Another wonderful experiment was the _beatification_ of Mr. Boze; which other electricians, for a long time, endeavoured to repeat after him, but to no purpose. His description of this remarkable experiment was, that if, in electrifying, large globes were employed, and the electrified person stood upon large cakes of pitch, a lambent flame would by degrees arise from the pitch, and spread itself around his feet; that from thence it would be propagated to his knees and body, till at last it ascended to his head; that then, by continuing the electrification, the person’s head would be surrounded by a glory, such as is in some measure represented by painters in ornamenting the heads of saints. Dr. Watson took the utmost pains to repeat this experiment. He underwent the operation several times, and was supported during the time of it by solid electrics three feet high. Being electrified very strongly, he felt a kind of tingling on the skin of his head, and many other parts of his body. The sensation resembled what would arise from a vast number of insects crawling over him at the same time. He constantly observed the sensation to be the greatest in those parts of his body which were nearest to any non-electric; but no light appeared upon his head, though the experiment was several times made in the dark, and with some continuance. At last the Doctor wrote to Mr. Boze himself, and his answer showed that the whole had been a trick. Mr. Boze acknowledged that he had made use of a suit of armour, which was decked with many pieces of steel, some pointed like nails, others like wedges, and some pyramidal; and that when the electrization was very vigorous, the edges of the helmet would dart forth rays, something like those which are painted on the heads of saints. The identity of electricity and lightning was the next discovery that engaged the attention of philosophers; and it is a discovery of the first practical importance. We have already noticed the conjectures hazarded by the ancients, on this identity, and we may remember that Dr. Wall, in his experiments on electric light and the crackling with which electricity is emitted, notices the similarity between it, and the phenomenon of thunder and lightning. But when the experiment of the Leyden phial was known to philosophers, this analogy became much more obvious. The Abbè Nollet, after suggesting that thunder is in the hands of nature what electricity is in ours, enumerates many points of resemblance between these two powers, and then says, that meditating on these points, he concludes “that one might, by taking electricity for the model, form to ones self, in relation to thunder and lightning, more perfect and more probable ideas than what have been offered hitherto.”