"Alchemy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that evangelical word, Et ecce plus quam Salomon hic! You have here in your presence an incomparable treasure, that is, my lord Pantagruel, whose great renown hath brought me hither, out of the very heart of England, to confer with him about the insoluble problems, both in magic, alchemy, the cabal, geomancy, astrology, and philosophy, which I had in my mind. But at present I am angry even with fame itself, which I think was envious to him, for that it did not declare the thousandth part of the worth that indeed is in him. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... alchemist is represented by his descendant as a Puritan impregnated with the secret doctrine of Robert Fludd. In 1639 Vaughan returned to England, but was immediately attracted to Denmark by the discovery of a golden horn adorned with mysterious figures, which he and his colleagues in alchemy supposed to typify the search for the philosophical stone. At the age of twenty-eight, Vaughan made further progress in the Rosicrucian Fraternity, being advanced to the grade of Adeptus Minor by Amos Komenski, in which year also Elias Ashmole entered the order. Accompanied ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... That such was the tardy process by which the School for Scandal was produced, will appear from the first sketches of its plan and dialogue, which I am here enabled to lay before the reader, and which cannot fail to interest deeply all those who take delight in tracing the alchemy of genius, and in watching the first slow workings of the menstruum, out of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... But the great Florentine invented neither his stories nor his " plot," if we may so call it. He wrote in the middle of the fourteenth century (1344-8) when the West had borrowed many things from the East, rhymes[FN8] and romance, lutes and drums, alchemy and knight-errantry. Many of the "Novelle" are, as Orientalists well know, to this day sung and recited almost textually by the wandering tale-tellers, bards, and rhapsodists of Persia and ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... advertisements at the ends of these tracts there are upwards of a hundred English tracts, nearly all of the period, and most of them translations. Alchemy looks up since the chemists have found perfectly different substances composed of the same elements and proportions. It is true the chemists cannot yet transmute; but they may in time: they poke about most assiduously. It seems, then, that the conviction that alchemy must be impossible ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... and occasions have forborne to use it, and falsest seducers and oppressors of men were the first who took it up, and to no other purpose but to obstruct and hinder the first approach of Reformation; I am of those who believe it will be a harder alchemy than Lullius ever knew, to sublimate any good use out of such an invention. Yet this only is what I request to gain from this reason, that it may be held a dangerous and suspicious fruit, as certainly it deserves, for the tree that bore it, until I can dissect one by one the properties it has. But ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... he returned to the excavation and scooped out yet another collection. This time there could be no mistake. Nature's own alchemy had fashioned a veritable ingot. There were small lumps in the ore which would need alloy at the mint before they could be issued as sovereigns, so free from ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... designated as the Occult School—vere adepti. They discern no beauties but what are concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar part of mankind. Their art is the transmutation of styles. By happy alchemy of mind they convert dross into gold—and gold into tinsel. They see farther into a millstone than most others. If an author is utterly unreadable, they can read him for ever: his intricacies are their delight, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of Evil, many times, As pearls and precious ambergris are grown, Fruits of disease in pain and sickness sown, So think not to unravel, in thy thought, This mingled tissue, this mysterious plan, The Alchemy of Good through ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of some of the winter homes of insects. Think of the thousands upon thousands of eggs and pupae which are hidden in every grove; what catacombs of bug mummies yonder log conceals,—mummies whose resurrection will be brought about by the alchemy of thawing sunbeams. Follow out the suggestion hinted at above and place a handkerchief full of frozen mould or decayed wood in a white dish, and the tiny universe which will gradually unfold before you will provide ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... of the process of alchemy which Richard Middleton has himself suggested is one of the finest and the fittest for our purpose; but there are many others. The "magic wand" analogy comes to much the same thing; there is the like notion of something ugly and insignificant ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... sway of the imagination is almost complete in the pseudo-sciences (alchemy, astrology, magic, occultism, etc.), which it would be more proper to call embryonic sciences, for they were the beginnings of more exact disciplines and their fancies have not been without use. In the history of science, this is the golden age of the creative imagination, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... very dark period in human history. In fact, we call that period the Dark Ages. A period wherein science was raped by the metaphysicians, wherein physics became a search for the Philosopher's Stone, wherein chemistry became alchemy, and astronomy became astrology. Sorry the domination ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... the fowls, the lambs, gambol in the sun and add daily to their stature like the hay and the barley. The poorest farmer sometimes halts in yard or field, hands in pockets, and tastes the great happiness of knowing that the sun's heat, the warm rain, the earth's unstinted alchemy—every mighty force of nature—is working as a humble slave for him ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... deadly. It was when he least endeavoured to conceal his character that its hideousness least appeared. He confessed sometimes so much, that you yielded that pity which, ere the shrived culprit could receive, by some fatal alchemy was changed into passion. His smile was a lure, his speech was a spell; but it was when he was silent, and almost gloomy, when you caught his serious eye, charged, as it were, with emotion, gazing on yours, that if you had a guardian sylph you should have invoked ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... seditions to which Egypt was constantly exposed. The emperor besieged Alexandria for eight months, cut off the aqueducts which conveyed water to the city, and, having taken it, put many thousands of its citizens to death. One remarkable edict which he now published forbade the study