Various
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453
With this episode, we close for the present, and will go into the history of Uncle Tom in a subsequent paper.
FORTUNES OF A LITERARY GOLD-SEEKER
The same passion for gold-seeking, which in our day has developed itself in a new form, raged in Europe from the depth of the middle ages till the eighteenth century was far advanced. By the arrival of the latter period, however, a good deal of discredit had been thrown upon the business; awkward revelations had been made; well-authenticated facts had been turned outside in; and, in fine, the world's dread laugh helped not a little to put down the conviction of ages. That conviction did not relate to the existence of natural hoards of the precious metal. Such idle dreams were left to the fanciful and superstitious, whose stores were usually situated in the bosom of mountains, and guarded by gnomes and demons. The others were more rational and practical: they sought to obtain their end by means of legitimate science, based upon virtue and religious faith. This basis is the only thing that since then has been unanimously abandoned; for philosophers are still by no means agreed as to the impossibility of making gold.
Only a few of the gold-seekers of the present day are literary men, for the pickaxe does not very naturally replace the pen; but at the time we speak of, almost the whole tribe were authors. Borel, in 1654, makes the list amount to 4000; but this is an exaggeration; many of his names being imaginary, and some cut into several pieces. We have before us, however, a catalogue by a less zealous compiler, brought between eighty and ninety years further down, containing about 2500 treatises by about 900 authors—a number which we consider not the least remarkable of the facts connected with the hermetic science. All these works, with the exception of a small number, are in Latin; and ten of them are the production of a certain Bernard Trevisanus, to give him his learned name, although he was born at Padua in 1406. We do not, however, particularise this author on account of the value of his books, for we are thankful to say we have never seen his Secret Work of Chemistry, or his Philosophers' Egg, or, in fact, a single line he has written;3 but we look upon him in his personal character as the very ideal of a gold-seeker; and we are on that account anxious to rescue his name from the obscurity in which it rests.
Bernard's attachment for his life-long profession was spontaneous, perhaps instinctive. He had no need to apply himself to make the precious metals, for he was born with a piece of one of them in his mouth—the piece which is technically called a silver spoon. He had the rank of count; and his father, a doctor of medicine, leaving him a sufficient fortune, he had nothing to do but to enjoy the world in any way he thought fit. We shall see how he managed. When only fourteen years of age, he fell in with one of the works of the Arabian physician Rhasis, and this led him, after four years' labour, to the fountain-head of the occult philosophy, Geber. The latter, next to Hermes himself, is the acknowledged chief of the science, and Trevisan found himself in good hands; although he wished he had made his acquaintance earlier, as he had already spent to no purpose about 800 crowns. The reader must not suppose that the wealth of adepts vanished in the common operations of chemistry; for in point of fact, the material consumed was the material sought for—gold. Some, indeed, supposed that by subliming or purifying the imperfect metals to a high enough degree, they might convert them into the perfect one; but in general it was acknowledged that there was no way of making gold but by means of gold itself. The philosopher's stone, as it was called, was a powder containing the pure essence of gold, and how to obtain this was the question.
Trevisan was not without friends and advisers in the great search. Philosophers gathered about him like bees; and by their assistance, together with the formulæ in the works of Geber, he had soon spent 2000 crowns more. But he was not discouraged. He applied to the treatises of Archelaus, Rufreissa, and Sacro-bosco; associated a monk with him in his experiments; and in the course of three years had rectified spirits of wine more than thirty times, till it reached a point at which no glass was strong enough to hold it. That was very well; but it cost more than 300 crowns, and he was no nearer his object than before.
He now began to dissolve, congeal, and sublime common salt, sal-ammonia, the alums, and copperas; and in distillation, circulation, and sublimation, he spent twelve busy years, at a cost of about 6000 crowns. Trevisan almost lost faith in human science, and set himself earnestly to pray for illumination. In this he was assisted by a magistrate of his own country; but while invoking divine aid, they were all the while working away with marine salt. This substance they continued to rectify for eight months without finding any change in its nature. It will be seen, that the object of all these experiments was to find a solvent powerful enough to separate the essence of gold from its material, the spirit from the body; but it now struck him like a flash of lightning, that aqua fortis must be the thing; and throwing himself upon this substance in its state of greatest intensity, he tried it first upon silver, then upon common mercury—but all in vain.
