The treatise itself is short and not of abnormal value. It represents the Hermetic art as the gift of God, and counsels the neophyte to love Him with all his heart and soul. It describes the mysteries of sublimation, and follows preceding authorities on the problem of the _prima materia_. Its generally indefinite and unprofitable character from any practical standpoint should make it an exceptional field for every species of fanciful interpretation. RAYMOND LULLY. The comparison of a brilliant but ephemeral reputation to “the comet of a season” has been transferred from the region of poetry into that of proverb, and is certainly applicable to no figure in the history of literature or science more completely than to the subject of this memoir. The name of Raymond Lully has indeed passed so completely into oblivion that it awakes no recollections whatever except in the minds of certain specialists in history and philosophy. Yet he exercised no small influence on his generation, while for a century after his death all intellectual Europe was acquainted with his method for the acquisition of the sciences and his voluminous literary and evangelistic labours. Raymond Lully united the saint and the man of science, the philosopher and the preacher, the apostle and the itinerant lecturer, the dialectician and the martyr; in his youth he was a courtier and a man of pleasure; in mature age he was an ascetic who had discovered the universal science through a special revelation from God; after his death he was denounced as a heretic, and then narrowly escaped beatification as a saint. While his relics worked miracles in Majorca, colleges were founded in various parts of Europe for teaching the _Ars Lulliana_, which was to replace the scholastic method; but the miracles ceased, the universal science fell into neglect, and, as the last scene in this eventful history, Raymond Lully appears in popular legends as an adept in alchemy, whose age was prolonged through centuries by the discovery of the elixir of life. Having succeeded in rescuing from oblivion and misrepresentation this singular man, whose sanctity was as eminent as his attainments were unique, I shall here present the first true history of his life and works to the reading public of England; the romantic narrative will be as interesting to the general student as to the occultist and the man of letters.