of alchemy in Egypt, and ordered all books upon that subject to be burned. He also made a treaty with the Nubians, in order to protect ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... alchemy of the Great War, many things are changing and in the wonderful days of reconstruction that lie ahead the Farmer is destined to play an upstanding part in the new greatness of our country. Because of ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... ideas is anyhow unmistakable. If metaphysical thinking is nonsensical, its empire over the human imagination must still be confessed; if it is as chimerical a science as alchemy, it is no less fertile in by-products of importance. And if we are to consider Leibniz historically, we cannot do better than take up his Theodicy, for two reasons. It was the only one of his main philosophical ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... alms, Some reverie, some pang of a damasked sword, Some poignant moment yet unparalleled In my dream-broidered chronicles, some chord Of mystery Love's music never knelled Before;—but nought of the rough alchemy That disillusions ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... laughter and the cry of triumph which meant the arrival into the safe refuge of his mother's arms. There was no detail of the occurrence that faithful heart could not recall. Time had no power to dull the recollection which love's alchemy kept clear and bright. Was he not still her boy—her lamb—for all her fourscore years and all the sorrow they had both known between that day and this? And the old walls which had rung to the sound of Francis' baby merriment echoed to his laughter again now. He was ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... directed by the philosophic spirit, and quickened with the life and energy of the nineteenth century, is a very different pursuit from the Archaeology of our forefathers, and has as little relation to their antiquarianism as modern Chemistry and modern Astronomy have to their former prototypes—Alchemy and Astrology. In proof of this, I may confidently appeal to the good work which Archaeology has done, and the great advances which it has struck out in different directions within the last fifty years. Within this brief period it has made discoveries, perhaps ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... feature, and at a distance called vividly to mind the effect of one of those great glass bottles of reddened water, behind which apothecaries of all degrees put a lamp at dusk in order that their light may the better shine in the darkness. It was one of the most surprising feats of nature's alchemy that a liquid so brown as that contained in the decanters on Patrick's sideboard should be able to produce and maintain anything so supernaturally red as ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... troublesome error, a pernicious foppery? physic, but intricate rules and prescriptions? philology, but vain criticisms? logic, needless sophisms? metaphysics themselves, but intricate subtleties, and fruitless abstractions? alchemy, but a bundle of errors? to what end are such great tomes? why do we spend so many years in their studies? Much better to know nothing at all, as those barbarous Indians are wholly ignorant, than as some of us, to be so ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... menace which had been built up week after week by rumor and also by fact, as represented in scores, was real,—that the purple team was invincible, that Ridgley had met the irresistible force and could not by any alchemy of spirit ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... social alchemy, my dear Paul, is to get the most we can out of each age of life through which we pass; to have and to hold the buds of our spring, the flowers of our summer, the fruits of our autumn. We amused ourselves once, a few good fellows ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... subtile, impalpable, might still elude them all, as for thirty-five years longer it still continued to elude wise statesmen and thoughtful economists; how, at last, some impatient spirit, breaking through the untimely delay, sternly asked them what else they proposed to do. By what alchemy would they create gold and silver? By what magic would they fill the coffers which their non-exportation resolutions had kept empty, or bring in the supplies which their non-importation resolutions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... shade, Of sound and echo, man and maid, The land reflected in the flood, Body with shadow still pursued. For Nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. The wood is wiser far than thou; The wood and wave ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for JOGI, used loosely for any Hindu ascetic. Arghun Khan of Persia (see Prologue, ch. xvii.), who was much given to alchemy and secret science, had asked of the Indian Bakhshis how they prolonged their lives to such an extent. They assured him that a mixture of sulphur and mercury was the Elixir of Longevity. Arghun accordingly took this precious potion for eight months;—and died shortly after! (See Hammer, Ilkhans, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... alchemy he had learned. He understood that force ultimately is everywhere one and the same; it is the motive behind that makes it good or evil; and his motive was entirely unselfish. He knew—provided he was not first robbed of self-control—how vicariously to absorb these ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of some confused knowledge of the Absolute? Stahl, Becker, Paracelsus, Agrippa, all the great Searchers into occult causes took the Great Triad for their watchword,—in other words, the Ternary. Ignorant men who despise alchemy, that transcendent chemistry, are not aware that our work is only carrying onward the passionate researches of those great men. Had I found the Absolute, the Unconditioned, I meant to have grappled with Motion. ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... of the earth, lay bare the primary strata of human nature: they expose to us elements we might forget, or suppose to be transmuted by the alchemy of civilization. In this respect they are, like those geological expositions, useful lessons ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... time, knowledge is obtained and mysteries are revealed. Chemistry and medicine, released from the tedious but not useless apprenticeship they had served to alchemy and empiricism, set up on their own account, and as a consequence, the 'nut of the sea' soon lost its European reputation as a curative, though it was still considered a very great curiosity, and the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... ALCHEMY, the early analysis of substances which has in modern times developed into chemistry, and which aimed chiefly at the discovery of the philosopher's stone, of a universal solvent, and of the elixir of life; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... forgiven. Did she sit in torment while her husband turned his somersaults, or was she now too so perverse that she thought it a fine thing