s species of
modesty is displayed, it never fails to defeat its object. It but calls
forth a deeper homage, and fixes the demigod more firmly in his shrine.

The history of learning furnishes us with many examples of that species
of delusion in which a great mind submits itself to vulgar adulation,
and renounces unwillingly, if it renounces at all, the unenviable
reputation of supernatural agency. In cases where self-interest and
ambition are the basis of this peculiarity of temperament, and in an age
when the conjuror and the alchemist were the companions and even the
idols of princes, it is easy to trace the steps by which a gifted sage
retains his ascendancy among the ignorant. The hecatomb which is
sacrificed to the magician, he receives as an oblation to his science,
and conscious of possessing real endowments, the idol devours the meats
that are offered to him without analysing the motives and expectations
under which he is fed. But even when the idolater and his god are not
placed in this transverse relation, the love of power or of notoriety is
sufficient to induce good men to lend a too willing ear to vulgar
testimony in favour of themselves; and in our own times it is not common
to repudiate the unmerited cheers of a popular assembly, or to offer a
contradiction to fictitious tales which record our talents or our
courage, our charity or our piety.

The conduct of the scientific alchemists of the thirteenth, fourteenth,
and fifteenth centuries presents a problem of very difficult solution.
When we consider that a gas, a fluid, and a solid may consist of the
very same ingredients in different proportions; that a virulent poison
may differ from the most wholesome food only in the difference of
quantity of the very same elements; that gold and silver, and lead and
mercury, and indeed all the metals, may be extracted from transparent
crystals, which scarcely differ in their appearance from a piece of
common salt or a bit of sugarcandy; and that diamond is nothing more
than charcoal,--we need not greatly wonder at the extravagant
expectation that the precious metals and the noblest gems might be
procured from the basest materials. These expectations, too, must have
been often excited by the startling results of their daily experiments.
The most ignorant compounder of simples could not fail to witness the
magical transformations of chemical action; and every new product must
have added to the probability that the te