Plund’rers with prying eyes, away! What mean ye by this curious stay? Hence with your cunning, patron god, With bonnet wing’d, and magic rod! Sacred alone to Pluto’s name, This mighty work of endless fame. * * * * * Saint Austin mentions a lamp that was found in a temple, dedicated to Venus, which was always exposed to the open weather, and could never be consumed or extinguished. And Ludovicus Vives, his commentator, mentions another lamp which was found a little before his time, that had continued burning for one thousand and fifty years. * * * * * It is supposed, that the perpetuity of these lamps, was owing to the consummate tenacity of the unctuous matter with which the flame was united, being so proportioned to the strength of the fire, that, like the radical moisture and natural heat in animals, neither of them could conquer or destroy the other. Licetus, who is of this opinion, observes, that in order to preserve this equality of proportion, the ancients hid these lamps in caverns, or close monuments: and hence it has happened, that on opening these tombs, the admission of fresh air to the lamps has produced so great an inequality between the flame and the oil, that they have been presently extinguished. _Mr. Addison in his Spectator, relates the following story of the lamp of Rosicrucius._ “A certain person having occasion to dig somewhat deep in the ground, where the philosopher Rosicrucius lay interred, met with a small door, having a wall on each side of it. His curiosity, and the hopes of finding some hidden treasure, soon prompted him to force open the door. He was immediately surprised by a sudden blaze of light, and discovered a very fair vault: at the upper end of it was a statue of a man in armour, sitting by a table, and leaning on his left arm. He held a truncheon in his right hand, and had a lamp burning before him. The man had no sooner set one foot within the vault, than the statue erected itself from its leaning posture, stood bolt upright, and upon the fellow’s advancing another step, lifted up the truncheon in his right hand. The man still ventured a third step, when the statue with a furious blow broke the lamp into a thousand pieces, and left his guest in a sudden darkness.” Upon the report of this adventure, the country people soon came with lights to the sepulchre, and discovered that the statue, which was made of Brass, was nothing more than a piece of clock work; that the floor of the vault was all loose, and underlaid with several springs, which, upon any man’s entering, naturally produced that which had happened. Rosicrucius, say his disciples, made use of this method, to shew the world that he had reinvented the ever-burning lamps of the Ancients, tho’ he was resolved no one should reap any advantage from the discovery.[2]