to be striking at the expense of one's honour? It would have taken a wondrous alchemy—working backwards, as it were—to produce this latter result. Besides these two alternatives (that she suffered tortures in silence and that she was so much in love that her husband's humiliating idiosyncrasy seemed to her only an added richness—a proof of life and ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... to Jacques Coictier bore reference principally to the temporal advantages which the worthy physician had found means to extract, in the course of his much envied career, from each malady of the king, an operation of alchemy much better and more certain than the pursuit ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... represents a higher approximation to realness than does alchemy, for instance, and so drove out alchemy, it is still only somewhere between ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... an instant. There was no mistaking the glow of the limbs, the midsummer languor of the smile, the magical atmosphere in which the gold of sunlight, of autumn leaves, of amber grapes, seemed fused by some lost alchemy of the brush. As he gazed, the scene changed, and he saw himself in a darkened room with cabalistic hangings. He saw Heiligenstern's tall figure, towering in supernatural light, the Duke leaning eagerly forward, the Duchess with set lips and ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... crime Ye never did commit? Mercy for these! Who bear on back and breast the scathing brand Of scarlet degradation, who are clothed In ignominious livery, whose bowed necks Are broken with the yoke. Change these to men! That were a noble witchcraft simply wrought, God's alchemy transforming clods to gold. If there be one among them strong and wise, Whose lips anoint breathe poetry and love, Whose brain and heart served ever Christian need— And there are many such—for his dear sake, Lest ye chance murder one of God's high priests, Spare his thrice-wretched ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... The refuse which was a drug and a curse to our manufacturers, when treated under the hands of the chemist, has been the means of supplying us with dyes rivalling in loveliness and variety the hues of the rainbow. If the alchemy of science can extract beautiful colours from coal tar, cannot Divine alchemy enable us to evolve gladness and brightness out of the agonised hearts and dark, dreary, loveless lives of these doomed myriads? Is it too much to hope that in God's world God's children may be able to do ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... task. He had been familiar with every species of human misery, and had for ever found his powers inadequate, his aid of small avail. Yet the purpose of his soul, his energy and ardent resolution, prevented any re-action of sorrow. He seemed born anew, and virtue, more potent than Medean alchemy, endued him with health and strength. Idris hardly recognized the fragile being, whose form had seemed to bend even to the summer breeze, in the energetic man, whose very excess of sensibility rendered him ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... a fiery furnace, that has consumed a thousand delusions, and must consume all that remain. We cast into it astrology and alchemy, and their ashes barely remain to tell of their existence. Old notions of the earth and heavens went in, and vanished as their dupes gazed upon them. Old religions, old gods, have become as the incense that ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... expectations in one wild-flower-written dream, Confusion and death sweetness, and a thicket of crab-thorns, Heart of a hundred midnights, heart of the merciful morns. Heaven's boughs bent down with their alchemy, Perfumed airs, and thoughts of wonder. And the dew on the grass and his own cold tears Were one in brooding mystery, Though death's loud thunder came upon him, Though death's loud thunder struck him down— The boughs and the proud thoughts swept through the thunder, Till he saw our ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... We rejoice, most of the time, in a house pet, a human puppet, a domestic toy, in the shape of 'DONNY.' Would you ever believe that that name had been originally CHARLES, and passed, by the subtle alchemy of nicknames, to its ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... light and warmth and heat of the sun, and even its color. But silver is used to describe the complexion of the moon only for want of a better word. It is neither silver nor white, but is the result of some mysterious alchemy known only to itself. And its temperature does not affect our bodies at all. You cannot deny that it has exercised a most beneficent effect on the spirits of lovers and poets for all the centuries we know of. Every pair of lovers has some cherished memories of moonlight, and poets would ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy. ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... into debt. King Charles himself was in great trouble, and he had no money with which to pay his painter's pension. The artist had lived so extravagantly that he did not know at last which way to turn, so in desperation he thought to try alchemy and maybe to learn the secret of making gold. He wasted much time at this, as cleverer men have done, but at last he became too ill for that or for his own proper work, and badly off though Charles ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... This is the point of union between the subjective and objective, and as the current returns from the solar plexus to this point it is restored to the objective portion of the brain in a fresh form which it has acquired by the silent alchemy of the subjective mind. Thus the conception which was at first only vaguely recognized is restored to the objective mind in a definite and workable form, and then the objective mind, acting through the frontal brain—the area of comparison and analysis—proceeds ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... resident, man, a creature compact of wonders that, after centuries of custom, is still wonderful to himself. He inhabits a body which he is continually outliving, discarding and renewing. Food and sleep, by an unknown alchemy, restore his spirits and the freshness of his countenance. Hair grows on him like grass; his eyes, his brain, his sinews, thirst for action; he joys to see and touch and hear, to partake the sun and wind, to sit down and intently ponder on his astonishing attributes and situation, to rise ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are as convinced of the existence of these atoms as they are of the objects we see and touch. The theory "is a necessity to explain the experimental facts of chemical composition." "Through metaphysics first," says Soddy, "then through alchemy and chemistry, through physical and astronomical spectroscopy, lastly through radio-activity, science has slowly groped its way to the atom." The physicists make definite statements about these hypothetical ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... literature and the sciences derived