It is from a perfect truth of keeping that poetry chiefly derives its verisimilitude-a quality without which it can make no appeal to the heart. Poetry professes to have witnessed that of which it makes report. If its witness be true, the sympathies of men will eventually seal that truth and receive that witness if its tidings be but hearsay, its empiricism will be proved by the inconsistent babbling with which men describe what they have not known. Let a man's theme be ever so high or ever so low, he may have seen what he speaks of, or he may have only wished to see it. Burns, when he describes a daisy uprooted by the plough, is not more truthful than Dante, when Dante sings of the choirs that rejoice in heaven. The former sees with true poetic insight that which actually exists; the latter with a more creative eye, but with equal truthfulness, sees that which might exist, and which, if it existed, would appear as it presented itself to him in definite and authentic vision. It is thus that in arduous instances of fore-shortening, positions of the human form which could never have been observed, even in the model, by the outward eye of the painter, are faithfully exhibited by his inspired guesses. Dante's unshaken self-possession in the midst of the marvels around him, is itself a proof that his vision was true; for had it been false, that artificial excitement, which alone could have sustained the illusion, would have swept him into the vortices of splendor and motion which he describes; and he would have written with as unsteady a hand as his imitators have ever done. Self-possession, a thing very different from unimpassioned sedateness, is a note of mature greatness in poetry; and it is so noble a resultant of it that repose itself, which has often been extolled as an ultimate merit in art, may, perhaps, derive no small part of its charm from the fact that it is among the modes by which self-possession is evinced. This is one of the characteristics, which mark the analogy between the inspiration of the true poet and that of the true prophet. Without it enthusiasm runs into madness, and passion is is called poetical painting. "The representations in the Fairy Queen,' in 'Paradise Lost,' and in Dante's Inferno,' have each a specific character, appropriate to the poems in which they are found respectively. The first are dream-like, fit for fairyland; the second are cosmological: they are grand symbols of the universe; while Dante's Spirit-world, especially the first division of it, is described with matter-of-fact particularity."-Appendix to Coleridge's Biographia Literaria," last edition. self-destructive: without it greatness, instead of rolling onward in an ever-ascending wave, perpetually tumbles over like a breaker, and loses itself in foam. Closely allied to selfpossession is that rare attribute-poetic moderation-which excludes such exaggerated admiration of one especial excellence as might lead to the neglect of others. The highest poetry rests upon a right adjustment of contending claims. Some persons are advocates of the sensuous, and others of what has latterly been called the subjective; but poetry of the first order reconciles both demands, being of all things the most intellectual in its method and scope, while in its form and imagery it is the largest representation of visible things. Partaking at once of the nature both of Science and of Art, it spiritualizes the outward world while it embodies the world of Thought. It composes also the border warfare between passion and imagination. Though passion frees a man from self, yet it sells him in bondage to outward things: it clasps the material world like a vine, sucks out and circulates its life-blood, stirs up heroic natures to high achievements, and yet, being servile in its nature, it makes the end of their wanderings a blind subjection to Fate. Passion is, therefore, the sanguine life of that tragic poetry which hailed in Bacchus a master-just as the poetry of mirth and grace boasted a protector in Mercury. The imagination, on the other hand, passes through all barriers, spurns the mountain-tops and feeds on each succeeding object, but only till it has gained strength to outsoar it. This is the poetry which sought a patron in Apollo-the lord of light, deliverance, and healing. Passion by itself would violate the freedom, imagination would transcend the limits of art. Whatever qualities tend to maintain this twofold equipoise, to which the innumerable balances of poetry are subordinate, promote its keeping and its truth. Poetry is a large thing, and poetic truth is but one department of it. There are few of its departments which have not been ably illustrated in the recent as well as the earlier periods of English literature; and to exalt any one of them with exclusive reverence, is among the last things we should desire. The root of theological heresy has been traced to a disposition arbitrarily to select and lift on high some one great verity, which in thus losing its relative position loses half its value. And no doubt such a disposition is equally fruitful in poetical and philosophical heresies. It has seemed to COMES that question on thy spirit Which it brought to souls before thee, Since our wisdom's youth- Ask'st thou, "What is truth?" Earth will send thee answering voices By far ways in sooth. Saith the priest, "What I have taught," Saith the sage, "What I have sought," And some whisper, "But found not." Searcher, that is Truth! Fiercely speak the world's hard workers, "In the growth of halls and manors, Never yet hath walked with power Pens are hailed and crowns flung by- Searcher, this is Truth!" There are sadder tones that