In modern times, much notice has been excited by jugglers, who practised deceptions by fire. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, one Richardson, an Englishman, excited great astonishment at Paris, by pretending to chew burning coals and to swallow melted lead, with many other equally extraordinary feats; some of which are thus recorded in Evelyn’s diary:—“October the 8th, 1672, took leave of my Lady Sunderland, who was going to the Hague to my Lord, now ambassador there. She made me stay dinner at Leicester House, and afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. He, before us, devoured brimstone on glowing coals, chewing and swallowing them. He melted a beere glasse and eate it quite up; then taking a live coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster; the coal was blowne on with bellows till it flamed and sparkled in his mouth, and so remained until the oyster was quite boiled; then he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he dranke down as it flamed.” Many of our readers must recollect Signora Girardelli; and Miss Rogers, the American fire-eater, who was announced as having entered a heated oven with a leg of mutton in her hand, and having remained there until it was baked! This young lady exhibited all the tricks usually performed by such persons; she washed her hands in boiling oil, and then suffered aquafortis to be poured over them; but below the oil, there, no doubt, was a quantity of water, the air from which, when heated, forcing itself through the supernatant oil, gave it the appearance of boiling, when in reality its temperature probably did not exceed a hundred degrees of Fahrenheit; and when the hands were once well coated with oil, there was no danger from the aquafortis. She had also a ladle of melted lead, out of which she appeared to take a little with a spoon and pour into her mouth, and then to return in the shape of a solid lump; but in pretending to take the lead into the spoon, it was, in fact, quicksilver that was received, through a dexterous contrivance in the ladle, and this she swallowed, the solid lead having been previously placed in her mouth. She, besides, repeatedly placed her foot on a bar of hot iron; but the rapidity with which she removed it scarcely allowed time to injure the most delicate skin, even had it not been previously prepared: the cuticle of the hands and of the soles of the feet may, however, be easily rendered sufficiently callous to support a longer experiment. This effect will be produced if it be frequently punctured, or injured by being in continual contact with hard substances; repeatedly moistening it with spirit of vitriol will also at length render it horny and insensible; and thus it is not uncommon to see the labourers at copper-works take the melted ore into their hands.