alchymic art last quoted tells us, “will restore you to the health and soundness you have lost.” With this result I shall not have laboured in vain, and you will all admit I have tried my hardest to obey the command of our ex-Oddship, Bro. Quaritch,
“To discover the Philosopher’s Stone,”
and present it to you accordingly as an Odd Volume.
Now, in my “mind’s eye,” I see a sceptical, unpoetical Brother, who can evolve nothing from his inner consciousness but the conception of hard solid facts: he says with Hamlet,—“Man delights not me, nor women either.” His mind has been intent on the absolute discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone; and he is almost angry with me that I have not discovered it. He smiles at my story of the Sicilian labourer; and, as to the Vases of “Padway in Italy,” he believes them to be mythical and unreal; and
