district where the people are not corrupted by luxury. To him enters an old gentleman who has discovered the philosopher's stone. This, as is known, enables a man to produce boundless wealth and also gives the power of restoring youth. The possessor, however, has been made so miserable that he is only anxious to die, and death, it seems, can only be secured by transferring the stone to another man, who must accept the same terms and be pledged to absolute secrecy. The purpose is to show how miserable a man would become when his exemption from mortality made him incapable of sympathy with his ephemeral companions. That is the kind of text which might have been treated effectively in the old moral tale of the Candide variety. Godwin not only expands it into a long quasi-historical novel, with all manner of impossible adventures and coincidences, but contrives to miss the moral. The point of the situation in his version comes to be the difficulty which St. Leon finds in accounting for his sudden accession to boundless wealth. He has a perfect wife, supposed to be meant for a portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft, but the poor lady is tormented by a curiosity as keen as that of Caleb Williams. In those days, no doubt, it would be more difficult