instruction from his discourse, and his talent was conspicuous even in the art of vocal music. His praises were celebrated in kasadas of the greatest beauty. Bakr Ibn An-Nattah said of him: O thou who pursuest the study of alchemy, the great alchemy consists in praising the son of Isa. Was there but one dirhem in the world, thou wouldst obtain it ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... think and I know that thou art most prodigal of frivolous talk. I sent for thee only to shave my head, but thou comest and pesterest me with this sorry prattle." "What more wouldst thou have?" replied he. "Allah hath bounteously bestowed on thee a Barber who is an astrologer, one learned in alchemy and white magic;[FN612] syntax, grammar, and lexicology; the arts of logic, rhetoric and elocution; mathematics, arithmetic and algebra; astronomy, astromancy and geometry; theology, the Traditions of the Apostle and the Commentaries on the Koran. Furthermore, I have read books galore and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Greece, and Judaea; that their beliefs and practices had been concealed from the vulgar by cabalistic methods, and that though their real origin and the purpose of their association had at times been almost lost, it had revived, and been restored under many aspects. They claimed that alchemy, mediaeval Rosicrucianism, and modern Freemasonry were off-shoots of the original Cabala, and that during the past 150 years new associations had been formed, and the parties who had introduced me into their arcanum were a society in affiliation with many others then in existence in different ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... plunder, and by even encouraging them to continue poisoning themselves and their descendants by over-indulgence in alcoholic drink?[1216] Surely "the defective natures of citizens will show themselves in the bad acting of whatever social structure they are arranged into. There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... merely of the Polish language, and of what talents the gods had given him, which were considerable. And now, in the mean while, Johann, who at one time promised well in practical life, had taken to Alchemy; and was busy with crucibles and speculations, to a degree that seemed questionable. Father Friedrich, therefore, had to interfere, and deal with this "Johann the Alchemist" (JOHANNES ALCHEMISTA, so the Books still name him); who loyally renounced the Electorship, at his ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... been for many years the medical adviser of the house; and although Lord Mergwain accorded the medical practice of his day about the same relation to a science of therapeutics that old alchemy had to modern chemistry, yet the moment he felt ill, he was sure to send for young Jermyn. Charles had also attended Lady Joan in several illnesses, for she had not continued in such health as when she used to climb hills ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... my Living to seek saved me from Dying,—by suicide. In our busy Europe, is there not an everlasting demand for Intellect, in the chemical, mechanical, political, religious, educational, commercial departments? In Pagan countries, cannot one write Fetishes? Living! Little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive Soul; how, as with its little finger, it can create provision enough for the body (of a Philosopher); and then, as with both hands, create quite other than provision; namely, spectres to torment ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... after the young Catholic gentleman. Sandy (Napier) was also probably his mother's medical adviser: he certainly acted as such to some members of her family. A man of fervent piety—his "knees were horny with frequent praying," says Aubrey—he was, besides, a zealous student of alchemy and astrology, a friend of Dee, of Lilly, and of Booker. Very likely Kenelm had been entrusted to Allen's care at Oxford on the recommendation of Sandy; for Allen, one of his intimates, was a serious ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... be discussed more fully in the next chapter. In brief, the spectroscope, which examines the light of distant stars and discovers what chemical elements emitted it, finds matter, in the hottest stars, in an unusual condition, and seems to show the elements successively emerging from their fierce alchemy. Sir J. Norman Lockyer has for many years conducted a special investigation of the subject at the Solar Physics Observatory, and he declares that we can trace the evolution of the elements out of the fiery chaos of the ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... as 1825, twenty years after the death of Peter Woulfe, who was thought to be the last of the true believers in alchemy, Sir Richard Phillips visited an alchemist at Lilley, near Hitchin, named Kellerman, who was believed by some of his neighbours to have discovered the philosopher's stone, and the universal solvent! His room was a realization ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... Cross, with a man upon a black horse! These are thy gods, O London! Ain't you mightily moped on the banks of the Cam? Had not you better come and set up here? You can't think what a difference. All the streets and pavements are pure gold, I warrant you,—at least, I know an alchemy that turns her mud into that metal: a mind that loves to be at ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... shaved heads and faces, and downcast eyes. He reflected what the effect of that news must be; as it penetrated each day, like a stone dropped softly into a pool, leaving no ripple. There, behind each brown door, he fancied to himself, a strange alchemy was proceeding, in which each new terror and threat from outside was received into the crucible of a beating heart and transmuted by prayer and welcome into some wonderful jewel of glory—at least so these poor men believed; and Ralph indignantly told himself it was ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... desire and little wit, wished that I should show him the art, and only because I did not make him Daedalus, made me be burned by one[3] that held him as a son; but to the last pit of the ten, for the alchemy that I practiced in the world, Minos, to whom it is not allowed to err, condemned me." And I said to the Poet, "Now was ever people so vain as the Sienese? surely not so the French by much." Whereon the other leprous one, who heard me, replied to my words, "Except[4] Stricca who knew how to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... themselves. It is not merely that we fail to do that which we know to be right, but at times the very idea of right itself is strangely altered. The good insensibly assimilates to itself certain elements of evil which we allow and accept without full realization of the significance of this moral alchemy to which the most fundamental of our ideas are often times subjected. The idea of right no longer stands in its integrity, but is compromised and even neutralized by conflicting thoughts and sentiments. The things which at one time held first place ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... aught but silently marvel at this alchemy? A little bundle of muscle and blood, which in this freezing weather can transmute frozen beetles and zero air into a happy, cheery little Black-capped Chickadee, as he names himself, whose trustfulness ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... restrain her hunger, when on her return she gave play to her teeth. Now by reason of reading the legends written by the way, and of separating by death the embraces of birds and wild beasts, she discovered a mystery of natural alchemy, while colouring her complexion, and superagitating her feeble imagination, which did little to pacify her warlike nature, and strongly tickled her desire which laughed, played, and frisked unmistakably. