SOME FORTUNES MISAPPLIED.

He must be a wise man who handles a fortune well, A large proportion of, the men who have inherited fortunes made by others come to grief in the spending of them ; and, what is still more surprising, many who have displayed wonderful abiUty, energy, and method in the building up of fortunes have in the disposal of their wealth given way to acts of extreme folly. Of fortunes wasted in extravagance, fortunes wrecked in mad speculation, fortunes lost in riding expensive hobbies, there is a never-ending record, and numerous are the illustrious names that appear in the list. To go back to the Middle Ages, we find a strange group of misappliers of fortunes in the alchemists. The professors of the " science " were, for the most part, poor, the truth of Ttheir position and [power being sufficiently indicated in the fact that they offered to communicate the art of making gold for a few ounces of the very substance which they asserted they could manufacture

by the hundredweight, For all that, many, men of fair fortune, and some of high intellectual attainments, were attracted by this dream of a chemical solution of the problem of gold [production, and scores of misguided searchers after the impossible, when the dream had faded, found that they had been reduced from competency to poverty. Eaymond Lully, Paracelsus, Bernard of Treves, and many others played with Fortune to such an extent in pursuit of the philosopher's stone that they all in turn became her plaything. Bernard of Treves sacrificed his entire patrimony at the shrine of the gold phantom. He travelled through the principal cities of Europe, visiting the most celebrated alchemists, and spent his gold with unhesitating freedom without ever being able to make any. Once, after suffering a severe disappointment at Vienna, when an assembly of famous alchemists to whom he had been dispensing bounty and hospitality had failed in a grand combined experiment, he made a vow that he would think no more of transmutation, and kept the vow for two months ; but the old fascination came over him again, and he returned to his crucibles. Subsequently he visited Persia, his journey costing him upwards of 13.0Q0 crowns, about onehalf of which had been fairly melted in his all-devouring furnaces, and the other half lavished upon sycophants. On going back to Treves he found himself little better than a beggar ; so he went into exile at Ehodes, where he met with a monk as mad as himself, on alchemy. For about a year they worked together without much means, but a merchant who knew Bernard's family advanced him 8000 florins on the security of the last remnant of his once large estate, and with that sum he eked out three more years of toil, study, and experiment ; then, when all was gone, and he found himself decrepit, a beggar, and an exile, he came to the conclusion that the great secret of philosophy was " contentment with our lot." But he was 83 and could not start life again. He lingered two years longer in poverty, and then died, leaving behind him nothing but the lesson of a misspent life and a misapplied fortune. Denis Zachaire was another infatuated searcher for the Grand Elixir, who in the sixteenth century spent a fortune in useless experiments. Another was Count Laski, a Polish nobleman of considerable wealth, who became the dupe of the notorious Dr Dee and his assistant, Edward Kelly. He entertained the two alchemists at his palace for many months, furnished them with all necessary materials for their investigations, and fed them and their crucibles to such an extent that at last luin stared him in the face, and if it had not been that at this juncture he awoke from his delusion and shuffled out of the alchemists' toils, he would speedily have been bankrupt.