cessive popes
with little or no success. The first was a plan for the introduction of
the oriental languages into all the monasteries of Europe; the second, for
the reduction into one of all the military orders, that, being united,
they might move more efficaciously against the Saracens; and the third,
that the sovereign pontiff should forbid the works of Averroes to be read
in the schools, as being more favourable to Mahometanism than to
Christianity. The pope did not receive the old man with much cordiality;
and, after remaining for about two years in Rome, he proceeded once more
to Africa, alone and unprotected, to preach the Gospel of Jesus. He landed
at Bona in 1314, and so irritated the Mahometans by cursing their prophet,
that they stoned him, and left him for dead on the sea-shore. He was found
some hours afterwards by a party of Genoese merchants, who conveyed him on
board their vessel, and sailed towards Majorca. The unfortunate man still
breathed, but could not articulate. He lingered in this state for some
days, and expired just as the vessel arrived within sight of his native
shores. His body was conveyed with great pomp to the church of St.
Eulalia, at Palma, where a public funeral was instituted in his honour.
Miracles were afterwards said to have been worked at his tomb.

[34] Vidimus omnia ista _dum ad Angliam transiimus, propter
intercessionem domini Regis Edoardi illustrissimi_.

[35] Converti una vice in aurum ad L millia pondo argenti vivi,
plumbi, et stanni.--_Lullii Testamentum_.

Thus ended the career of Raymond Lulli, one of the most extraordinary men
of his age; and, with the exception of his last boast about the six
millions of gold, the least inclined to quackery of any of the professors
of alchymy. His writings were very numerous, and include nearly five
hundred volumes, upon grammar, rhetoric, morals, theology, politics, civil
and canon law, physics, metaphysics, astronomy, medicine, and chemistry.

ROGER BACON.

The powerful delusion of alchymy seized upon a mind still greater than
that of Raymond Lulli. Roger Bacon firmly believed in the philosopher's
stone, and spent much of his time in search of it. His example helped to
render all the learned men of the time more convinced of its
practicability, and more eager in the pursuit. He was born at Ilchester,
in the county of Somerset, in the year 1214. He studied for some time in
the University of Oxford, and a