Eastern historians relate the trouble and expense incurred by the succeeding Caliphs, who, resigning the Saracenic barbarism of their ancestors, were glad to collect from all parts the books which were to furnish forth a princely library at Bagdad. How the learned scholar sighs when he reads of seven hundred thousand books being consigned to the ignominious office of heating forty thousand baths in the capital of Egypt, and of the magnificent Alexandrian Library, a mental fuel for the lamp of learning in all ages, consumed in bath furnaces, and affording six months' fuel for that purpose. The Arabians, however, made amends for these barbarous deeds in succeeding centuries, and when all Europe was laid waste under the iron rule of the Goths, they became the protectors of philosophy and the promoters of its pursuits; and thus we come to the seventh century, in which Geber, an Arabian prince lived, and is stated to be the earliest of the true alchemists whose name has reached posterity. Without attempting to fill up the alchemical history of the intervening centuries, we leap forward six hundred years, and now find ourselves in imagination in England, with the learned friar, Roger Bacon, a native of Somersetshire, who lived about the middle of the thirteenth century; and although the continual study of alchemy had not yet produced the "stone," it bore fruit in other discoveries, and Roger Bacon is said, with great appearance of truth, to have discovered gunpowder, for he says in one of his works:--"From saltpetre and _other_ ingredients we are able to form a fire which will burn to any distance;" and again alluding to its effects, "a small portion of matter, about the size of the thumb, _properly disposed_, will make a tremendous sound and coruscation, by which cities and armies might be destroyed." The exaggerated style seems to have been a favourite one with all philosophers, from the time of Roger Bacon to that of Muschenbroek of the University of Leyden, who accidentally discovered the Leyden jar in the year 1746, and receiving the first shock, from a vial containing a little water, into which a cork and nail had been fitted, states that "he felt himself struck in his arms, shoulders, and breast, so that he lost his breath, and was _two days_ before he recovered from the effects of the blow and the terror;" [Page 83] adding, that "he would not take a _second_ shock for the kingdom of France." Disregarding the numerous alchemical events occurring from the time of Roger Bacon, we again advance four hundred years--viz., to the year 1662, when, on the 15th of July, King Charles II. granted a royal charter to the Philosophical Society of Oxford, who had removed to London, under the name of the Royal Society of London for Promoting Natural Knowledge, and in the year 1665 was published the first number of the _Philosophical Transactions_; this work contains the successive discoveries of Mayow, Hales, Black,