Category: Biographies
The word +chêmeia+--from which we derive our English word 'chemistry'--first occurs, it is said, in the Lexicon of Suidas, a Greek writer who flourished in the eleventh century. Here is his definition of it:
The word +chêmeia+--from which we derive our English word 'chemistry'--first occurs, it is said, in the Lexicon of Suidas, a Greek writer who flourished in the eleventh century....
3. CHAPTER I.It was in the early years of the fourteenth century that the two pseudo-sciences of alchemy and astrology, the supposititious sisters of chemistry and astronomy, made their way...
4. Scene II. introduces us to Friar Bacon's cell at Brasenose College,Oxford (an obvious anachronism, as the college was not founded until long after Bacon's time). Enter Bacon and his poor scholar, Miles, with books under his arm; also three doct...
5. Scene XI.--_Friar Bacon's Cell._FRIAR BACON is discovered lying on a bed, with a white stick in one hand, a book in the other, and a lamp lighted beside him; and the BRAZEN HEAD, and MILES with weapons by him._
6. Scene XII. passes in King Henry's Court, and the royal consent isgiven to Earl Lacy's marriage with the Fair Maid, which is fixed to take place on the same day as Prince Edward's marriage to the Princess Elinor. In Scene XIII. we again go bac...
7. CHAPTER II.The world must always feel curious to know the exact moment when its great men first drew the breath of life; and it is satisfactory, therefore, to be able to state, on the weig...
8. CHAPTER III.I am not prepared to say, with its modern editor, that Dr. Dee's Diary[26] sets the scholar magician's character in its true light more clearly than anything that has yet been p...
9. CHAPTER IV.The secrecy, the mystery, and the supernatural pretensions associated with the so-called occult sciences necessarily recommended them to the knave and the cheat as instruments o...
10. CHAPTER V.'Lilly was a prominent, and, in the opinion of many of his contemporaries, a very important personage in the most eventful period of English history. He was a principal actor in...
11. CHAPTER VI.It is not very easy to trace the origin of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. It is not easy, indeed, to get at the true derivation of the name 'Rosicrucian.' Some authorities refer i...
12. CHAPTER I.To various conspicuous and easily intelligible causes the witch and the warlock, like the necromancer and the astrologer, owed their power with the multitude. First, there was t...
13. CHAPTER II.The accession of James I., a professed demonologist, and an expert in all matters relating to witchcraft, gave a great impulse to the persecution of witches in England. 'Poor ol...
14. CHAPTER III.The honour of discouraging prosecutions for witchcraft belongs in the first place to France, which abolished them as early as 1672, and for some years previously had refrained f...
15. CHAPTER IV.Among the people of Scotland, a more serious-minded and imaginative race than the English, the superstition of witchcraft was deeply rooted at an early period. Its development w...
16. v. She was also accused of lending to Meryann Nasmith a pair ofhead-sheets in childbed, into which she put her witchcraft: which sheets, as soon as she knew they had taken heat about the woman's head, immediately she went and took them from...
17. vi. Three years since, or thereby, James Ailhows, having been a longtime in her service, Janet desired him to continue with her, and on his refusing, 'Gang where you please,' she said, 'I will see that you do not earn a single cake of bread for...
18. vii. For twenty years past she continually and nightly, after eleveno'clock, when her husband and servants had gone to their beds, put on a great fire, and kept it up all night, and sat before it using witchcraft, altogether contrary to the natu...
19. ix. She and Janet Patton having fallen into variance and discord,Janet Patton called the witch 'Karling,' to whom she answered that she would give her to understand if she was a witch, and would try her skill upon her. And immediately afterwa...
20. x. The particulars given of the case of James Lowe, stabler, arealmost the same. He refused to lend his kill and barn, and on the same day he was seized with this remarkable sickness--half a day burning hot, and half a day ice-cold. On his d...
21. xii. There is an air of novelty about the next case, that of JohnAllan, cutler, Janet Wishart's son-in-law. Quarrelling with his wife, he 'dang' her, 'whereupon Mistress Allan complained to her mother, who immediately betook herself to her so...
22. xiii. The next case must be given verbatim, it is so striking an'Four years since, or thereby, she came in to Walter Mealing's dwelling-house, in the Castlegate of Aberdeen, to buy wool, which they refused to sell. Thereafter, she came to th...
23. xiv. On Yule Eve, in '94, at three in the morning, Janet, remaining inGilbert Mackay's stair in the Broadgate, perceived Bessie Schives, spouse of Robert Blinschell, going forth of her own house to the dwelling-house of James Davidson, notary, to...
24. xv. At Midsummer was a year or thereby, Elspeth Reid, herdaughter-in-law, came into her house at three in the morning, and found her sitting, mother naked as she was born, at the fireside, and another old wife siclike mother naked, si...
25. xvii. The following deposition is, however, the most singular of all:Twelve years since, or thereby, Janet came into Katherine Rattray's, behind the Tolbooth, and while she was drinking in the said Katherine's cellar, Katherine reproved her for d...
26. CHAPTER V.It should teach us humility when we find a belief in witchcraft and demonology entertained not only by the uneducated and unintelligent classes, but also by the men of light and...