Being in Paris, Mr. Evelyn visited Marc Antonio, an ingenious enameller, who told him two or three stories of men who had the great arcanum, and who had successfully made projection before him several times. “This,” says Evelyn, who obviously hesitated between doubt and belief, “Antonio asserted with great obtestation; nor know I what to think of it, there are so many impostors, and people who love to tell strange stories, as this artist did; who had been a great rover, and spake ten different languages.” The most celebrated history of transmutation is that given by Helvetius, in his “Brief of the Golden Calf.” It is thus given by Mr. Brande. “The 27th day of December, 1666, came a stranger to my house at the Hague, in a plebeick habit, of honest gravity and serious authority, of a mean stature, and a little long face, black hair not at all curled, a beardless chin, and about forty-four years of age, and born in North Holland. After salutation, he beseeched me, with great reverence, to pardon his rude access, for he was a lover of the pyrotechnian art, and having read my treatise against the sympathetic powder of Sir Kenelm Digby, and observed my doubt about the philosophic mystery, induced him to ask me if I really was a disbeliever as to the existence of an universal medicine, which would cure all diseases, unless the principal parts were perished, or the predestinated time of death come. I replied, I never met with an adept, or saw such a medicine, though I had fervently prayed for it. Then I said, ‘Surely, you are a learned physician.’ ‘No,’ said he, ‘I am a brass-founder, and a lover of chemistry.’ He then took from his bosom-pouch a neat ivory box, and out of it three ponderous lumps of stone, each about the bigness of a walnut. I greedily saw and handled this most noble substance, the value of which might be somewhere about twenty tons of gold; and having drawn from the owner many rare secrets of its admirable effects, I returned him this treasure of treasures with a most sorrowful mind, humbly beseeching him to bestow a fragment of it upon me, in perpetual memory of him, though but the size of a coriander seed. ‘No, no,’ said he, ‘that is not lawful, though thou wouldest give me as many golden ducats as would fill this room; for it would have particular consequences, and if fire could be burned of fire, I would at this instant rather cast it into the fiercest flames.’ He then asked if I had a private chamber, whose prospect was from the public street; so I presently conducted him to my best furnished room backwards, which he entered, (said Helvetius, in the true spirit of Dutch cleanliness,) without wiping his shoes, which were full of snow and dirt. I now expected he would bestow some great secret upon me, but in vain. He asked for a piece of gold, and opening his doublet, showed me five pieces of that precious metal, which he wore upon a green riband, and which very much excelled mine in flexibility and colour, each being