only inefficacious, but positively dangerous. By thus joining in the vulgar cry of lightning being, so to speak, sucked from the clouds by Franklin’s conductors, the learned Abbé had the satisfaction of retarding their introduction in his own, as well as other European countries, for a number of years. In France itself the thus awakened resistance to the setting-up of lightning conductors was strikingly shown by an incident which occurred at the town of St. Omer, not far from Calais. A manufacturer settled here, who had been in America, and there learnt to appreciate the usefulness of Franklin’s lightning conductors, had one made for his own house, and quietly fixed it to wall and roof. But the populace no sooner heard of it when there arose a public disturbance, and the iron rod was torn down by force. So far from repressing the rioters, the municipality of St. Omer, acting under priestly influence, forbade the manufacturer to erect another lightning conductor, on the ground that it was ‘against law and religion.’ Thereupon the bold manufacturer, a man of English descent, to try his right, appealed to the tribunals, and the judges at last, after protracted pleadings, not being able to discover any statutes against the fastening of metal rods to buildings, declared that the thing might be done, but with precautions. The lawyer who pleaded the case of the lightning conductors before the French tribunals at this momentous period was a very young man, quite unknown to fame at the time, but destined for a superabundance of it. His name was Robespierre.