Lntroduction. Di 
mons would be but to tire you ; I must not 
omit to name, however, that of the great 
Paracelsus ; he corrected me, and begged I 
would call him by the name he was proud to 
be known by,— “Theophrastus Aureolus 
Bombastes Paracelsus.” He said he agreed 
with many of Roger Bacon’s ideas; was, 
moreover, convinced that that glorious Elixir, 
which would prolong life indefinitely, had 
been discovered by him; “but,” he added, 
passing his hands over his brow, thought- 
fully, ‘‘I procrastinated. I made the same 
mistake Roger Bacon made, I did not drink 
of the Elixir in time, and so died before I 
could reap the benefit of my discovery. I 
should have rejoiced to have been your guest 
at a meeting of the Sette of ‘Odd Volumes’ 
one night. By the bye,” he resumed, “ there 
is a very good article on Alchemy in the 
Encyclopedia Britannica (1879); in this the 
writer says of me: ‘ His work, like his genius, 
oscillates perpetually between magic and 
science ; but what has not been sufficiently 
