Michael Sendivogius died at Parma in 1646, aged eighty-four years, having been counsellor of state to four emperors successively. His only daughter had married an army captain against her father’s wish. He left her nothing but a “Treatise on the Salt of the Philosophers,” which has never been printed, and, therefore, must not be confused with a spurious work which has been ascribed to him under a similar title. * * * * * The Sethon-Sendivogius treatises are generally known under the collective title, “A New Light of Alchemy.” They were written to counteract the many adulterated and false receipts composed through the fraud and covetousness of impostors. The procedure they indicate is declared to be the result of manual experience. “Many men, both of high and low condition, in these last years past, have to my knowledge seen Diana unveiled. The extraction of the soul out of gold or silver, by what vulgar way of alchymy soever, is but a mere fancy. On the contrary, he which, in a philosophical way, can, without any fraud and colourable deceit, make it that it shall really tinge the basest metal, whether with gain or without gain, with the colour of gold or silver (abiding all requisite tryals whatever), hath the gates of Nature opened to him for the enquiring into further and higher secrets, and with the blessing of God to obtain them.” It is thus in the writings of the alchemists that we are continually glimpsing or hearing of altitudes beyond transmutation, of regions of achievement which nothing in the pages of the adepts prove them to have actually explored, but which in possession of a comprehensive theory of organic and inorganic development they beheld as a Promised Land. The “New Light of Alchemy” insists on the existence of a sperm in everything, and that all Nature originated at the beginning from one only seed. It treats of the generation of metals and the manner of their differentiation, of the extraction of their seed, and of the manufacture of the stone or tincture. FOOTNOTES: [AF] See Desnoyer’s Letter in Langlet du Fresnoy’s _Histoire de la Philosophie Hermétique_. Borel, in his Gallic Antiquities, recounts that he, with many others at Paris, saw this crown-piece. He describes it as partly gold, so far only as it was steeped in the elixir. The gold part was porous, being specifically more compact than in its silver state. There was no appearance of soldering, or of the possibility of deception. [AG] See _Vie de Sendivogius, tirée de la Rélation de Jean Bodowski_. GUSTENHOVER. A respectable goldsmith, named Gustenhover, resided at Strasburg in 1603. In a time of great peril he gave shelter to a certain M. Hirschborgen, who is described as good and religious. On leaving his house after a considerable stay, this person presented his humane host with some powder of projection, and then, departing on his journey, was heard of no more.