The Sylphes in like manner, are composed of the purest atoms of the air: the Nymphs of the most delicate parts of the water, and the Gnomes of the subtlest parts of the Earth. There was a great proportion betwixt Adam and these so perfect Creatures; because they being composed of that which was most pure in the four elements; he comprehended the perfection of these four sorts of people, and was their natural King. But since the time that his sin precipitated him into the excrements of the elements (as you shall see hereafter) the Harmony was disordered, and there was no more proportion, he being become impure and dull in respect of the substances so pure and so subtil. What remedy for this evil? How shall we remount this throne and recover this lost sovereignty? O Nature! Why do they study thee so little? Do you not comprehend my son, with what simplicity nature can render to man the goods which he has lost? Alas! Sir (replied I), I am very ignorant in all these simplicities, you speak of. But yet (pursued he) it is very easy to become knowing in them. If we would recover that empire over the Salamanders, we must purifie, and exalt the element of fire which is in us, and raise up the tone of this slackened string, we need do no more, but concentre the fire of the world by concave mirrors in a globe of glass. And herein, is that great piece of art which all the ancients have so religiously concealed, and which the divine Theophrastus has discovered. There is formed in this globe a solar powder, which being purified by itself from the mixture of other elements, and being prepared according to art, becomes in a very little time, sovereignly proper to exalt the fire which is in us, and make us become (according to our phrase) of a fiery nature. From that time the inhabitants of the sphere of fire become our inferiors, and ravished to see our mutual harmony re-established, and that we once more approach to them. They have all the kindness for us which they have for their own species, all the respect which they owe to the image and to the lieutenant of their Creator; and all the concern which may make evident in them, the desire of obtaining by us the immortality which they want. 'Tis true that as they are more subtil than those of the other elements, they live a very long time, so they are not very forward to importune the Sages to make them immortal. You may accommodate yourself with one of these, if the aversion which you have witnessed to me last not with you to the end: perchance, she will never speak to you of that which you fear so much.