THE BENJAMIN WEST. BY LEIGH HUNT. two principal houses at which I visited, till the arrival of our relations from the West Indies, were Mr. West's (late President of the Royal Academy), in Newman-street, and Mr. Godfrey Thornton's (of the distinguished city family), in Austin-Friars. How I loved the Graces in one, and every thing in the other! Mr. West (who, as I have already mentioned, had married one of my relations) had bought his house, I believe, not long after he came to England; and he had added a gallery at the back of it, terminating in a couple of lofty rooms. The gallery was a continuation of the housepassage, and, together with one of those rooms and the parlor, formed three sides of a garden, very small but elegant, with a grass-plot in the middle, and busts upon stands under an arcade. The gallery, as you went up it, formed an angle at a little distance to the left, then another to the right, and then took a longer stretch into the two rooms; and it was hung with the artist's sketches all the way. In a corner between the two angles was a study-door, with casts of Venus and Apollo, on each side of it. The two rooms contained the largest of his pictures; and in the farther one, after stepping softly down the gallery, as if reverencing the dumb life on the walls, you generally found the mild and quiet artist at his work; happy, for he thought himself immortal. I need not enter into the merits of an artist who is so well known, and has been so often criticised. He was a man with regular, mild features; and, though of Quaker origin, had the look of what he was, a painter to a court. His appearance was so gentlemanly, that, the moment he changed his gown for a coat, he seemed to be full-dressed. The simplicity and selfpossession of the young Quaker, not having time enough to grow stiff (for he went early to study at Rome), took up, I suppose, with more ease than most would have done, the urbanities of his new position. And what simplicity helped him to, favor would retain. Yet this man, so well bred, and so indisputably clever in his art (whatever might be the amount of his genius), had received so careless, or so homely an education when a boy, that he could hardly read. He pronounced also some of his words, in reading, with a puritanical barbarism, such as haive for have, as some people pronounce when they sing psalms. But this was perhaps an American custom. My mother, who both read and spoke remarkably well, would say haive, and shaul (for shall), when she sung her hymns. But it was not so well in reading lectures at the Academy. Mr. West would talk of his art all day long, painting all the while. On other subjects he was not so fluent; and on political and religious matters he tried hard to maintain the reserve common with those about a court. He succeeded ill in both. There were always strong suspicions of his leaning to his native side in politics; and during Bonaparte's triumph, he could not contain his enthusiasm for the Republican chief, going even to Paris to pay him his homage, when First Consul. The admiration of high colors and powerful effects, natural to a painter, was too strong for him. How he managed this matter with the higher powers in England, I can not say. Probably he was the less heedful, inasmuch as he was not very carefully paid. I believe he did a great deal for George the Third with little profit. Mr. West certainly kept his love for Bonaparte no secret ; and it was no wonder, for the latter expressed admiration of his pictures. The artist thought the conqueror's smile enchanting, and that he had the handsomest leg he had ever seen. He was present when the "Venus de Medicis" was talked of, the French having just taken possession of her. Bonaparte, Mr. West said, turned round to those about him, and said, with his eyes lit up, "She's coming!" as if he had been talking of a living person. I believe he retained for the emperor the love that he had had for the First Consul, a wedded love, "for better, for worse." However, I believe also that he retained it after the emperor's downfall; which is not what every painter did. [From Household Words.] ALCHEMY AND GUNPOWDER. THE day-dream of mankind has ever been the Unattainable. To sigh for what is beyond our reach is, from infancy to age, a fixed condition of our nature. To it we owe all the improvement that distinguishes civilized from savage life to it we are indebted for all the great discoveries which, at long intervals, have rewarded thought. Though the motives which stimulated the earliest inquiries were frequently undefined, and, if curiously examined, would be found to be sometimes questionable, it has rarely happened that the world has not benefited by them in the end Thus Astrology, which ascribed to the stars an influence over the actions and destinies of man; Magic, which attempted to reverse the laws of nature, and Alchemy, which aimed at securing unlimited powers of self-reward; all tended to the final establishment of useful science. Of none of the sciences whose laws are fully understood, is this description truer than of that now called Chemistry, which once was Alchemy. That "knowledge of the substance or composition of bodies," which the Arabic root of both words implies, establishes a fact in place of a chimera. Experimental philosophy has made Alchemy an impossible belief, but the faith in it was natural in an age when reason was seldom appealed to. The credulity