At the present day of intellectual advancement, this story of the size of Pallas, and of the lamp whose contumacious flame, well befitting such a giant, exceeds all belief, however gravely stated; yet the time was, when, instead of exciting contemptuous laughter, it was implicitly credited. The lamp in the temple of Jupiter Ammon was reported by the priests to have burned continually, yet it consumed less oil each succeeding year; though burning in the open air, neither wind nor water could extinguish it. A similar lamp also burned in honour of Venus. Trithemius obliges his readers with two long receipts for the artificial manufacture of these lamps, yet seems to doubt their efficacy. The _possibility_ of such eternal lamps being made in Egypt has been attributed to the existence of the bituminous wells or fountains, from which the learned in those days laid secret canals or pipes to the subterranean caves, where, in a convenient place, they set up a lamp with a wick of asbestos. It seems, indeed, to have been thought a great desideratum in the arts to invent a perpetual lamp for the companion of the dead as a complimentary illumination to the manes of the departed, or from some foolish desire to strike wonder, in after times, in some carnal beholder, unwittingly violating the tomb; the accounts of such appear to have been generally believed authentic up to the end of the seventeenth century; the utilitarian age we live in is content to possess a perpetual locomotive fire for those above ground. The art of mimicry, in its modern sense though confined to a mere imitation of manners, in former times, by the excellence of its action, imposed on the imaginations of the spectators, and persuaded them into a belief of the reality of what was represented, even as it were against conviction. The endeavour of one or more individuals to express or relate any story by mere action, was carried to much greater perfection among the ancients than now appears to be possible. According to Lucian, a single dancer or mime was able to express all the incidents and sentiments of a whole tragedy or epic poem by action, accompanied by music, and the fable of Proteus he seemed to think meant no more than that he was an accomplished pantomime. The education of a mime required, he says, his whole life to make himself master of his profession; he must know the past, the present, and what is to come; in short, the spectator must _understand_ the dancer though dumb, and _hear_ him though silent. Lucian mentions a famous mime, who played Ajax the madman so well, and raged in such a way that one would have said he did not counterfeit, but was mad in reality. Timocrates, a tutor in philosophy, and who from conscientious motives had declined being present at such plays, by accident seeing a pantomime, cried out, “What admirable sights have I lost by a philosophical modesty!” and ever afterwards attended them.