English literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- Anecdotes; Litterateurs
The accounts of the perpetual lamps which ancient writers give have
occasioned several ingenious men to search after their composition.
Licetus, who possessed more erudition than love of truth, has given two
receipts for making this eternal fire by a preparation of certain
minerals. More credible writers maintain that it is possible to make
lamps perpetually burning, and an oil at once inflammable and
inconsumable; but Boyle, assisted by several experiments made on the
air-pump, found that these lights, which have been viewed in opening
tombs, proceeded from the collision of fresh air. This reasonable
observation conciliates all, and does not compel us to deny the
accounts.
The story of the lamp of Rosicrucius, even if it ever had the slightest
foundation, only owes its origin to the spirit of party, which at the
time would have persuaded the world that Rosicrucius had at least
discovered something.
It was reserved for modern discoveries in chemistry to prove that air
was not only necessary for a medium to the existence of the flame, which
indeed the air-pump had already shown; but also as a constituent part of
the inflammation, and without which a body, otherwise very inflammable
in all its parts, cannot, however, burn but in its superficies, which
alone is in contact with the ambient air.
NATURAL PRODUCTIONS RESEMBLING ARTIFICIAL COMPOSITIONS.
Some stones are preserved by the curious, for representing distinctly
figures traced by nature alone, and without the aid of art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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