Political persecution consigned to the Bastile, at this period, and when he was on the verge of the grave from extreme old age, a man who was a benefactor, and an honour, to his native land. Bernard Palissy was born about the year 1500, in the bishopric of Agen. His parents were so scantily favoured by fortune that they could do little for his education; but he contrived to acquire a knowledge of reading and writing, and sufficient skill in drawing and land-measuring to gain a livelihood as a draughtsman, a painter of glass and images, and a land surveyor. Geology, natural philosophy, and chemistry, next attracted his attention, and with respect to the two former he was far in advance of his contemporaries. It was about the year 1539, when he had settled at Saintes, after his journeys through the provinces, that a circumstance occurred which gave a colour to all his future life. He chanced to be shown a beautiful enamelled porcelain cup, manufactured in Italy. It struck him that, if he could discover the secret of fabricating this ware, he might obtain riches, and likewise serve his country by introducing into it a new art. From that moment he pursued his object with admirable energy and perseverance. Innumerable experiments failed, his resources wasted away, poverty and almost starvation stared him in the face, yet still, in spite of this, and of the exhortations of some, and the sneers of others, he steadily persisted. At length, after having suffered a mental martyrdom of sixteen years’ duration, he succeeded in his efforts, and independence and fame were his reward. For the adornment of their palaces and gardens, the king and all the nobles of France were eager to possess the figures and vases which were produced by Palissy’s taste and skill. Bernard Palissy had too enlarged a mind to devote himself wholly to the heaping up of riches. The toils of business he diversified and lightened by liberal studies. He formed a cabinet of natural history at Paris; gave, for several years, a course of lectures on natural history and physics; and wrote a variety of works, valuable for their facts and reasonings, and the new and just views contained in them, and unaffected and pleasing in their style.