six millions of gold, towards carrying on the Crusade. This piece of secret history he assures us he found in an ancient manuscript of indisputable authority, quod inculpatæ fidei registris innotescit: A manuscript that no one ever saw except Mundanus himself; penes me indeed, it was to be found only in his own head.

:

Ripley is in great repute among the adepts to this day, and his famous unintelligible and mysterious book is called A Compound of Alchymie conteyning Twelve Gates. He inscribed the manuscript to Edward IV. but the editor dedicated it to Q. Elizabeth, affirming that it contained the right method of making the philosopher's stone and aurum potabile. Lully was a very learned man

but, on trial in the coppel, it flew away in fumes and the adept made off. Too late this good and learned man saw he had been imposed on, and that the Spagyrists are in reality what Dr. Dickenson calls them, Enigmatistinubivagi.*.

Chymistry, reader, is a fine and ancient art. The analysing of sensible bodies by fire, to discover their real powers and virtues, is highly praise-worthy, and the surprising experiments we make, fill the mind of an inquirer after truth, with the greatest veneration for the wonderful author of nature: but more than this, is a sad romance that ends in empty pockets. Never think then of The Hermetical Banquet, Glauber's Golden Ass, or the Philosopher's Magical Gold. By the law of honest industry, en

for the latter end of the thirteenth century, and wrote several books in Latin; Generales Artium Libri. Libri Logicales, Philosophici et Metaphisici; Variarum Artium Libri; Libri Spirituales Prædicabiles, and the Vade Mecum Lullii; which treats more particularly on the Philosopher's Stone.

* Life of Edmund Dickenson, M.D. Physician in Ordinary to Charles II., and James II. by William Nicolas Blomberg, 1739, 8vo. p. 135. From this work, the whole that has here been advanced respecting Alchymy, is extracted, pp. 87-139.

As to the aurum potabile mentioned by Ripley,