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... about her and she introduced Tess to them one by one. Tess, hardly understanding a word of what was said to her, was never made so much of in her life, sharing honors with Yasmini, almost as much a novelty as she—a Western woman, spirited behind the purdah by the same new alchemy that made a girl of partly foreign birth, and so without caste in the Hindu sense of it, revive a royal custom with its antecedents rooted in the very rocks of time. It was a ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... temper of happiness, which doth put the soul in a natural and easy condition, and openeth it to the solaces of that pure and sublime entertainment which the angels do spread for such as obey the will of their Creator, hath discovered a more subtle alchemy than any of which the philosophers did dream,—for he transmuteth the enjoyments of others into his own, and his large and open heart partaketh of the satisfaction of all around him. Are there any here who, in the midst of outward abundance, are ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... happy at all, and did not perceive—how could one?—as life rose serenely and strongly to its zenith, what the pains and shadows of the declining life might be. And yet more strange is it that the memory, by some subtle alchemy, has the power of involving in a delicate golden mist days of childhood and boyhood which one knows as a matter of fact not to have been happy. For instance, my own memory continues to clothe my early ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... together, O mysterious tome, whose Arab name breathes a strange mustiness of occult lore and claims kindred with the sciences of almagest and alchemy. What will you show me? Let us turn the leaves at random. Before fixing one's eyes on a definite point in the landscape, it is well to take a summary view of the whole. Page follows swiftly upon page, telling me nothing. A chapter catches ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... of the ancients, and is rather redder than the latter. They possess the same qualities as pigments, and as such resemble yellow orpiment, to which the old painters gave the orange hue by heat, naming it alchemy and burnt orpiment. Orange orpiment contains more arsenic and less sulphur than the yellow, and is of course highly poisonous. It is often sophisticated with brickdust ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... to say to me that which I know already? Yet perhaps in the future it may be different, since often by the alchemy of the mind the fables of our youth are changed into the facts of our age, and we come to believe in anything, as your little yellow man believes in some savage named Zikali, and those Amahagger believe in the talisman round your ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... flagons placed beside them. Behind this party stood Giovanni Joungevello, an Italian minstrel, much in favour with Anne Boleyn, and Domingo Lamellino, or Lamelyn—as he was familiarly termed—a Lombard, who pretended to some knowledge of chirurgery, astrology, and alchemy, and who was a constant attendant on Henry. At the head of the bench, on the right of the table, sat Will Sommers. The jester was not partaking of the repast, but was chatting with Simon Quanden, the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... away the lingering mist, and the cloudless sky was like one large perfect opal, while the earth beneath shone and glistened as if it were a jewel set with various-colored gems. There was not a mean or sordid thing about. Touched by the splendid alchemy of the sun, the smallest circumstance was noble, the poorest color glorious. Alick stood on the fell-brow entranced: then turning, he saw slowly coming across the pathless green a young slight figure dressed in gray. He looked as it came near, and his heart beat with a force ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... earnest; his sense of duty perhaps at its best; the sacrifice greatest, for it is life. Theirs are the most momentous decisions for weal or woe; theirs the tragedy beyond all other tremendous and solemn. It is right that the sacrifice they have witnessed should possess an alchemy to ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... covetous expression that the sight of the same coins lying there inspires in the three Persians is, of itself, an instructive lesson on the difference between the two peoples. The sowars become inspired, as if touched by the magic wand of alchemy, to the discussion of their favorite theme; but the Afghans pay no more heed to their remarks about money than if they were talking in an unknown tongue. They really act as though they regarded the subject of money as ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... helpful medicinally against certain maladies. Moreover real gold can be employed more frequently, and lasts longer in its condition of purity than counterfeit gold. If however real gold were to be produced by alchemy, it would not be unlawful to sell it for the genuine article, for nothing prevents art from employing certain natural causes for the production of natural and true effects, as Augustine says (De Trin. iii, 8) of things produced by the art ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... interest whatever in Margaret and her troubles. Father Warner despised all human affections of whatever kind, with the intensity of a nature at once cold and narrow. Father Nicholas was of a far kindlier disposition, but he was completely engrossed with another subject. Alchemy was reviving. The endless search for the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, and other equally desirable and unattainable objects, had once more begun to engage the energies of scientific men. The real end which they were approaching was the invention of gunpowder, which can hardly ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... stone,' and elixirs of life, bred in the popular superstition a mysterious awe and attached to almost all scientific investigation the epithet 'black,' or diabolic, as opposed to the 'white art' of holding communion with good spirits. Alchemy and astrology (words meaning merely what we call chemistry and astronomy) became words of hellish import, and he who practised these arts was in league with