However, our Bernard was still in the flower of his age—he was only forty-six: nothing for a philosopher. He began to travel, with the view of collecting wisdom in his way; and at length fell in with Maître Geoffrey Leuvrier, a Cistercian monk, a man after his own heart. These congenial companions set to work at first upon hens' eggs, calcining even the shells; till at the end of eight laborious years, devoted to these and other substances, they had acquired the skill of at least preparing in an artistic manner the furnaces used in their operations. After this, he attached himself to another theological friend, who was prothonotary of Berghes, in Flanders; and with him he worked during fourteen months in distilling copperas with vinegar. But the result of the experiments was nothing better than a quartan-ague.
When Bernard began to get better, the interesting intelligence came to his ears, that Maître Henry, confessor of the Emperor Ferdinand III., possessed the secret of the philosopher's stone. Our adept, therefore, set out at once for Germany, and by means of the good offices of friends, and the liberal expenditure of money, obtained an introduction to the fortunate man. With him he set to work with a good heart; but after rectifying and dissolving till they were tired, he found that he had only succeeded in melting away 300 crowns more of his wealth. The thing grew serious. He was now fifty-eight. He could afford to dally no longer: it was necessary to find the secret of the hermetic science at once, or give up the search. Trevisan pondered over his critical position for two entire months; but at the end of that time a ray of hope flashed across the gloom of his meditations. The nature of the hope we do not know; we can only tell what was the course of action on which it determined him. He arose suddenly from his depression, and, girding up his loins, began to travel. He went first to Rome; then to Spain; then to Turkey; then to Greece. He passed into Egypt; then into Barbary; then visited Rhodes; and then traversed a portion of Palestine and Persia. He then returned to France, by way of Messina, and visited England, Scotland, and finally Germany. Wherever he went, it was the same thing. The phantom he followed fled as he pursued; and alike in the heart of London, and in the deserts of the Holy Land, he saw appearing, and then vanishing, in the distance—
The unreached paradise of his despair
That the secret existed, there could be no doubt; for it was a part of Trevisan's creed that it was born before the Flood; that it was revealed to the Israelites in their passage through the Desert; and that it had thus been handed down through the various generations of men. In his own travels, there was no want of true philosophers here, there, and everywhere. But they were alone; they kept their science to themselves; and they fixed upon the inquirer a stony gaze, which petrified his heart. Pretenders, on the contrary, were as open as day—there was no end to their civilities: but their favours were expensive; they cost altogether, including his travelling expenses, about 13,000 crowns; and he was at length obliged to sell an estate which had produced him the agreeable little revenue of 8000 German florins.
Bernard was now sixty-two years of age, within a year of his grand climacteric. He had succeeded in divesting himself by degrees of all his property, with the exception of what afforded him a very bare subsistence; and his relatives, incensed at a conduct which their ignorance of science prevented them from appreciating, had turned their backs upon him. Poor, friendless, and alone, he had hatched his Philosophers' Egg to some purpose; and now what was he to do? He must, in the first place, find some cheap retirement, where he could at least live; and accordingly he set out for a place he had visited in his travels—the island of Rhodes. Why he should have chosen the island of Rhodes more than any other island, or an island more than any part of the mainland, it would be difficult to tell. But Bernard speedily saw that he had been conducted thither by the hand of destiny; for in his solitary wanderings he encountered a monk whom he at once recognised as a kindred spirit. It would be too long to tell how they fell into talk about the Companions of Cadmus, the Doves of Diana, the Dragon, the Serpent, and the Nymphs; of the Male, the Female, and the Hermaphrodite; of the Hermetic Sulphur which exists in gold, and of the means of coagulating with this sulphur the sacred Mercury. Suffice it to say, that their conversation excited in them an intense desire to experiment, and an absolute conviction that the collision of two such intellects would strike out the sublime spark of truth. But how to manage? Gold could not be made without the aid of gold; and they had not a piece between them. But here the lucky stars of our philosopher interposed. Bernard fell in with a merchant to whom his family was known, and his adventures unknown; and the good man had the kindness to lend him 8000 florins. This was a trifling debt to incur at a time when he stood on the very brink of the Secret; and the two friends set to work with a will. They occupied themselves for three years in dissolving gold and silver; and then discovered that their fund was exhausted, and that nothing remained to them of all their labours but the embers of the fire.
