Electricity is however oppressed by few of these difficulties. With the exception of some small discoveries mentioned by ancient authors, this science derives its origin and all its improvements from the two last centuries. Neither is the historian perplexed in giving every invention to its proper author. Those who cultivated this science were commonly men of talents and condition; they pursued it with ability and perseverance; and either themselves published the result of their observations, or deposited them in those literary institutions which they found established in their country. The historian of electricity, therefore, with no extraordinary exertion of industry or talent, may fully collect and accurately arrange the materials of his work. On the subject of electricity nothing earlier is on record than the observation of Thales, that yellow amber, when rubbed, has the property of attracting light bodies.—So struck was he with this property of amber, that he imagined it was animated. Thales, the contemporary of Pythagoras, was born at Miletus, a city of Ionia, about six hundred years before Christ. Like all the Grecian sages, he travelled into Egypt; lived in that country a number of years; contracted friendships with the priests, then the depositories of science; and became deeply skilled in all their mysteries and learning. Returning to his own country, stored with the knowledge of the East, he was ranked as the first of the seven wise men of Greece, and became the founder of the Ionic school, as Pythagoras did of the Italic. It may deserve remark that the same philosopher who is recorded to have observed the first phenomenon in electricity, is also said to have discovered the cause of thunder and lightning. We shall give to the curious, the remarkable passage containing this account, as we find it in Apuleius, a learned and eloquent writer of the second century, while he is rapidly enumerating the discoveries of Thales. _Thales Milesius ex septem illis sapientia memoratis viris facile præcipuus: fuit enim geometricæ penes Grajos primus repertor, et naturæ rerum certissimus explorator, et astrorum peritissimus contemplator, maximas res parvis lineis reperit, temporum ambitus, ventorum flatus, stellarum meatus_, tonitruum sonora miracula, _siderum obliqua curricula, Solis annula reverticula; idem Lunæ vel nascentis incrementa, vel senescentis dispendia, vel delinquentis obstacula_. “Thales the Milesian was decisively the most eminent of the seven famous sages; for he was the first inventor of geometry among the Greeks, the most judicious inquirer into nature, and the most skilful observer of the stars; he made great discoveries by small geometrical lines, the regulation of times and seasons, the theory of the winds, the course of the stars, _the wonderful causes of thunder_, the oblique motions of the planets, the annual revolution of the sun, the reason of the increase, decrease, and eclipse of the moon.”[1]