Satan. Thus were regarded such men as Lully, Roger Bacon, the Abbot Tritheim, and (perhaps ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... not to the criminal classes alone that superstitions of this nature belong. Of the alchemy, magic, black art, sorcery, and "philosophy" of the Dark Ages of Europe, the practice of which lingered in some places well on into the seventeenth century, horrible stories are told, in which children, their bodies, their ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Peculiar Effects of Money. Jesus' Law for the Use of Money. Foreign Exchange. Gold-Exchanged Lives. Spirit Alchemy. The Fragrance of the Life in the Gift. Sacrifice Hallows and Increases the Gift. A ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... leading intellects began to inquire into the mysteries of nature and the periods of pure philosophy gave way to an era of methodical research. Alchemy and superstition began to retire before the attacks of those pioneers who had the temerity to believe that the scheme of creation involved a vast network of invariable laws. In this manner the powerful sciences of physics and chemistry were born a few centuries ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... in your childish mind with old Coppelius, who, even though you had not believed in the Sand-man, would have been to you a ghostly bugbear, especially dangerous to children. His mysterious labours along with your father at night-time were, I daresay, nothing more than secret experiments in alchemy, with which your mother could not be over well pleased, owing to the large sums of money that most likely were thrown away upon them; and besides, your father, his mind full of the deceptive striving after higher knowledge, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... by God glorifies God, as showing the most wonderful working of His power in making such a man out of such material, by an alchemy that can convert base metal into fine gold; as showing the most wonderful condescension of His love in taking to His heart man, into whose flesh the rotting leprosy of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... whilst the men stretched out as if unconscious of the exertion of pulling, every one of them feeling his share of the excitement. From the western sky the last lingering rays of the sun shot athwart the wave, turning it, as it were, by the alchemy of light into a flood of gold. Overhead, the cope of heaven was gradually growing soberer in hue from the withdrawal of those influences which lately had warmed and brightened it; but in the west a brilliant halo encircled the declining ruler of the day. In these latitudes the sunset is ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... work perfect. At the moment you knocked at the door I was picking up the Spirit of the World, and the Flower of Heaven, which are the veritable Fountains of Youth. Have you some understanding of alchemy, Monsieur Coignard?" ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... At the College de Verdale, at Toulouse, expulsion was the penalty for a list of crimes which includes theft, entering the college by stealth, breaking into the cellar, bringing in a meretrix, witch-craft, alchemy, invoking demons or sacrificing to them, forgery, and ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... bravely, as the moment's tension passed, 'my original idea was simply to treat Bourcelles as an epitome, a miniature, so to speak, of the big world, while showing how Nature sweetened and kept it pure as by a kind of alchemy. But that idea has grown. I have the feeling now that the Bourcelles we know is a mere shadowy projection cast by a more real Bourcelles behind. It is only the dream village we know in our waking life. The real one—er—we know only in ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... acquire that degree of improvement her natural good sense was capable of receiving; she knew something of philosophy and physic, but not enough to eradicate the fondness she had imbibed from her father for empiricism and alchemy; she made elixirs, tinctures, balsams, pretended to secrets, and prepared magestry; while quacks and pretenders, profiting by her weakness, destroyed her property among furnaces, drugs and minerals, diminishing those charms and accomplishments which might ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... walks there are resurrections because life begets life. No science, no mathematics, no history, no language, can be dull or dry when touched by her art, but all become vital because she is vital. By the subtle alchemy of her artistic teaching all the subjects of her school are transmuted into the pure gold ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... moments when one suspects that his somewhat spectacular pietism disguised the spirit of one whose mind had little to do with the mysticism of the mediaeval church. Or perhaps it was that the strange friendship between him and Albertinelli, the man of the cloister and the man of the world, effected some alchemy in the mind of each. The story of that lifelong friendship, strong enough to overcome the difficulties of a definite partnership between the strict life of the monastery and the busy life of the bottega, is one of the most ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... kind was acquired in the ten centuries which preceded the Renaissance, that we are at all able to estimate the expansive force which was then generated. Science, rescued from the hands of astrology, geomancy, alchemy, began her real life with the Renaissance. Since then, as far as to the present moment, she has never ceased to grow. Progressive and durable, science may be called the first-born of the spirit of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... raindrops side by side, drawing irresistibly nearer, ever nearer: for now they had touched and were not two, but one inseparable drop, crystallized beyond change, not to be disintegrated by time, nor shattered by death's blow, nor resolved by any alchemy. ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... intrinsically useful and serviceable to the scheme as the figures which admirably illustrate the pictures of Hogarth and Holman Hunt. When introduced, music is rarely intended to edge itself into the important place of "first study." This in alchemy or personification being occupied by the circumstantial cruxes of life, philosophic morality, vested usually in courtly attire; I would not say abstract attire, for the clean-cut character it bears is too strictly defined (for the sake of that Artist's art) for such an impression to ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... brother collector with whom our book-hunter sometimes passes an evening is a medical man of no small talent. But attached as he is to his profession, archaeology is for ever striving with medicine for the first place in his affections, and his knowledge of herbals and the literature of alchemy is immense. His collection of works dealing with these subjects is well known to the booksellers, and the book-hunter sometimes receives a line from him asking him