Perfectly agreeing with Miss Phantasia, so far as my ignorance went, I thought I had better drop the subject altogether; still I ventured to ask her one more question: Did this museum at the same time contain the ancestors of the human race? In reply she pointed to a row of veiled figures in the background of the hall; but as she took my hand to conduct me thither, Bacon stepped between us, and said, "Let not my fair friend tempt you; you would not be able to see anything in that dark corner over there; the evening is falling. Go you to your hotel; we too are homeward bound." Indeed, the evening was falling, but only in the building; for as soon as we got outside, we found ourselves apparently in broad daylight. I looked about me for gas-flames and lamp-posts, but I could discover nothing of the kind. At last I looked up to the sky, and then I saw far above the houses a dazzling light, somewhat like the sun, spreading his rays in all directions, and several more of these "suns" at considerable distances from one another. "Don't you even know the Solar Light?" Bacon asked. "That surprises me; for as far back as the second half of the nineteenth century it was used to illuminate both here and in Paris some of the public edifices. Here it has been generally introduced for some time past, ever since the streets have been covered with our endless glass." "But then that light is too brilliant and too white; that can't be gas-light." "Nor is it. Gas is now only burnt in those isolated districts where the houses stand far apart from each other, but the central part of the city is chiefly lighted up by the burning of magnesium, and sometimes also by electric light, or any of the numerous lights with which we are now acquainted. The apparatus, consisting of mirrors and lenses, to collect the light and to make the beams parallel, i.e. equal to sunlight, is the same for all those different kinds of public illumination." "Rather expensive, though," was my sudden reply. "Not as expensive as you think," continued Bacon; "especially not in the case of magnesium, for there is an abundance of magnesium ore in the form of dolemite, etc., from which we get the metal in a way as inexpensive as that followed in the preparation of aluminium. To this must be added that the process of burning this metal yields a hard substance, which, by a suitable arrangement of the apparatus, can be collected again and re-reduced to magnesium. Speaking theoretically, a certain quantity of magnesium is a source of light quite as inexhaustible as the oil-jar of the widow of Sarepta of which we read in the Book of Kings." The more I looked about, the more I arrived at the humiliating conclusion that we of the boasting nineteenth century--of which I still felt to be a child--were really very much benighted, and I could almost forgive Miss Phantasia for speaking of the semi-barbarous condition of society in my time.