them? I think not.
Yet why should men have taken all this trouble to make, not a man, but a
trumpet?"

Our profound philosopher was right not to agitate the question whether
these brazen heads had ever spoken. Why should not a man of brass
speak, since a doll can whisper, a statue play chess,[200] and brass
ducks have performed the whole process of digestion?[201] Another
magical invention has been ridiculed with equal reason. A magician was
annoyed, as philosophers still are, by passengers in the street; and he,
particularly so, by having horses led to drink under his window. He made
a magical horse of wood, according to one of the books of Hermes, which
perfectly answered its purpose, by frightening away the horses, or
rather the grooms! the wooden horse, no doubt, gave some palpable kick.
The same magical story might have been told of Dr. Franklin, who finding
that under his window the passengers had discovered a spot which they
made too convenient for themselves, he charged it with his
newly-discovered electrical fire. After a few remarkable incidents had
occurred, which at a former period would have lodged the great
discoverer of electricity in the Inquisition, the modern magician
succeeded just as well as the ancient, who had the advantage of conning
over the books of Hermes. Instead of ridiculing these works of magic,
let us rather become magicians ourselves!

The works of the ancient alchemists have afforded numberless discoveries
to modern chemists: nor is even their grand operation despaired of. If
they have of late not been so renowned, this has arisen from a want of
what Ashmole calls "apertness;" a qualification early inculcated among
these illuminated sages. We find authentic accounts of some who have
lived three centuries, with tolerable complexions, possessed of nothing
but a crucible and a bellows! but they were so unnecessarily mysterious,
that whenever such a person was discovered, he was sure in an instant
to disappear, and was never afterwards heard of.

In the "Liber Patris Sapientiae" this selfish cautiousness is all along
impressed on the student for the accomplishment of the great mystery. In
the commentary on this precious work of the alchemist Norton, who
counsels,

Be thou in a place secret, by thyself alone,
That no man see or hear what thou shalt say or done.
Trust not thy friend too much wheresoe'er thou go,
For he thou trustest best, sometyme may be thy foe;

Ashmole observ