The name of Michael Scot is principally familiar to English readers through Sir Walter Scott’s _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. Shakespeare’s _Tempest_ and Scott’s _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ are probably the two, best-known works among English classics which breathe throughout the weird and fascinating atmosphere of mediæval magic. Prospero is a magician, and the whole plot of the _Tempest_ is based upon his magical practices and their consequences. The Lady of Branksome in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ has also learned from her father the “forbidden art.” Her father was a clerk of fame Of Bethune’s line of Picardie: He learned the art that none may name, In Padua, far beyond the sea. Men said, he changed his mortal frame By feat of magic mystery; For when, in studious mood, he paced St Andrew’s cloistered hall, His form no darkening shadow traced Upon the sunny wall! And of his skill, as bards avow, He taught that Ladye fair, Till to her bidding she could bow The viewless forms of air. In order the more effectually to accomplish her purposes, she dispatches her staunch henchman, William of Deloraine, to Melrose Abbey, where lies buried the wizard, Michael Scot, and buried with him, the Book of Might, which contains those potent spells whereby the great wizard had achieved his world-wide celebrity. “The Monk of St Mary’s Aisle,” now an ecclesiastical veteran of some hundred summers, had in earlier days fought the Moslem on the fields of Spain, and had there met and become an intimate friend of the much dreaded wizard. He had attended him at his death-bed, and had himself buried him in Melrose Abbey, receiving injunctions from him in his last hours never to allow the Book of Might to be disinterred “save at his chief of Branksome’s need.” For Michael Scot himself was a native of Teviot Dale, though his life had been spent in Italy, in Spain, and at Palermo in Sicily in attendance at the court of the Emperor Frederick II., whose fame became in a curious way linked with his own. The date of Michael Scot’s departure from Sicily for Spain was approximately 1210 A.D., and coincided with the turning-point of that long war of centuries which ended in the ejection of the Moorish conquerors from the Spanish peninsula. 1212 A.D. was the date of the decisive battle of Las Navas, which resulted in a crushing defeat for the Moorish forces, and led within fifty years to their retirement from all parts of Spain with the exception of the province of Granada. Scot was at this time in Spain pursuing his studies in Alchemy, Astrology, and the forbidden arts generally, and translating the works of the learned Arabians, Avicenna, Averroes, and Geber, and rewriting their