to pay a visit for the purpose of examining ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... state of despair and not hope, his energies are paralyzed. But hope lends wings,—hope and faith are creative, and can both control and change the trend of events. Circumstances are but the crude material, which is subject to any degree of transformation by the alchemy of faith. "When a god wishes to ride, every chip and stone will bud and shoot out winged feet to carry him," and it is hope and faith that give ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... charming rural tales; but he wrote long ones. There is minute observation, dramatic force, tender pathos, but there is much, of tedious and coarse description. If by some subtile alchemy the better qualities could be thrown down from the turbid and watery flux of his verse, we should have an admirable pocket-volume for the country; as it is, his books rest mostly on the shelves, and it requires a strong breath to puff away the dust that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... hours he would meditate, and he became more than ever convinced that man could, if he pleased, become lord of his own sensations. This, surely, was the true meaning concealed under the beautiful symbolism of alchemy. Some years before he had read many of the wonderful alchemical books of the later Middle Ages, and had suspected that something other than the turning of lead into gold was intended. This impression was deepened when he looked into Lumen de ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the ear, then the full corn in the ear. But it is not the husbandman who makes them grow. It is, first, the miraculous plasmic power in the grain of seed, which brings forth after its kind; then the alchemy of sunlight which, in presence of the green colouring matter of the leaves, gathers hydrogen from the water and carbon from the gases in the air, and mingles them in the hydro-carbons of plant growth; and, finally, the wholly occult vital ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... perfection. All the rest of the globe was covered with lace-fine work repeating one group of characters over and over. I was not learned enough to tell what the characters were, but the whole plainly belonged to those strange, outcast academies of astrology, alchemy—magic, in short. It contained what appeared to be a pinkish ball; originally a scented paste rolled round and dried, I judged by peering through the interstices ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... philosopher, was born, and in that same year Galileo, the Italian astronomer, died. Meanwhile the Thirty Years War had destroyed the prosperity of central Europe and there was a sudden but very general interest in "alchemy," the strange pseudo-science of the middle-ages by which people hoped to turn base metals into gold. This proved to be impossible but the alchemists in their laboratories stumbled upon many new ideas and greatly helped the work of the chemists ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... sky, Mysterious, fair as the moon-led sea, The vast plain flames on the dazzled eye Under the fierce sun's alchemy. The slow hawk stoops To his prey in the deeps; The sunflower droops To the lazy wave; the wind sleeps— Then swirling in dazzling links and loops, A riot of shadow and shine, A glory of olive and amber and wine, To the westering sun the colors run Through the deeps ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... be a pensioner on his bounty. He knew she had no wish to keep herself alive on the small change of sentiment; she simply fed on her own funded passion, and the luxuries it allowed her made him, even then, dimly aware that she had the secret of an inexhaustible alchemy. ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... satisfied Anstice that Iris had not been mistaken. Cheniston was dead; and as he stood looking down on the quiet face, which, by virtue of Death's magic alchemy, had regained in the last hour something of its former youth, Anstice knew a sincere and unfeigned pity for the young life so ruthlessly cut short by ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... gardens, fountains and baths, and stately halls decorated in the most costly style of Oriental luxury. According to Moorish tradition, the king who built this mighty and magnificent pile was skilled in the occult sciences, and furnished himself with the necessary funds by means of alchemy.* Such was its lavish splendor that even at the present day the stranger, wandering through its silent courts and deserted halls, gazes with astonishment at gilded ceilings and fretted domes, the brilliancy and beauty of which have survived the vicissitudes of war and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... seemed a perfect thing without beginning, as long descended as the folds of downs which sheltered it. The austere Tudor front, the Restoration wing, the offices built under Queen Anne, the library added in the days of the Georges, had by some alchemy become one. Peace and long memories were in every line of it, and that air of a home which belongs only to places that have been loved for generations. It breathed ease and comfort, but yet had a tonic vigour in it, for while it stood knee-deep in the green valley its head ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... in the long life of Izaak Walton have been carefully investigated by Sir Harris Nicolas. All that can be extricated from documents by the alchemy of research has been selected, and I am unaware of any important acquisitions since Sir Harris Nicolas's second edition of 1860. Izaak was of an old family of Staffordshire yeomen, probably descendants of George Walton of Yoxhall, who died in 1571. Izaak's father was Jarvis Walton, ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... and allied problems, gathered around him scholars of different schools, and carried on discussions with them. Many of his writings are lost, but enough is extant to show that he was one of the earliest Chinese alchemists. The question has not yet been settled, but it is probable that alchemy first appeared in China, together with the cult of the "art" of prolonging life, and was later carried to the West, where it flourished among the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... a scholar brooded continually over him and made him reticent, but he was never silent from ill-humor. His was that true modesty so excellent in ability, and so rare in celebrities petted for a long time in society. His was also that happy alchemy of mind which transmutes disagreeable things into golden and ruby colors like the dawn. His temperament was the exact reverse of Fuseli's, who complained that "nature put him out." A beautiful spirit has indeed passed away, and ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... through. Then the working and the washing of it to free it from the milk and the final packing into tub or firkin, its fresh odour in the air—what a picture it was! How much of the virtue of the farm went each year into those firkins! Literally the cream of the land. Ah, the alchemy