murmur From the inward sea: 'Seek thou all earth's wealth bestoweth, Hope for all her wisdom showeth; By thy stars, not thee. If they lend not to thy years Of Time's cankering tooth- Ever thus the dark responses As the sands of life are shaken, Yet in tireless youth; From the New Monthly Magazine. ALCHEMY, ANCIENT AND MODERN. As may readily be imagined, from the nature of the subject, one of the interlocutors is very eager, the other very cautious. Elardus pushes home, but the Devil is very cunning of fence, and reveals only just enough to stimulate the questioner to seek for more without his direct assistance. After some preliminary matter with regard to the actual existence of the stone, the necromancer asks: "Is it not possible for a man to make this same ston?" To this the Devil, who exhibits a great deal of pious submission throughout the conversation, and actually does what Lord Byron thought impossible—“talk like a clergyman"-replies: "Whatsoever God hathe revealed, it is possible for a man to enter into; yf it have a pptio, (proportion.) But it were difficult to make the ston; and yet, notwithstanding, it may be made by man." This is rather vague and misty, but Elardus catches at the last admission, and inquires : darke and obskure names and manye operations." The last part of this statement is as true as if the Devil had not made it. The colloquy is continued for some time, until, at last, Elardus, tired of beating about the bush, puts it to his friend direct: By what means and wherefore is it called a ston ?" Stat nominis umbra is the motto of the Devil as well as of Junius, and with a prudence and wariness which would have done honor to a general of the Jesuits, the Father of Lies backs out of the difficulty, making answer: "I say unto you his name is a ston, and there is not so muche liberty given unto me to manifest any further of this matter unto thee." The question, therefore, as far as the Devil. was concerned, remained just where it was. It is possible, taking into consideration the clerical style of his discourse, that he was at the moment under the influence of some compunctious visitings, and forebore to enlighten the world so fully as he has subsequently done. Perhaps, since then, he has had more provocation." Pearce, the Black Monk, who was the author of one of the "obskure" works above alluded to, seems to have wished the world to understand that he had achieved the Great Secret, for in the rhymed production which bears his name, he says, in treating of the elixir, "Take erth of erth, erth's moder, But the reader may go through the entire poem without getting any nearer the mark than the Catalonian necromancer did. Pearce, the Black Monk, like many of his fellow-laborers, was too discreet to reveal his know ledge to any but the initiated. What they | less, had carefully studied the "Bird of knew they wisely kept to themselves, though Hermes," and if all accounts be true, he did they had no objection to the world's giving so to advantage. This man was the celethem credit for not having had their labor for brated Nicholas Flamel, a countryman of their pains. One of these philosophers, Raymond Lully, born at Pontoise, in the year named Jean de la Fontaine, a native of Va- 1328. His parents were poor, and left him lenciennes, who wrote a poem about the little more than the house in Paris, in the commencement of the fifteenth century, inti- Rue des Notaires, which he possessed at the tuled "La Fontaine des Amoureux de Sci- time he was last heard of in France, for of ence," does not confine himself to mere hints, his supposed death we shall have something but states with sufficient distinctnesss that more to say. He earned a livelihood in he had actually made the grand discovery, Paris as a scrivener, copying deeds or writfor at the conclusion of his poem he speaks ings in Latin or French; but, looking beyond the narrow limits of his profession, sought his fortune by a darker and more uncertain track than even the law. Chemistry was the mystic guide that beckoned him onward, and the sole purpose for which it was studied in the time of Flamel was because in its unknown depths was supposed to lie the secret of transmuting metals, and with it the art of renewing eternal youth. He became an Hermetic student about the year 1357, while he was yet in his thirtieth year. thus: 66 J'ay à nom Jehan de la Fontaine : Alfonso the Wise was another who had plucked out the heart of this mystery. He speaks in one of his poems (the usual vehicle for conveying alchemical knowledge) of the manner in which he toiled with his master, who knew how to make the stone, and afterwards of how they made it together: "La piedra que llaman filosofal Sabia facer, e me la enseño, Raymond Lully, who flourished in the time These parables and allusions appear to have found an interpreter in one who, doubt Amongst the works which he studied were probably all that treated of the Divine philosophy-the translated writings of Claudius, Ptolemy, and of Geber, of Aben Sina (Avicenna) of Averroes, and of Friar Bacon, as well as those of such of his own countrymen as had distinguished themselves in the science; Raymond Lully, as we have already conjectured, and Jehan de Meung, the collaborator of Guillaume de Lorris, in the "Romance of the Rose," but the author also of a treatise which bears the title of "Les Rémonstrances de Nature à l'Alchymiste errant; avec la réponse du dict Alchymiste." But the volume to which he was most indebted, according to his own account, was a very curious book which fell, by chance, into his hands, and cost him only two florins. It is thus described in Miss Costello's "Memoirs of Jacques Coeur, the French