which accepted witchcraft for a truth, was not likely to reject the theory of the transmutation of metals, nor strain at the dogma of perpetual youth and health; the concomitants of the Philosopher's Stone. led; nor need it excite any wonder that in pursuit of the ideal, they accidentally hit upon a good deal that was real. The labors, therefore, of the Arabian physicians were not thrown away, though they entangled the feet of science in mazes, from which escape was only effected, after the lapse of centuries of misdirected efforts. From the period we have last spoken of, until the commencement of the eleventh century, the only Alchemist of note is the Arabian Geber, who, though he wrote on the perfections of metals, of the new-found art of making gold, in a word, on the philosopher's stone, has only descended to our times as the founder of that jargon which passes under the name of “gibberish." He was, however, a great authority in the middle ages, and allusions to "Geber's cooks," and "Geber's kitchen," are frequent among those who at length saw the error of their ways, after wasting their substance in the vain search for the elixir. A longer interval might have elapsed but for the voice of Peter the Hermit, whose fanatical scheme for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre was the cause of that gradual absorption, by the nations of the West, of the learning which had so long been buried in the East. The crusaders, or those, rather, who visited the shores of Syria under their protection—the men whose skill in medicine and letters rendered them useful to the invading armies-acquired a knowledge of the Arabian languages, and of the sciences cultivated by Arabian philosophers, and this knowledge they disseminated through Europe. Some part of it, it is true, was derived from the Moors in Spain, but it was all conveyed in a common tongue which began now to be understood. To this era belong the The Alchemists claim for their science the names of Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile; of remotest antiquity possible, but it was not until Isaac Beimiram, the son of Solomon the physithree or four centuries after the Christian era cian; of Hali Abbas, the scholar of Abimeher that the doctrine of transmutation began to Moyses, the son of Sejar; of Aben Sina, better spread. It was among the Arabian physicians known as Avicenna, and sometimes called Abothat it took root. Those learned men, through hali; of Averroes of Cordova, surnamed the whom was transmitted so much that was useful | Commentator; of Rasis, who is also called in astronomy, in mathematics, and in medicine, Almanzor and Albumasar; and of John of were deeply tinctured with the belief in an Damascus, whose name has been latinized into universal elixir, whose properties gave the Johannes Damascenus. All these, physicians power of multiplying gold, of prolonging life by profession, were more or less professors of indefinitely, and of making youth perpetual. alchemy; and besides these were such as ArteThe discoveries which they made of the suc- phius, who wrote alchemical tracts about the cessful application of mercury in many diseases, year 1130, but who deserves rather to be reled them to suppose that this agent contained membered for the cool assertion which he makes within itself the germ of all curative influences, in his "Wisdom of Secrets" that, at the time he and was the basis of all other metals. An wrote he had reached the patriarchal-or fabEastern imagination, ever prone to heighten ulous-age of one thousand and twenty-five the effects of nature, was not slow to ascribe years! a preternatural force to this medicine, but not The thirteenth century came, and with it finding it in its simple state, the practitioners came two men who stand first, as they then of the new science had recourse to combination, stood alone, in literary and scientific knowledge. in the hope, by that means, of attaining their One was a German, the other an Englishman; object. To fix mercury became their first the first was Albertus Magnus, the last Roger endeavor, and this fixation they described as Bacon. "catching the flying bird of Hermes." Once Of the former, many wonderful stories are embarked in the illusory experiment, it is easy told: such, for instance, as his having given a to perceive how far the Alchemists might be banquet to the king of the Romans, in the gar dens of his cloister at Cologne, when he converted the intensity of winter into a season of summer, full of flowers and fruits, which disappeared when the banquet was over; and his having constructed a marvelous automaton, called "Androïs," which, like the invention of his contemporary, Roger Bacon, was said to be capable of auguring all questions, past, present, and to come. But there never yet was an adept in any art or science who freely communicated to his pupil the full amount of his own knowledge; some thing for experience to gather, or for ingenuity to discover, is always kept in reserve, and the instructions of Roger Bacon stopped short at one point. He was himself engaged in the prosecution of that chemical secret which he rightly judged to be a dangerous one, and, To know more than the rest of the world in while he experimented with the compound of any respect, but particularly in natural philoso- sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal, he kept himphy, was a certain method by which to earn self apart from