he and the crew escaped to land, he had a
violent illness, through which he was nursed by
some Dominicans.

A general council was then sitting at Vienna,
and so soon as he was able to travel, he went
there to solicit assistance for the conversion
of the infidels. He made several propositions
which he could get no one to listen to. Whilst
at Vienna he received flattering letters from
Edward the Second, King of England, and
from Robert Bruce, King of Scotland,
entreating him to visit them. He had also, in
the course of his travels, met with John
Cremer, Abbot of Westminster, with whom
he formed a strong friendship; and, it was
more to please him than the king, that
Raymond consented to go to England. Cremer
had an intense desire to learn the last great
secret of alchemy—to make the powder of
transmutation—and Raymond, with all his
friendship, had never disclosed it. Cremer,
however, set to work very cunningly; he
was not long in discovering the object that was
nearest to Raymond's heart—the conversion
of the infidels. He told the king wonderful
stories of the gold Lully had the art to make;
and he worked upon Raymond by the hope
that King Edward would be easily induced
to raise a crusade against the Mahomedans, if
he only had the means. Raymond had
appealed so often to popes and kings that he
had lost all faith in them; nevertheless, as a
last hope, he accompanied his friend Cremer
to England. Cremer lodged him in his abbey,
treating him with distinction; and there
Lully at last instructed him in the powder,
the secret of which Cremer had so long desired
to know. When the powder was perfected,
Cremer presented him to the king, who
received him as a man may be supposed to
receive one who could give him boundless
riches. Raymond made only one condition;
that the gold he made should not be
expended upon the luxuries of the court or
upon a war with any Christian king; and
that Edward himself should go in person, with
an army against the infidels. Edward
promised everything and anything. Raymond
had apartments assigned him in the Tower,
and there he tells us he transmuted fifty
thousand pounds weight of quicksilver, lead,
and tin, into pure gold, which was coined at
the mint into six millions of nobles, each
worth about three pounds sterling at the
present day. Some of the pieces said to
have been coined out of this gold are still
to be found in antiquarian collections. To
Robert Bruce he sent a little work entitled
Of the Art of Transmuting Metals. Dr.
Edmund Dickenson relates that when the
cloister that Raymond occupied at
Westminster was removed, the workmen found
some of the powder, with which they enriched
themselves. During Lully's residence in England,
he became the friend of Roger
Bacon.

Nothing, of course, could be further from
King Edward's thoughts than to go on a
crusade. Raymond's apartments in the Tower
were only an honourable prison; and he
soon perceived how matters were. He
declared that Edward would meet with nothing
but misfortune and misery for his breach of
faith. He made his escape from England in
thirteen hundred and fifteen, and set off once
more to preach to the infidels. He was now
a very old man, and none of his friends could
ever hope to see his face again. He went
first to Egypt, then to Jerusalem, and
thence to Tunis. There he at last met
with the martyrdom he had so often braved.
The people fell upon him and stoned him.
Some Genoese merchants carried away his
body, in which they discerned some feeble
signs of life. They carried him on board their
vessel; but, though he lingered awhile, he
died as they came in sight of Majorca, on the
twenty-eighth of June, thirteen hundred and
fifteen, at the age of eighty-one. He was
buried with great honour in his family chapel
at St. Ulma, the viceroy and all the principal
nobility attending.

He left many works behind him—some are
in manuscript and some in print—the greater
number are to be found in the Royal Library
at Paris. Amongst the discoveries of Lully
we may mention the preparation of sweet
nitre; but his chief merit was that he perfected
and spread the knowledge of scientific
discoveries which were but little known
before his time.

Alexander Sethon was a Scotchman, and
lived at the end of the sixteenth and the
beginning of the seventeenth century.
Tradition credits him with having succeeded in
becoming master of the secret of making gold.
Whatever might have been his life before that
period, it is certain that at the moment which
seemed to crown him with the highest fortune,
he might have quoted old Gammer Gurton's
lamentation, and said:—"This first day
of my sorrow is the last day of my pleasure,"
for he knew no comfort afterwards. He passed
into Holland, and remained some time in the
house of one John Haussen, a mariner, in the
town of Erkusen, whom he had once hospitably
received and entertained when he was
shipwrecked on the coast of Scotland, near to
where he lived. He made several transmutations
in the house of this man, binding him to
secresy, which John Haussen kept pretty well;
although he thought it no harm to mention the
circumstance to Doctor Vandervelden, a
physician of Erkusen. He gave him also a piece of
gold on which he marked the hour and the
date of the reputed transmutation, March
thirteenth, sixteen hundred and two, at four
o'clock. Sethon proceeded on his travels,
making transmutations from time to time;
but news did not travel fast in those
days, and he might have escaped mischance
for a pretty long while, if his
evil genius had not led him into Saxony.
Here he made an imprudent display of