alchymist, gained his knowledge in Egypt; but he kept it all to
himself, and would not instruct the children of Israel in its
mysteries. All the writers upon alchymy triumphantly cite the story of
the golden calf, in the 32nd chapter of Exodus, to prove that this
great lawgiver was an adept, and could make or unmake gold at his
pleasure. It is recorded, that Moses was so wroth with the Israelites
for their idolatry, "that he took the calf which they had made, and
burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon
the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it." This, say the
alchymists, he never could have done, had he not been in possession of
the philosopher's stone; by no other means could he have made the
powder of gold float upon the water. But we must leave this knotty
point for the consideration of the adepts in the art, if any such
there be, and come to more modern periods of its history. The Jesuit,
Father Martini, in his "Historia Sinica," says, it was practised by
the Chinese two thousand five hundred years before the birth of
Christ; but his assertion, being unsupported, is worth nothing. It
would appear, however, that pretenders to the art of making gold and
silver existed in Rome in the first centuries after the Christian era,
and that, when discovered, they were liable to punishment as knaves
and impostors. At Constantinople, in the fourth century, the
transmutation of metals was very generally believed in, and many of
the Greek ecclesiastics wrote treatises upon the subject. Their names
are preserved, and some notice of their works given, in the third
volume of Lenglet du Fresnoy's "History of the Hermetic Philosophy."
Their notion appears to have been, that all metals were composed of
two substances; the one, metallic earth; and the other, a red
inflammable matter, which they called sulphur. The pure union of these
substances formed gold; but other metals were mixed with and
contaminated by various foreign ingredients. The object of the