158 The Greek Fire. [FEB. 



its communication to the heathen being the signal of the Divine ven- 

 geance upon the negligent possessors ot so magnificent a gift. 



The sneer may be suffered to take its way ; but the only fact seems 

 to be, that, Callinicus, an architect of Heliopolis, sold the invention to 

 Constantine Pogonatus about three centuries later than the date of the 

 angelic visit, or about A. D. 668. The probability is, that this architect 

 brought it from some Persian or Indian repository. The chief ingre- 

 dient in this original form of the " fire" was said to be naptha, the well- 

 known produce of the north of Persia, and still in the central pro- 

 vinces perpetuating something like the old famous worship of the 

 Guebres. 



It is well known that the chief inventions which have figured in 

 European history, were scarcely more than revivals or transmissions of 

 Egyptian or Arabian knowledge, and that of these, too, the fountain 

 was India. Printing, the loadstone, and gunpowder, the three grand 

 instruments of modern civilization and general power over mind and 

 matter, w r ere certainly known in the remotest India at a period beyond all 

 chronology. Alexander's assault on some of the cities on the Indus was 

 met by a discharge of fireworks, probably a species of the rocket, from 

 the walls ; and Philostratus, in the life of Apollonius Tyanaeus, states 

 that the true cause of Alexander's shrinking from the invasion of India 

 between the Hyphasis and the Ganges, was, the knowledge that the 

 men of those cities had the power of hurling thunderbolts and lightnings 

 from their battlements ; and that Hercules and Bacchus, in their inva- 

 sions of India, had been overthrown in their assaults upon those pos- 

 sessors of the weapons of the gods. 



The expedition of Alexander itself bears back the invention far enough, 

 for it took place three centuries and a half before our sera. There is the 

 distinct mention of gunpowder, and even of projectile instruments, or 

 cannon, in the Chinese annals, within eighty-five years following our 

 sera. Gunpowder is mentioned in the Hindoo code, which is of a very 

 remote antiquity. The Arabs were acquainted with the use of gun- 

 powder long before the supposed invention by Schwartz. A writer in 

 the collection at the Escurial, about A. D. 1249, describes an explosion 

 of rockets, as a multitude of " fiery scorpions hissing and writhing 

 through the air, surrounded and bound with nitrous dust, from which 

 they explode in thunder and flame. We might see," continues the 

 wondering narrator, " when the machine was fired/. a sudden cloud 

 spread through the air, with a hideous roar, like thunder ; and as it 

 rushed on, vomiting flame, every thing round it was torn into pieces, 

 burned, and turned into cinders." 



The actual receipt for gunpowder is given by Marcus Graecus, before 

 either Friar Bacon or Friar Schwartz were born. He gives it as a 

 composition for a rocket, and calls it " a flying fire." " R. duas libras 

 sulphuris vivi, libras duas carbonis salicis, salis petrosi libras sex." He 

 directs the three to be ground very fine in a marble mortar, and then 

 used, ad libitum, for ramming the rocket case. 



The Congreve rocket is an improvement on the old, principally in the 

 greater proportion of its nitrous or explosive ingredients ; and it has 

 gradually become an instrument of palpable importance in sieges. Its 

 use has not been adopted in ships, from its extreme hazard to the vessel 

 from which it is discharged ; but it is a curious instance of the re-intro- 

 duction of a great weapon, which, for three hundred years, had been 

 excluded by the improvements in artillery and the arts of destruction. 



