Albertus Magnus was made Bishop of Ratisbon in 1259; but he
occupied the See only four years, when he resigned, on the ground that
its duties occupied too much of the time which he was anxious to
devote to philosophy. He died in Cologne in 1280, at the advanced age
of eighty-seven. The Dominican writers deny that he ever sought the
philosopher's stone, but his treatise upon minerals sufficiently
proves that he did.

ARTEPHIUS.

Artephius, a name noted in the annals of alchymy, was born in the
early part of the twelfth century. He wrote two famous treatises; the
one upon the philosopher's stone, and the other on the art of
prolonging human life. In the latter he vaunts his great
qualifications for instructing mankind on such a matter, as he was at
that time in the thousand and twenty-fifth year of his age! He had
many disciples who believed in his extreme age, and who attempted to
prove that he was Apollonius of Tyana, who lived soon after the advent
of Jesus Christ, and the particulars of whose life and pretended
miracles have been so fully described by Philostratus. He took good
care never to contradict a story, which so much increased the power he
was desirous of wielding over his fellow-mortals. On all convenient
occasions, he boasted of it; and having an excellent memory, a fertile
imagination, and a thorough knowledge of all existing history, he was
never at a loss for an answer when questioned as to the personal
appearance, the manners, or the character of the great men of
antiquity. He also pretended to have found the philosopher's stone;
and said that, in search of it, he had descended to hell, and seen the
devil sitting on a throne of gold, with a legion of imps and fiends