Delicacy expresses soft and agreeable sentiments and ingenious praise; thus finesse belongs more to epigram, and delicacy to madrigal. It is delicacy which enters into a lover's jealousies, and not finesse. The praises given to Louis XIV. by Despréaux are not always equally delicate; satires are not always sufficiently ingenious in the way of finesse. When Iphigenia, in Racine, has received from her father the order never to see Achilles more, she cries: "_Dieux plus doux, vous n'aviez demandé que ma vie!_"--"More gentle gods, you only ask my life!" The true character of this partakes rather of delicacy than of finesse. FIRE. SECTION I. Is fire anything more than an element which lights, warms, and burns us? Is not light always fire, though fire is not always light? And is not Boerhaave in the right? Is not the purest fire extracted from our combustibles, always gross, and partaking of the bodies consumed, and very different from elementary fire? How is fire distributed throughout nature, of which it is the soul? _Ignis ubique latet, naturam amplectitur omnem,_ _Cuncta parit, renovat, dividit, unit, alit._ Why did Newton, in speaking of rays of light, always say, "_De natura radiorum lucis, utrum corpora sint necne non disputamus_"; without examining whether they were bodies or not? Did he only speak geometrically? In that case, this doubt was useless. It is evident that he doubted of the nature of elementary fire, and doubted with reason. Is elementary fire a body like others, as earth and water? If it was a body of this kind, would it not gravitate like all other matter? Would it escape from the luminous body in the right line? Would it have a uniform progression? And why does light never move out of a right line when it is unimpeded in its rapid course? May not elementary fire have properties of matter little known to us, and properties of substance entirely so? May it not be a medium between matter and substances of another kind? And who can say that there are not a million of these substances? I do not say that there are, but I say it is not proved that there may not be. It was very difficult to believe about a hundred years ago that bodies acted upon one another, not only without touching, and without emission, but at great distances; it is, however, found to be true, and is no longer doubted. At present, it is difficult to believe that the rays of the sun are penetrable by each other, but who knows what may happen to prove it? However that may be, I wish, for the novelty of the thing, that this incomprehensible penetrability could be admitted. Light has something so divine that we should endeavor to make it a step to the discovery of substances still more pure.