opposite qualities of the three elements--sulphur, oxygen, and potassium--as compared with the three chemically combined and forming sulphate of potash. The same kind of experiment may be repeated with charcoal; if some powdered charcoal is made red-hot, and then puffed into the air with a blowing machine, numbers of sparks are produced, and the [Page 85] charcoal burns away and forms carbonic acid gas, a little ash being left behind; but if some more nitre be heated in a ladle, and charcoal added, a brilliant deflagration (_deflagro_, to burn) occurs, and the charcoal, instead of passing away in the air as carbonic acid, is now retained in the same shape, but firmly and chemically united with the potash of the nitre, forming carbonate of potash, or pearl-ash, which is not black and insoluble in water and acids like charcoal, but is white, and not only soluble in water, but is most rapidly attacked by acids with effervescence, and the carbon escapes in the form of carbonic acid gas. Thus we have traced out the distinction between mechanical aggregation and chemical affinity, taking for an example the difference between gunpowder as a whole (in which the ingredients are so nicely balanced that it is almost a chemical combination), and its constituents, sulphur, charcoal, and nitre, when they are chemically combined; or, in briefer language, we have noticed the difference between the mechanical mixture, and some of the chemical combinations, of three important elements. Our very slight and partial examination of three simple bodies does not, however, afford us any deep insight into the principles of chemistry; we have, as it were, only mastered the signification of a few words in a language; we might know that _chien_ was the French for dog, or _cheval_ horse, or _homme_ man; but that knowledge would not be the acquisition of the French language, because we must first know the alphabet, and then the combination of these letters into words; we must also acquire a knowledge of the proper arrangement of these words into sentences, or grammar, both syntax and prosody, before we can claim to be a French scholar: so it is with chemistry--any number of isolated experiments with various chemical substances would be comparatively useless, and therefore the "alphabet of chemistry," or "table of simple elements," must first be acquired. These bodies are understood to be solids, fluids, and gases, which have hitherto defied the most elaborate means employed to reduce them into more than one kind of matter. Even pure light is separable into seven parts--viz., red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet; but the elements we shall now enumerate are not of a compound, but, so far as we know, of an absolutely simple or single nature; they represent the boundaries, not the finality, of the knowledge that may be acquired respecting them.