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THOMAS VAUGHAN, 309
when its ways are paved with gold, and its gates are of
pearls and precious stones, and when the Tree of Life,
planted in the centre of Paradise, will dispense
health to
the whole of humanity 1 I foresee that my writings will
be esteemed as highly as the purest gold and silver now
are, and that, thanks to my works,
these metals will "be as
despised as dung."
The date of this author's birth was 1612;
he is
supposed to have been a native of Scotland, but the fact
of his placing a Welsh motto on the title of one of his
books, together with his true name, Thomas Yaughan,
which is pure Welsh, is a strong argument of his Welsh
nationality. He adopted various pseudonyms in the
different countries through which he passed in his wander-
ings as an alchemical propagandist. Thus in America he
called himself Doctor Zheil, and in Holland Carnobius.
According to Herthodt, his true name was Childe, while
Langlet du Fresnoy writes it Thomas Vagan, by
a char-
acteristic French blunder. His nom de plume was Eugenius
not Irenseus Philalethes, as Figuier states. 1 The life of this
adept is involved in an almost Rosicrucian uncertainty ;
was a mystery even to his publishers, who received his
works from " an unknown person." Nearly all that is as-
certained concerning him, and concerning his marvellous
transmutations, rests on the authority of Urbiger, who has
been proved inaccurate in more than one of his statements.
His sojourn in America is an established fact, according to
Louis Figuier, and the projections which he there accom-
plished in the laboratory of George Starkey, an apothecary,
were subsequently published by the latter in London.
1 Ireiiseus Philalethes was the pseudonym of George Starkey, the
American disciple of Thomas Vaughan.
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