Argonaut," a work of the highest interest, dramatic as well as historical: "It was a gilded book, very old, and of very great size, made neither of paper or parchment, like other books, but of the bark, apparently, of young trees, and was bound with leather, (another account says of brass,) curiously wrought with strange characters, written in an unknown, but seemingly an Oriential tongue. The interior was bark, and the characters were Latin, beautifully colengraved with a short-pointed instrument on the ored. The book contained three times seven leaves. At the end of the first division was a leaf without any writing, but instead thereof a painting, repre up. senting a rod, with serpents swallowing each other At the second division was seen a cross, on which a serpent was crucified; and at the end was painted a desert, with many beautiful foun tains, from whence issued numerous serpents, disporting here and there. On the first leaf was written, in large golden capitals, as follows: Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer and Philosopher. To the Nation of the Jews, by the wrath of God, dispersed through Gaul, Health.' Then followed often-repeated and severe denunciations and maledictions, in which the word Maranatha' was frequently used against any who might presume to attempt to read the book, unless he were sacrificer or scribe." This work contained the prima materia of the alchemical science; but, in spite of his being a scribe and able to read Latin, it was perfectly hieroglyphical to poor Flamel, and also, as may believed, to the partner of his bosom, his wife Pernelle, to whom he showed it. Despairing, after much study, to arrive at the real secret without further assistance, Flamel made a vow to perform a pilgrimage into Spain, to endeavor to find some Jew who, he imagined, might be able to enlighten him on the subject. He accordingly caused his manuscript to be copied, and took the copy with him on his pilgrimage. At Leon, returning after a fruitless search, he fell in with a learned Jew named Canches, (or Sanchez,) to whom he showed it, who immediately professed such anxiety to see the original that he resolved to join Flamel on his journey home. On the way he interpreted much of the hidden mystery of the volume, but did not live to reach Paris, being taken ill at Orleans, where he died, and Flamel persued his journey alone. He says: "He that would see the manner of my arrival and the joy of Pernelle, let him look upon us two in the city of Paris, upon the door of the chapel of Saint Jacques la Boucherie, close by the one side of my house, where we are both painted kneeling and giving thanks to God." It is very possible that Nicholas was himself the artist, for he is known to have been a proficient in painting, as far as proficiency went in those days. my own house, Pernelle being only present." Continuing in the course marked out by his book, on the 25th of April of the same year he at length, by the operation of the red stone, projected fine gold, still in the presence of Pernelle. Husband and wife made a good use of the discovery, devoting the riches they thus acquired to charitable purposes, endowing no less than fourteen hospitals, three chapels, and seven churches, all of which were new built, besides innumerable acts of charity in Paris and the village of Boulogne. In addition to his piety, Flamel was anxious to leave written proofs of his knowledge, and composed his "Summary of Philosophy," after the model of Jehan de Meung's work, and subsequently wrote a commentary on the hieroglyphics which he had erected in the public street, near the Cimetière des Innocens. According to certain biographers, he died in 1419, outliving his wife Pernelle seven years; but they who wrote his epitaph knew nothing of the real state of the case. It was not for one who had discovered the elixir vitæ quietly to render up the ghost, even at the advanced age of ninety-one, which he had reached at the above date; but that no scandal might be rife against him in his native city, where he had done so much good, by confounding him with the Wandering Jew, he took himself off to the East, accompanied by the faithful partner of all his toils, and the sharer in all his fortunes. They feigned sickness and disappeared, two logs of wood being interred in their stead; and that no doubt of the truth of the story may remain on anybody's mind, Paul Lucas, a most conscientious and trustworthy traveller, whose only fault, perhaps, was that of having too large a belief, and who labored under the impression that he had himself seen the Devil Asmodeus in Upper Egypt, declares that he met with a dervise who was intimately acquainted with Nicholas Flamel and his wife; and, moreover, assured Lucas that they were at that time in the enjoyment of perfect health. We have been thus particular in treating of Nicholas Flamel, because his is the most circumstantial case of hermetic projection on record, which may reconcile those to the possibility of making money who would not believe in the fact without a well authenti Although through the assistance of the Jew Canches he had now acquired some insight into the prima materia, he was several years before he attained the perfect knowledge necessary for the completion of the great work. But at length he succeeded in project-cated precedent. ing upon mercury, and converted about a pound weight into pure silver. "This," he declares, was done in the year 1382, on January 17th, about noon, being Monday, in The other side of the picture exhibits failures enough, and we shall advert to a few, for the simple purpose of showing what the difficulties were which the most successful |