The golden age of alchemy commenced, properly speaking, with the conquests of Arabian fanaticism in Asia and Africa, about the time of the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, and the subjection of Europe to the basest superstition. The Saracens, lively, subtle, and credulous, intimate with the fables of talismans and celestial influences, admitted, with eager faith, the wonders of alchemy. The rage of making gold spread through the whole Mahometan world; and in the splendid courts of Almansor and Haroun Al Raschid, the professors of the hermetic art found patronage, disciples, and emolument. About the thirteenth century, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Raymond Lully, appeared as the revivers of this science, which had been nearly lost in the interval from the tenth century; their writings again raised alchemy to a very high degree of credit, and their adventures as well as those of their disciples partake more of the character of oriental romance than the results of philosophic study. The most celebrated of the alchemic philosophers were not only the companions of princes, but many of them were even kings themselves, who chose this royal road to wealth and magnificence. No delusion in the world ever excited so extensive and long-continued an interest, or rather it might be called madness; though it now seems wonderful how the fallacy of it should have escaped detection during a period of seven or eight hundred years, when so many causes for suspicion and disappointment must have occurred amongst its professors; but the fond idea seems to have been strengthened by this want of success, which was attributed to any cause rather than the proper one. An alchemist, in his writings, complains of the difficulties attending the search after the Immortal Dissolvent, as the grand agent in the operations was sometimes called; and very feelingly asserts, that the principal one is the want of subsistence or money, as without a supply of the latter to buy glasses, build furnaces, etc., the operations cannot go on. The several metals were described metaphorically, as plants, animals, &c., and mystical allusions were made to the sacred Scriptures, in confirmation of the truth of the science, by the most forced interpretations of certain passages: as for instance--“He struck the stone and water poured out, and he poured oil out of the flinty rock;” and the whole composition of the philosopher’s stone was thought to be contained in the four verses, beginning, “He stretched forth the heavens as a curtain, the waters stood above the mountains.”