Basil Valentine, the German Benedictine monk and alchemist, who wrote a book which he quaintly termed The Triumphant Wagon, in praise of the healing properties of antimony, actually thought that he had discovered the Elixir of Life in tartrate of antimony, more generally known as tartar emetic.  He administered large doses of this turbulent remedy to some ailing monks of his community, who promptly all died of it.

The main characteristics of the Alchemists is their wonderful clarity.  For instance, when they wish to refer to mercury, they call it “the green lion,” and the “Pontic Sea,” which makes it quite obvious to every one.  They attached immense importance to the herb “Lunary,” which no one as yet has ever been able to discover.  Should any one happen to see during their daily walks “a herb with a black root, and a red and violet stalk, whose leaves wax and wane with the moon,” they will at once know that they have found a specimen of the rare herb “Lunary.”  The juice of this plant, if boiled with quicksilver, has only to be thrown over one hundred ounces of copper, to change them instantly into fine gold.  Paracelsus’ directions for making the Philosopher’s Stone are very simple:  “Take the rosy-coloured blood of the lion, and gluten from the eagle.  Mix them together, and the Philosopher’s Stone is thine.  Seek the lion in the west, and the eagle in the south.”  What could be clearer?  Any child could make sufficient Philosopher’s Stones from this simple recipe to pave a street with—­a most useful asset, by the way, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the present time, for every bicycle, omnibus and motor-lorry driving over the Philosopher Stone-paved street would instantly be changed automatically into pure gold, and the National Debt could be satisfactorily liquidated in this fashion in no time.

Whenever I returned home on leave, whether from Berlin, Petrograd, Lisbon, or Buenos Ayres, I invariably spent a portion of my leave at Glamis Castle.  This venerable pile, “whose birth tradition notes not,” though the lower portions were undoubtedly standing in 1016, rears its forest of conical turrets in the broad valley lying between the Grampians and the Sidlaws, in the fertile plains of Forfarshire.  Apart from the prestige of its immense age, Glamis is one of the most beautiful buildings in the Three Kingdoms.  The exquisitely weathered tints of grey-pink and orange that its ancient red sandstone walls have taken on with the centuries, its many gables and towers rising in summer-time out of a sea of greenery, the richness of its architectural details, make Glamis a thing apart.  There is nothing else quite like it.  No more charming family can possibly be imagined than that of the late Lord Strathmore, forty years ago.  The seven sons and three daughters of the family were all born musicians.  I have never heard such perfect and finished part-singing as that of the Lyon family, and they were always singing:  on the way to a cricket-match; on the road home from