changed. It subjected every farmer, every manufacturer, every merchant and shopkeeper, to the continual visits and examination of the tax-gatherers, whose number was necessarily very great. This monstrous impost was permitted to ruin the industry and commerce of the greater part of the kingdom down to the invasion of Napoleon. Catalonia and Aragon purchased from Philip V. an exemption from the alcavala, and, though still burdened with other heavy taxes, were in a comparatively flourishing state, in consequence of their exemption from this oppressive duty. (See M'Culloch On Taxation.)
ALCAZAR DE SAN JUAN, a Spanish town, in the province of Ciudad Real, 45 miles N.E. of Ciudad Real, and on the railway between Alicante and Madrid. It is a well-built town, and has manufactures of soap, saltpetre, and gunpowder. This is the Alce of the Romans, taken by T. Sempronius Gracchus 180 B.C. Population, 7800.
ALCAZAR KEBIR, a city of Marocco in Africa, 80 miles N.W. of Fez. It was formerly of great note as the magazine and place of rendezvous for the Moorish invasions of Spain. It is now greatly decayed, probably on account of its low and unhealthy situation. Not far from the city is the river Elmahassen, famous for the battle fought in 1578 between Sebastian, king of Portugal, and the Moors, in which the Portuguese were defeated and their king slain. Population, 6000.
ALCESTER, pronounced Auster, a market town in the county of Warwick, situated at the junction of the Arrow and Alne, 14 miles W.S.W. of Warwick. Its position on the Roman way known as the Ickenild Street, and the discovery of numerous remains of ancient art, as well as urns and coins, make it sufficiently evident that this was a Roman encampment. A monastery was founded here in 1140; but the building has totally disappeared, though sufficient vestiges remain to indicate its site. The church is a fine building, and contains several interesting monuments, one of which, to the marquis of Hertford, is by Chantrey, and is in the best style of that sculptor. The town possesses a free grammar school and an elegant market-hall. Employment is afforded to about 1200 of the inhabitants in the manufacture of needles, which is the chief branch of industry. Fish-hooks are also manufactured. Population of parish, 2363.
ALCESTIS, or Alceste, the daughter of Pelias and Anaxibia, and wife of Admetus, king of Pheræ in Thessaly. She consented to die in place of her husband, and was afterwards restored to life by Hercules. This beautiful instance of conjugal devotion forms the subject of one of the best plays of Euripides, the Alcestis, which furnishes the basis for Robert Browning's Balaustion's Adventure.
ALCHEMY, Chemy, or Hermetics. Considering the present state of the science and the advance of public opinion, the old definition of alchemy as the pretended art of making gold is no longer correct or adequate.
Modern science dates from three discoveries—that of Copernicus, the effect of which (to borrow St Simon's words) was to expel the astrologers from the society of astronomers; that of Torricelli and Pascal, of the weight of the atmosphere, a discovery which was the foundation of physics; lastly, that of Lavoisier, who, by discovering oxygen, destroyed the theory of Stahl, the last alchemist who can be excused for not being a chemist.
Before these three grand stages in the progress of science, the reign of astrology, magic, and alchemy was universal and almost uncontested. Even a genius like Kepler, who by his three great laws laid the foundations for the Copernican system, was guided in his investigations by astrological and cabalistic considerations. Hence it follows that a philosophical history of modern science is certain to fall into the opposite superstition of idolising abstract reason, if it does not do full justice to this long and energetic intellectual struggle which began in India, Greece, and Egypt, and, continuing through the dark ages down to the very dawn of modern enlightenment, preceded and paved the way for the three above-mentioned discoveries, which inaugurated a new era.
It was the alchemists who first stated, however confusedly, the problems which science is still engaged in solving; and to them, in conclusion, we owe the enormous service of removing the endless obstructions which a purely rationalistic method, born before its time and soon degenerating into verbal quibbles and scholastic jargon, had placed in the path of human progress.
Alchemy was, we may say, the sickly but imaginative infancy through which modern chemistry had to pass before it attained its majority, or, in other words, became a positive science. The search for gold was only one crisis in this infancy. This crisis is over, and alchemy is now a thing of the past. There is no longer any need to exhort adventurous spirits, who hope to find Golconda at the bottom of their crucibles, to leave such visions and turn to the safer paths of science or industry. The battle has been fought and won, the problem of the unity of chemical elements or simple bodies belongs rather to the province of metaphysics than to that of experimental science. If here and there an honest student of the black art still survives, he is regarded as a mad but harmless enthusiast; and as for the pretended searchers for the philosopher's stone, they are, if possible, less interesting objects than the dupes they still continue to cheat. Thus the full time ig come for applying to the occult sciences the same searching analysis to which the other myths of prehistoric times have been so rigorously subjected. To trace its earliest beginnings, to investigate its development by the aid of modern criticism, is the province of physical science, no less than of the sister science of morals. Nay, more, we shall find that both had a common origin. Those ancient cosmogonies, those poetical systems which the genius of each nation and race has struck out to solve the problem of the universe and of the destiny of mankind, were the germs of science no less than of literature, of philosophy as well as of religion. And as in the infancy of science its various branches were confused and confounded, so in a like stage of society we often find the same person uniting the parts of philosopher, savant, and priest. Besides this, it is evident that in the absence of all scientific apparatus or instruments, the ancients, if they had limited themselves to the exercise of their reason, must have remained observers and nothing more. It is true they did observe, and that widely and well; but observation alone, even when aided by the strongest and subtlest reason, can lead to nothing but contradictory theories, irreconcilable, because they cannot be verified. And it is not in human nature to remain a simple spectator. Curiosity was first excited by fancy (and the fancy of primitive man, we must remember, was far more active and vigorous than ours), and when it found itself baffled by a natural reaction, it had recourse to divination.
In a word, the ambition of these earliest philosophers was more intense, because its sphere was narrower. In the first stages of civilisation the magician was the man of science. The mysteries of this magic art being inseparable from those of religion and philosophy, were preserved, as it were, hermetically sealed in the adyta of the temple. Its philosophy was the cabala. We must consequently look on the various cabalas or oral traditions, transmitted from age to age as the oracles of various faiths and creeds, as constituting the elements of that theory which the Jewish, cabala promulgated some centuries later in a condensed and mutilated form. Astrology and magic were the efforts
