The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-07-12

the Golfers of one OF our Edwards TO Jne |
tune of six millions Of rose mobiles; though |
indeed some rationalizing authorities ven
tured TO say it was by inducing the King to lay |
a tax upon wool, and not by transmitting
metals that he worked that miracle. Nicholas
Flamel a poor Partisan scribe, extracted the
secret from mysterious MS. after twenty
years of painful study. Were not the four
teen hospitals, three chapels, and seven
churches that he built, restored or endowed,
indisputable evidence of the validity of his
claims to the possession of the gold-maling
stone? What if the incredulous, even in his
own time, whispered that he was miser and
a usurer that he extorted his pelf from Span
ish Jews, and was general money-lender TO
the dissipated youth of Paris ? Avaunt, such
ignoble calumniesl
If the hermetic science bore on the whole
"holy and harmless" character among the
inquiring intellects of the thirteenth century,
already, in the fourteenth, the quest after the
secret of inexhaustible riches had induced
spirit of rivalry and deception which caused
serious inconvenience to society. 1t is to be
remarked that the early alchemists invariably
went by the name of philosophers" the
term "gold-maBers' was applied in later times
and in derogatory sense. Many Popes and
other potentates sought to make the practice
of multiplication, as it was sometimes
termed, penal. But in vain: 'multipliers'
multiplied Coins and medals were minted
from what at all events passed for fabricated
| gold, to the great detriment of commercial
interests. Henry IV of England issued a
| stringent prohibition of the practice. The
God-fearing Henry VI eagerly encouraged
it, repeating his grandfather's statute, and
exhorting all classes of his subjects to search
for the secret in the spirit of loyalty, for the
replenishment of his Golfers; his characters
| tic piety coming out in the special charge to
the clergy, as being undoubtedly possessed of
the power of transmitting substances in one
way, and therefore more likely perhaps to
succeed in the other. Edward ~ patronized
| the art. So did poor Charles vi of France,
in his fighty, impulsive way. One of the
occupants of the Holy See had the
credit of being an achemist, Pope John
| XXII whose bulls issued against the pretend
| ers to the art were perhaps intended to warn
off rivals. The eighteen millions of treasure
| which he was said to have left behind him
was the current argument adduced to prove
| him an adept; the evidence of the fact per-
haps as little Trustworthy as the inference
Weird fancies have always found a congo
nial atmosphere within the breast of the leu
| ton; and it was most cOnspicuously by Ger
man emperors and princes that the Spagiric
art-so called in fact from a Teutonic word,
SpdheH, to search-was cultivated or patron
lied. During the fifteenth century it came
to be professed by a number of adventurers,
wandering alchemists" as they were styled,
who strolled from court to court, sometimes
| gaining great political influence over their
| patrons, as, for instance. Hans Won Dorm
berg did over the Landgrave of Hesse;
sometimes experiencing the tragic fate
| of those who sink from great men s favor by
too daring swimming on bladders. The first
parsonage of pre-eminent degree who kept
| regular court alchemist" was Barbara, wife
of the Emperor Sigismond. She had been
instructed, so the story goes, by wandering
sage how to make silver out of copper and
arsenic and to increase the substance of gold
by the addition of copper and silver. This
metal, on which, at all events, imperial power
could pass the fiat of currency she benevo-
lently sold to the poor as genuine metal.
The Malgrave John of Brandenburg
was so great a proficient in the labors
of the crucible that he was surnamed
1.-The Alchemist" and his residence at the
Plassenburg, near Culmbach, was a head
quarter of the profession His fame, how
ever, was outdone in the following century
by that of the Emperor Rudolph H. whose
soubriquets were 'the Prince of Alchemy"
and ''the German Hermes Trismegistus. "
His superstitious dreams, which cost the en-
pire dear at time when intellect and energy
were required to steer her through her
troubles, gave an impetus to 'gold-cookery
throughout his dominions such as it never
received before or after. Adopts fought out
their envious rivalries at his court.
His poet laureate sung of the alchemical
processes as of the conflict of allegorical
powers in an heroic strife. Here Dee aud
Kelly, the English mountebank, dropped
down for while on their erratic course.
Here Van Helmont was eagerly invited. Here
Sandivogius was treated sumptuously, and
honored with the title of Councillor of State.
Equally jealous with Rudolph, as student
of the art and patron of it's professors,
was Augustus, Eleetor of Saxony, who had
a laboratory at Dresden, popularly called
the Gold House; while his wife, the
Electress Anna, practised at Annaburg,
and his son and successor, Christian, grew
up under their eyes a sharer in the family
taste. 1t was this Christian to whose reign
belongs the story of Setonius Scotus (Seaton
the Scott, alias the ''Cosmopolite, which
affords a striking illustration of the preca-
rious conditions of an alchemist's life and for
tunes in those days. Setonius professed to
have mastered the mystery of gold-makiug;
and the proof he gave of his art, in the pre-
sence of the Elector Christian, on one occa-
sion, so greatly impressed that princes mind;
that he caused the uckless adept to be forth
with carried off and imprisoned in a high
tower at Dresden, where no one else could
get at him TO learn his secret and where a
fair field might be left for the Electors
own efforts. He visited his prisoner HIM
self and tried persuasion. Setonius was
dumb. Then he employed torture, The poor
'Cosmopolite' was racked till within an
ace of death Still no confession: and as it
would not do to kill the goose with the golden
eggs outright, Seaton was left to linger in the
tower, alternately soothed and tormented
One day, by special favor, Polish visitor
was allowed to have access to him. This was
Michael Sandivogius, to whom more than