Roger Bacon was the first English alchemist. He was born in 1214. Popular belief attributed to him the contrivance of a machine to rise in the air, and convey a chariot more speedily than by horses; and also the art of putting statues in motion, and drawing articulate sounds from brazen heads. From this it appears that he had made considerable progress in the formation of automata. There can be no doubt that he discovered the mode of making gunpowder; in his works the secret may be found, veiled under an anagram. The discovery has, however, on doubtful authority, been ascribed to Berthold Schwartz, a German Benedictine friar, who lived about the middle of the fourteenth century. In an old print, the _merit_ of the invention is ascribed to the devil, who is represented as prompting the friar’s operations, and enjoying their success. Can we be surprised, that in an age of ignorance, the wonderful doings of Bacon obtained for him the name of a magician, and the friars of his own order refused to admit his works into their library, as though he was a man who ought to be proscribed by society? His persecution increased till 1278, when he was imprisoned, and obliged to own that he repented of the pains he had taken in the arts and sciences; and he was at last constrained to abandon the house of his order. The credulity and avarice of princes often caused them to arrest alchemists, and, by means of the torture, endeavour to force them to multiply gold, or furnish the powder of projection, that it might be ready for use at any time; but it was generally found that, like poetical composition, perfect freedom of thought and action were necessary to so desirable an end. There is an edict of Henry VI. king of England, in letters patent to lords, nobles, doctors, professors, and priests, to engage them in the pursuit of the philosopher’s stone, especially the priests, who having power (says the pious king) to convert bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, may well convert an impure into a perfect metal. Even Pope John XXII., the father of the church, was weak enough to become an adept; he worked at the practice of hermetic philosophy in Avignon, and at his death were found eighteen millions of florins in gold, and seven millions in jewels and sacred vases. Notwithstanding his writing a treatise on alchemy, and making transmutations, yet such was the mischief arising in his times from the knavery of pretended alchemists, that he issued a bull, condemning all traders in this science as impostors. Pope Sixtus V. had a true idea of the real value of this science; for, when one presented to him a book on alchemy, his holiness gave the author an empty purse, emblematic of the vanity of the study.