2^3 8 & F THE PROLONGATION 



that no- fuch means of artificially prolonging life h 

 known. How fad and deplorable would it be, if the 

 great clafs of thdfe who feem born for no other purpofe 

 than to confume the fruits of the earth, could prolong 

 their inlignificant exiftence at pleafure i or if a defpot 

 fhould get pofieffion of fuch means, and thereby put 

 Mmfelf in a capacity of exercifing his tyranny through 

 feveral centuries ! A thoufand times better for the 

 Imman race that there fhould be no fuch means, which 

 in. all probability is the cafe. 



THE eventful hiftory of the adept Nicholas Fla-* 

 mel, with which we have been lately entertained by an 

 efiimable anonymous correfpondent, is at leaft not fo 

 much known in England, but that to many readers it 

 may have the charm of novelty. It is undoubtedly in 

 more than one refpect the moil remarkable of all the 

 adeptical hiftories, chiefly in regard to the wonderful 

 credibility it is faid to have acquired from the mouth 

 of an. ufbec dervife two hundred years after FlamePs 

 death.. But what particularly and very much to its ad- 

 vantage,, diffinguiihes it from other legends of thefe 

 luminaries, is the circumftance, that Nicholas Flamel, 

 it, as far as my knowledge reaches, the only gold- 

 #naker who built churches and endowed fpitals, and 

 left behind him thefe foundations in being at this very 

 day, as (apparently) real evidences to pollerity of the 

 truth of his pretences that he was in poUeiTion of the 

 plxilofopher'a Hone, 



The 