of Life, that in the bee can transform one product of those wild rough fields into honey, and in the cow can ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... of the lead. Gilbert suggests as an improvement of the treatment that a thin lamina of gold be substituted for the lead, "because mercury thirsts after gold as animals do after water, as it is held in the books on alchemy" (in libris allzinimicis). This fact, too, he tells us can be easily demonstrated externally by placing upon a plate a portion of gold, and near, but not in contact with it, a little quicksilver, when the silver, he says, will at once "leap" upon the gold. Avicenna ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... By some uncanny alchemy, hard cash appears to soften the heads and relax the muscles of rich men's sons—at least, such had been old Hector's observation, and on the instant that he first gazed upon the face of his son, there had been ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... fatal termination to this last enterprise of Count Louis had been anticipated by many. In that superstitious age, when emperors and princes daily investigated the future, by alchemy, by astrology, and by books of fate, filled with formula; as gravely and precisely set forth as algebraical equations; when men of every class, from monarch to peasant, implicitly believed in supernatural portents and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... suitably moved: but as he sat by her bedside, and thoughtfully proffered to her the list of people who had "called to enquire", she looked first at him, and then at the child between them, and wondered at the blundering alchemy of Nature... ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... more doubtful arts, magic and astrology. Philadelphus, who, toward the close of his life, was haunted with an intolerable dread of death, devoted himself with intense assiduity to the discovery of the elixir of life and to alchemy. Such a comprehensive organization for the development of human knowledge never existed in the world before, and, considering the circumstances, never has since. To be connected with it was the passport to the highest Alexandrian society and ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... of the science of chemistry from the "science" of alchemy is a striking example of the complete revolution in the attitude of observers in the field of science. As has been pointed out in a preceding chapter, the alchemist, having a preconceived idea of how things should be, made all his experiments ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... ruler will be as incomprehensible to the democratic citizen as alchemy, but, in order to draw anything like true inferences or useful deductions, in order to understand the situation and to get a true likeness of the ruler, one must take this utterly unfamiliar and to us incomprehensible ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... character is wrought, Rounded and beautified, By the alchemy of that strange alloy, The intermingling of grief and joy; So nearer Heaven the spirit, brought Bleeding, so sorely tried, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... of such things here," said the Doctor. "In my youth, when I studied in the North, experiments of that nature exercised a powerful sway over my mind. I dabbled in alchemy; I tried and indeed considered that I succeeded in raising spirits and visions; but two things are necessary for such a study: youth, and the mists of the Northern country. Here the generous sun kills such phantasies. There are no phantoms here. Moreover, I am convinced that in all ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... wickedness that ever was woman to the destruction of man; ending her terrible life in an absorbing passion for art and literature which attracted to itself all that was most delicate and refined at the end of the seventeenth century; dabbling in alchemy, composing verses forgotten long ago, discoursing upon art with Bernini, dictating the laws of verse to the poet Guidi, collecting together a vast library of rare books and a great gallery of great pictures, and of engravings ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... sunshine that beckons on the blossoming and fruitage; it is the starlight dew that perfumes life with sweetness and besprinkles it with splendor; it is the music-tide that sweeps the soul, scattering treasures; it is the victorious and blessed leader of integrity's forlorn hope; it is the potent alchemy that transmutes failure into success; it is the hidden manna that nourishes when all other sustenance fails; it is the voice that speaks to hopes all dead, "Because I live, ye shall live also." For the loftiest ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... chair, with a brown-black leathern cushion, beside an oaken table or tressel, groaning under the weight of many ponderous volumes of all hues and subjects. Divers and occult were the tractates there displayed, and unintelligible save to the initiated. Alchemy was just then his favourite research, and he was vainly endeavouring to master the jargon under which its worthlessness and folly ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... those related to Chaucer's Pilgrims by the "Prioress" (one of the numerous repetitions of a cruel calumny against the Jews), and by the "Second Nun" (the supra-sensual story of Saint Cecilia). Hence, on the other hand, the greedy hunger for the marvels of astrology and alchemy, notwithstanding the growing scepticism even of members of a class represented by Chaucer's ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... not advanced more than two miles when he saw before him the superb city of Alcina. It was surrounded with a wall of gold, which seemed to reach the skies. I know that some think that this wall was not of real gold, but only the work of alchemy; it matters not; I prefer to think it gold, for ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... city. It was gone now from out his life, but everything about it seemed so good and fine; even its exclusive air was not ignoble. Clothed in the calm of history, the golden web of glorious tradition, radiant with the alchemy of memories, it bewitched him like the perfume of a woman's dress. At the entrance of a college they glanced in at the cool grey patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of a window flowerbox—secluded, mysteriously calm—a narrow vision of the sacred past. Pale and trencher-capped, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of prophecy; if these discoveries, instead of having been as they really were, preconcerted by meditation, and evolved out of his own intellect, had occurred by a set of lucky accidents to the illustrious father and founder of philosophic alchemy; if they presented themselves to Sir Humphry Davy exclusively in consequence of his luck in possessing a particular galvanic battery; if this battery, as far as Davy was concerned, had itself been an accident, and not (as in point of fact it was) desired and obtained by ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
