This illustrious alchemical philosopher, whose works paved the royal road to the initiation, in after times, of his still more illustrious pupil, the sublime and mysterious Philalethes, entered, at an early age, among the regular canons of Bridlington, in the diocese of York. The tranquillity of monastic life afforded him a favourable opportunity for the study of the great masters in transcendental chemistry, but he found himself notwithstanding incompetent for their full comprehension, and in considerable consequent disappointment he determined to travel, persuading himself that he should discover in the conversations of philosophers what he could not glean from books. In Italy, Germany, and France he became acquainted with various men of learning, and was present at a transmutation which was performed in Rome. He proceeded afterwards to the island of Rhodes, where a document is supposed to exist testifying that he gave £100,000 to the Knights of St John of Jerusalem. He was dignified by the Pope, which fact, on his return to Bridlington, excited the jealousy of his brethren, and in consequence of their hostility he entered the Carmelite order at Butolph, in Lincolnshire, and, by an indulgence from Innocent VIII., had permission to live in solitude, exempt from cloistral observances, and in his now uninterrupted leisure he wrote twenty-four books, some scientific, and others on devout subjects. The “Twelve Gates of Alchemy” he composed in 1471, and he declares that any of his experiments recorded from 1450 to 1470 should be entirely discredited, as he wrote them from theory, and found afterwards by practice that they were untrue. Hence it may be concluded that he employed twenty years in mastering the secrets of the science. He died at Butolph in 1490. * * * * * “The Twelve Gates of Alchemy” describe the stone as a triune microcosm, whence Ripley has been cited as an adept of the spiritual chemistry. He insists upon the necessity of proportion in its composition, and declares that the principle, or _prima materia_, may be found everywhere. It flies with fowls in the air, swims with fishes in the sea, it may be discerned by the reason of angels, and it governs man and woman. An astronomical year is required for the manufacture of the stone. PICUS DE MIRANDOLA. John Picus, Earl of Mirandola, was born on the 24th February 1463. He is equally celebrated for his precocity, the extent of his learning, his prodigious memory, and his penetrating intellect. As the pupil of Jochanum, a Jew, he became early initiated in the Kabbalistic interpretation of Scripture, and at the age of twenty-four years he published nine hundred propositions in logic, mathematics, physics, divinity, and Kabbalism, collected from Greek, Latin, Jewish, and Arabian writers. In his treatise _De Auro_, he records his conviction of the success of Hermetic operations, and gives us the following narrations:--