FLAMEL, Nicolas, a reputed French alchemist, and a caligrapher to the university of Paris, was born about 1330. Becoming a money lender, he amassed immense wealth, with which he built a large number of churches and endowed various charities. He died at Paris 22d March 1418, and was buried in the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, to which he bequeathed the bulk of his property. His unusual prosperity acquired for him, either during his life or shortly after his death, the reputation of being an alchemist, and gradually his history became incrusted with legend. It was said that he accidentally discovered the secret of alchemy in an old book by a Jewish astrologer which happened to come into his hands, and that after reaching a good old age in France, he and his wife mysteriously disappeared, presumably to live in splendour in the East through the aid of the philosopher’s stone. A book on alchemy exists in the imperial library of Paris with an inscription professing to have been written by Nicolas Flamel, but plainly a forgery. In 1561 also, a small treatise entitled Sommaire Philosophique de Nicolas Flamel was published among a collection of alchemist treatises entitled Transformation métallique. These and similar inventions were, however, exploded by Vilain’s Essai sur V Histoire de Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, 1758, which contains an account of the life of Flamel, derived from the archives and other authentic documents of the parish. See also Description de la Ville de Paris au quinzième Siècle, par Guillebert de Metz, published for the first time from De Metz’s manuscript by Leroux de Lincy, Paris, 1855.