On the other side of the house, old Roger Chillingworth arranged his study and laboratory: not such as a modern man of science would reckon even tolerably complete, but provided with a distilling apparatus and the means of compounding drugs and chemicals, which the practised
alchemist knew well how to turn to purpose.
that thy father is already in the hands of a powerful
alchemist, who knows how to convert into gold and silver even the rusty bars of a dungeon grate.
According to the great
alchemist, Pierre de Boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India made him eloquent.
And, in fine, of false sciences I thought I knew the worth sufficiently to escape being deceived by the professions of an
alchemist, the predictions of an astrologer, the impostures of a magician, or by the artifices and boasting of any of those who profess to know things of which they are ignorant.
Doctor Cacaphodel, the
alchemist, returned to his laboratory with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible, and burned with the blow-pipe, and published the result of his experiments in one of the heaviest folios of the day.
The care imprinted in the lines of Caleb's face, and his absorbed and dreamy manner, which would have sat well on some
alchemist or abstruse student, were at first sight an odd contrast to his occupation, and the trivialities about him.
This, according to the big brother, was the dwelling-place of an
alchemist "old and grey with a long beard.
They were regular
alchemists at Durham's; they advertised a mushroom-catsup, and the men who made it did not know what a mushroom looked like.
There are days when every stream is Pactolus and every man is Croesus, and thanks to that first and greatest of all
alchemists, the sun, the morning I write of was a morning when to breathe was gold and to see was silver.
Religious discord has lost her sting; the cumbrous weapons of theological warfare are antiquated; the field of politics supplies the
alchemists of our times with materials of more fatal explosion, and the butchers of mankind no longer travel to another world for instruments of cruelty and destruction.
This little coterie of friends was composed of seven famous men, who possessed many talents in common, being poets and musicians,
alchemists, philosophers, and mostly hard drinkers as well.
He gave a history of the long dynasty of the
alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent by which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and base.
alchemist - one who was versed in the practice of alchemy and who sought an elixir of life and a panacea and an alkahest and the philosopher's stone