among the chemical sages. Deep mysteries were conjectured to be veiled by it. Verses were written in the highest strain of the Rosicrucian language. _Ashmole_ confessed he meant nothing more than a kind of pun on his own name, for the tree was the _ash_, and the creature was a _mole_. One pillar tells his love of music and freemasonry, and the other his military preferment and astrological studies! He afterwards regretted that no one added a second volume to his work, from which he himself had been hindered, for the honour of the family of Hermes, and “to shew the world what excellent men we had once of our nation, famous for this kind of philosophy, and masters of so transcendant a secret.” Modern chemistry is not without a _hope_, not to say a _certainty_, of verifying the golden visions of the Alchymists. Dr. Gertänner, of Gottingen, has lately adventured the following prophecy: “In the _nineteenth century_ the transmutation of metals will be generally known and practised. Every chemist and every artist will _make gold_; kitchen materials will be of silver, and even gold, which will contribute more than any thing else to _prolong life_, poisoned at present by the oxyds of copper, lead, and iron, which we daily swallow with our food[23].” This sublime chemist, though he does not venture to predict that universal _Elixir_[24], which is to prolong life at pleasure, yet approximates to it. A chemical friend observed, that “the metals seem to be _composite_ bodies, which nature is perpetually preparing; and it may be reserved for the future researches of Science to trace, and perhaps to imitate, some of these curious operations.” _Origin, Objects, and Practice of Alchymy, &c._ We find the word Alchymy occurring, for the first time, in JULIUS FIRMICUS MATERNUS, an author who lived under Constantine the Great, who in his _Mathesis_, iii. 35, speaking of the influence of the heavenly bodies, affirms, “that if the Moon be in the house of Saturn, at the time a child is born, he shall be skilled in Alchymy.” The great objects or ends pursued by Alchymy, are, 1st, To make gold; which is attempted by separation, maturation; and by transmutation, which is to be effected by means of the Philosopher’s stone. With a view to this end, Alchymy, in some writers, is also called ποιητκη, _poetice_, and χρυσοποιητικη, _chryso poetice_, _i. e._ the art of making gold; and hence also, by a similar derivation, the artists themselves are called gold-makers. 2d. An universal medicine, adequate to all diseases. 3d. An universal dissolvent or alkahest. (See ALKAHEST.)