his general laboratory, and the name of a necromancer in the middle ages, wrought in a separate cell, to which not even and there are few whose occult fame has stood Hubert had access. To know that the friar higher than that of Roger Bacon. He was had a mysterious occupation, which, more than afraid, therefore, to speak plainly-indeed, it the making of gold or the universal medicine, was the custom of the early philosophers to engrossed him, was enough of itself to rouse couch their knowledge in what Bacon-himself the young man's curiosity; but when to this calls the "tricks of obscurity;" and in his cele- was added the fact, that, from time to time, brated" Epistola de Secretis," he adverts to the strange and mysterious noises were heard, acpossibility of his being obliged to do the same companied by bright corruscations and a new thing, through "the greatness of the secrets which and singular odor, penetrating through the he shall handle." With regard to the invention chinks close to which his eyes were stealthily of his greatest secret, we shall give the words riveted, Hubert's eagerness to know all that in which he speaks of the properties of gun- his master concealed had no limit. He resolved powder, and afterward show in what terms he to discover the secret, even though he should concealed his knowledge. Noyses," he says, perish in the attempt; he feared that there may be made in the aire like thunders, yea, was good reason for the accusation of dealing with greater horror than those that come of na- in the Black Art, which, more than all others, ture; for a little matter fitted to the quantity of the monks of Bacon's own convent countenanced; a thimble, maketh a horrible noise and wonderful but this apprehension only stimulated him the lightning. And this is done after sundry fashions, more. For some time Hubert waited without an whereby any citie or armie may be destroyed." opportunity occurring for gratifying the secret A more accurate description of the explosion of gunpowder could scarcely be given, and it is not to be supposed that Bacon simply confined himself to the theory of his art, when he knew so well the consequences arising from a prac tical application of it. On this head there is a legend extant, which has not, to our knowledge, been printed before, from which we may clearly see why he contented himself with the cabalistic form in which he conveyed his knowledge of what he deemed a fatal secret. longing of his heart; at last it presented itself. To afford medical assistance to the sick, was, perhaps, the most useful practice of conventual life, and the monks had always among them practitioners of the healing art, more or less skillful. Of this number, Roger Bacon was the most eminent, not only in the monastery to which he belonged, but in all Oxford. It was about the hour of noon on a gloomy day toward the end of November, in the year 1282, while the Friar and his pupil were sev Attached to Roger Bacon's laboratory, and a erally employed, the former in his secret cell, zealous assistant in the manifold occupations and the latter in the general laboratory, that with which the learned Franciscan occupied there arrived at the gate of the Franciscan conhimself, was a youthful student, whose name vent a messenger on horseback, the bearer of is stated to have been Hubert de Dreux. He news from Abingdon, that Walter de Losely, was a Norman, and many of the attributes of that people were conspicuous in his character. He was of a quick intelligence, and hasty couragc, fertile in invention, and prompt in action, eloquent of discourse, and ready of hand; all excellent qualities, to which was superadded an insatiable curiosity. Docile to receive instruction, and apt to profit by it, Hubert became a great favorite with the philosopher, and to him Bacon expounded many of the secrets-or supposed secrets-of the art which he strove to bring to perfection. He instructed him also in the composition of certain medicines, which Bacon himself believed might be the means of prolonging life, though not to the indefinite extent dreamed of by those who put their whole faith in the Great Elixi:. the sheriff of Berkshire, had that morning met with a serious accident by a hurt from a lance, and was then lying dangerously wounded at the hostelry of the Checkers in Abingdon, whither he had been hastily conveyed. The messenger added, that the leech who had been called in was most anxious for the assistance of the skillful Friar, Roger Bacon, and urgently prayed that he would lose no time in coming to the aid of the wounded knight. Great excitement prevailed among the monks on the receipt of this intelligence, for Walter de Losely was not only a man of power and intluence, but moreover, a great benefactor to their order. Friar Bacon was immediately sought and speedily made his appearance, the urgency of the message admitting of no delay. He hastily enjoined Hubert to continue the preparation of an amalgam which he was desirous of getting into a forward state, and taking with him his case of instruments with the bandages and salves which he thought needful, was soon monted on an easy; ambling palfrey on his way toward Abingdon, the impatient messenger riding before him to announce his approach. He hastily turned the leaf back and read again. The passage was that one in the "Epistola de Secretis" which spoke of the artificial thunder and lightning, and beneath it was the full