Trevisan applied to philosophy for consolation: he set himself to read attentively Arnold of Villenova. This 'great theologian, skilful physician, and learned alchemist,' as we are assured by Andreas, a celebrated lawyer of his day, was in the habit of making gold at pleasure; but not satisfied with this triumph, he would needs interfere in the concerns of religion, and more especially scandalised the whole orthodox world by affirming, 'that the works of charity and medicine are more agreeable to God than the services of the altar.' He was likewise the master in the sublime science of the famous Raymond Lully, who, as is well known to English history (although the fact is omitted by the historians), converted in one operation 50,000 lbs. weight of mercury, lead, and tin, into pure gold, which was coined into rose nobles. Raymond, like his master, was a great theologian, and the grand aspiration of his life, to which he finally fell a martyr, was the conversion of the infidels. In reading him, also—for Bernard was led naturally from one to the other—he was greatly struck with that blending of religion with science which is observable in almost all the Hermetic books, where the practical part of Christianity, the love of God and man, is inculcated as the fundamental maxim. On this he pondered for eight years, by which time he had attained the ripe age of seventy-three, and then at length the mind of the adept opened to the Secret he had been so long and so blindly pursuing.
His Search was successful. He was now able to separate the pure spirit from the material gold that had all his life been harmonising and fusing, and while reading the books of the alchemists, to collect their truths, and pass over their errors as dross. It was two years before he had fairly accustomed his mind to this view of the subject; but his life was prolonged for five years more, during which time, notwithstanding his poverty and solitude, he probably enjoyed the only real happiness he had ever known. He reached the age of eighty-four, and, in the year 1490, gave up his last breath with a smile. If a bystander had inquired at the moment he was passing away, what it was which gave this illumination to his countenance, and this tranquillity to his heart, he would doubtless have answered, the philosopher's stone.
After his death, he obtained the reputation he had missed when living. His works were widely circulated, and some of them printed so late as 1672. They were reckoned an important help to the student of hermetic science; and the name of the luckless Bernard Trevisan was always included in the list of great adepts.
LACON'S BOAT-LOWERING APPARATUS
The want of a ready means of lowering boats from vessels in distressed circumstances, has been exemplified with the most tragical results in such cases as those of the Orion, Birkenhead, and Amazon. Mr W. S. Lacon, late of the H.E.I.C.'s service, has invented a plan for making them quickly available, which seems likely to be successful. It was tried on the 5th August by the Regatta Committee at Folkestone, with the approval of a great number of persons professionally qualified to pronounce on the subject. The wind was blowing strongly from the southwest, with a heavy surge running. This proved fortunate, for the better testing of the efficacy of the system. In the first trial, a boat was lowered from the steamer by one man, with several persons on board, and alighted on the water, abaft of the larboard paddle-box, with the utmost safety and apparent comfort, the tackle being released momentarily by the weight of the boat's descent, the vessel at the time steaming at the rate of 12½ knots per hour. It was afterwards hoisted up again by two men. At the second trial, the boat was lowered and cleared from the ship by one man, with Mr Lacon and three men on board, the vessel at the time maintaining full speed. The same experiments were performed several times during the day, in a similarly successful manner. The apparatus employed by Mr Lacon is very compact and simple, being fixed under the deck-seats, so as to be not in the least incommodious. In treating of this patent invention, the Liverpool Mercury says, Mr Lacon has succeeded in 'solving a problem which has hitherto baffled the ingenuity of scientific and practical men, and attaining the "desideratum of lowering boats evenly, and of rapidly disengaging the tackles," by a self-acting contrivance. Mr Lacon takes as his principle the well-known axiom in mechanics, that what is gained in power is lost in time; and although he approves of the method at present in use, as being the best for hoisting up boats: he (seeing that the hoisting need never be a hurried operation) substitutes two single ropes or chains, which, being secured to two broad slings passing round the body of the boat, are then brought inboard on davits, and carried to two concave barrels connected together by means of a shaft. The ends of the ropes or chains are secured to the barrels in such a manner that they will support any amount of weight until such time as the boat has reached the water, when they will disconnect and fall away from their attachment by their own weight, by which means he prevents the possibility of a ship, in its onward progress through a rough sea, dragging forward a lowered boat sideways, and capsizing or swamping it. By means, then, of a friction-strap and pulley round the shaft, one man is enabled to regulate the descent of the boat, which will go down by its own weight; and by means of the parallel action of the two barrels, he lowers both ends uniformly, and insures the boat falling in a proper position on the water.'