and precise receipt for its composition. This at once explained the strange noises and the flashes of light which he had so anxiously noticed. Surprising and gratifying as this discovery might When he was gone, quiet again reigned in be, there was, Hubert thought, something bethe convent, and Hubert de Dreux resumed his yond. Roger Bacon, he reasoned, was not one occupation. But it did not attract him long. to practice an experiment like this for mere Suddenly he raised his head from the work and amusement. It was, he felt certain, a new form his eyes were lit up with a gleam in which joy of invocation, more potent, doubtless, over the beand fear seemed equally blended. For the first ings of another world, than any charm yet recordtime, for months, he was quite alone. What if ed. Be it as it might, he would try whether, he could obtain access to his master's cell and from the materials around him, it were not in penetrate the mystery in which his labors had his power to produce the same result. been so long enveloped! He cautiously stole to "Here are all the necessary ingredients," he the door of the laboratory, and peeped out into a exclaimed; "this yellowish powder is the well long passage, at the further extremity of which known sulphur, in which I daily bathe the a door opened into a small court where, de-argent-vive; this bitter, glistening substance is tached from the main edifice and screened from the salt of the rock, the salis petra; and this all observation, was a small building which the black calcination, the third agent. But the proFriar had recently caused to be constructed. portions are given, and here stands a glass He looked about him timorously, fearing lest he cucurbit in which they should be mingled. It might be observed; but there was no cause for is of the form my master mostly uses ses-round, apprehension, scarcely any inducement could with a small neck and a narrow mouth, to be have prevailed with the superstitious Francis- luted closely, without doubt. He has often told cans to turn their steps willingly in the direction me that the sole regenerating power of the uniof Roger Bacon's solitary cell. verse is heat; yonder furnace shall supply it, and then Hubert de Dreux is his master's equal!" Reassured by the silence, Hubert stole noiselessly onward, and tremblingly approached the forbidden spot. His quick eye saw at a glance that the key was not in the door, and his countenance fell. The Friar's treasure was locked up! He might see something, however, if he could not enter the chamber. He knelt down, therefore, at the door, and peered through the keyhole. As he pressed against the door, in doing so, it yielded to his touch. In the haste with which Friar Bacon had closed the entrance, the bolt had not been shot. Herbert rose hastily to his feet, and the next moment he was in the cell, looking eagerly round upon the crucibles and alembics, which bore witness to his master's labors. But beyond a general impression of work in hand, there was nothing to be gleaned from this survey. An open parchment volume, in which the Friar had recently been writing, next caught his attention. If the secret should be there in any known language. Hubert knew something of the Hebrew, but nothing yet of Arabic. He was reassured; the characters were familiar to him; the language Latin. He seized the volume, and read the few lines which the Friar had just traced on the last page. They ran thus: "Videas tamen utrum loquar in ænigmate vel secundum veritatem." And, further (which we translate): "He that would see these things shall have the key that openeth and no man shutteth, and when he shall shut no man is able to open again." "But the secret-the secret !" cried Hubert, impatiently, "let me know what 'these things' are!" The short November day was drawing to a close, when, after carefully tending the wounded sheriff, and leaving such instructions with the Abingdon leech as he judged sufficient for his patient's well-doing, Roger Bacon again mounted his palfrey, and turned its head in the direction of Oxford. He was unwilling to be a loiterer after dark, and his beast was equally desirous to be once more comfortably housed, so that his homeward journey was accomplished even more rapidly than his morning excursion; and barely an hour had elapsed when the Friar drew the rein at the foot of the last gentle eminence, close to which lay the walls of the cloistered city. To give the animal breathing-space, he rode quietly up the ascent, and then paused for a few moments before he proceeded, his mind intent on subjects foreign to the speculations of all his daily associations. Suddenly, as he mused on his latest discovery and calculated to what principal object it might be devoted, a stream of fiery light shot rapidly athwart the dark, drear sky, and before he had space to think what the meteor might portend, a roar as of thunder shook the air, and simultaneous with it, a shrill, piercing scream, mingled with the fearful sound; then burst forth a volume of flame, and on the wind came floating a sulphurous vapor which, to him alone, revealed the nature of the explosion he had just witnessed. "Gracious God!" he exclaimed, while the cold sweat poured like rain-drops down his forehead, "the fire has caught the fulminating powder! But what meant that dreadful cry? Surely nothing of human life has suffered! The boy Hubert-but, no-he was at work at the further extremity of the building. But this is no time for vain, conjecture-let me learn the worst at once!" And with these words he urged his affrighted steed to its best pace, and rode rapidly into the city. All was consternation there: the tremendous noise had roused every inhabitant, and people were hurrying to and fro, some hastening toward the place from whence the sound had proceeded, others rushing wildly from it. It was but too evident that a dreadful catastrophe, worse even than Bacon dreaded, had happened. It was with difficulty he made his way through the crowd, and came upon the ruin which still blazed fiercely, appalling the stoutest of heart. There was a tumult of voices, but above the outcries of the affrighted monks, and of the scared multitude, rose the loud voice of the Friar, calling upon them to extinguish the flames. This appeal turned all eyes toward him, and then associating him with an evil, the cause of which they were unable to comprehend, the maledictions of the monks broke forth. "Seize the accursed magician," they shouted; "he has made a fiery compact with the demon! Already one victim is sacrificed—our turn will come next! See, here are the mangled limbs of his pupil, Hubert de Dreux! The fiend has claimed his reward, and borne away his soul. Seize on the wicked sorcerer, and take him to a dungeon!" Roger Bacon sate stupefied by the unexpected blow; he had no power, if he had possessed the will, to offer the slightest resistance to the fury of the enraged Franciscans, who, in the true spirit of ignorance, had ever hated him for his acquirements. With a deep sigh for the fate of the young man, whose imprudence he now saw had been the cause of this dreadful event, he yielded himself up to his enemies; they tore him from his palfrey, and with many a curse, and many a buffet, dragged him to the castle, and lodged him in one of its deepest dungeons. The flames from the ruined cell died out of themselves; but those which the envy and dread of Bacon's genius had kindled, were never extinguished, but with his life. In the long years of imprisonment which followed-the doom of the stake being averted only by powerful intercession with the PopeBacon had leisure to meditate on the value of all he had done to enlarge the understanding and extend the knowledge of his species. "The prelates and friars," he wrote in a letter which still remains, "have kept me starving in close prison, nor will they suffer any one to come to me, fearing lest my writings should come to any other than the Pope and themselves." He reflected that of all living men he stood well-nigh alone in the consciousness that in the greatest of his inventions he had produced a discovery of incalculable value, but one for which on every account the time was not ripe. "I will not die," he said, "without leaving to the world the evidence that the secret was known to me whose marvelous power future ages shall acknowledge. But not yet shall it be revealed. Generations must pass away and the minds of men become better able to endure the light of science, before they can profit by my discovery. Let him who already possesses knowledge, guess the truth these words convey." And in place of the directions by which Hubert de Dreux had been guided, he altered the sentence as follows: "Sed tamen salis petre, LURU MONE CAP UBRE et sulphuris." The learned have found that these mystical words conceal the anagram of Carbonum pulvere, the third ingredient in the composition of Gunpowder. A [From a Month at Constantinople.] GLIMPSES OF THE EAST. BY ALBERT SMITH. TURKISH BATH.-The second day I was at Constantinople I had a bath, in the proper Turkish fashion; and this was quite as novel in its way as every thing else had been. The establishment patronized was the head one in Stamboul; and we went from the street into a very large hall, entirely of marble, with a gallery round the walls, in which were couches, as well as down below. On these different visitors were reposing; some covered up and lying quite still, others smoking narghilés, and drinking coffee. Towels and cloths were drying on lines, and in the corner was a little shed, serving as a Câfé. We went up-stairs and undressed, giving our watches and money to the attendant, who tied our clothes up in a bundle. He then tucked a colored wrapper round our waists, and threw a towel over our shoulders, after which we walked down stairs, and put on some wooden clogs at the door of the next apartment. The first thing these did was to send me head over heels, to the great discomfiture of my temporary costume, and equal delight of the bathers there assembled. We remained in this room, which was of an increased temperature, idling upon other couches, until we were pronounced ready to go into the second chamber. I contrived, with great care and anxiety, to totter into it upon my clogs, and found another apartment of marble, very warm indeed, and lighted from the top by a dome of glass "bull's-eyes." In the middle of this chamber was a hot, raised octagon platform, also of marble, and in the recesses of the sides were marble vases, and tanks, with taps for hot and cold water, and channels in the floor to carry off the suds. Two savage, unearthly boys, their heads all shaved, with the exception of a tuft on the top, and in their scant costume of a towel only, looking more like wild Indians than Turks, now seized hold of me, and forcing me back upon the hot marble floor commenced a |