208 



FLAGEOLET FLA MEL. 



degrees became disgusted with flagellation. The 

 Franciscan monks in France (Cordeliers) observed 

 the practice longest. 



It is not to be wondered at, thai a custom so 

 absurd was so long maintained, when we remember 

 the great advantages which the sufferers promised 

 themselves. In the opinion of men in the middle 

 ages, flagellation was equivalent to every sort of 

 exp iation for past sins, imposed by the father con- 

 tVssors. 3000 strokes, and the chanting of thirty 

 penitential psalms, were sufficient to cancel the sins 

 of a year ; 30,000 strokes, the sins of ten years, &c. 

 An Italian widow, in the eleventh century, boasted 

 that she had made expiation by voluntary scourging 

 for 100 years, for which no less tlian 300,000 stripes 

 were requisite. The opinion was prevalent, likewise, 

 that, however great the guilt, by self-inflicted pain, 

 hell might be escaped, and the honour of peculiar 

 holiness acquired. By this means, flagellation 

 gained a charm in the sight of the guilty and ambi- 

 tious, which raised them above the dread of corporeal 

 suffering, till the conceits of hypocrisy vanished 

 l>efore 2ie clearer light of civilization and know- 

 ledge. 



FLAGEOLET ; a small pipe or flute, the notes 

 of which are exceedingly clear and shrill. It is gener- 

 ally made of box or other hard wood, though some- 

 times of ivory, and has six holes for the regulation of 

 its sounds, besides those at the bottom and mouth- 

 piece and that behind the neck. 



FLAIL ; an instrument for thrashing corn, that 

 consists of 1. the hand-staff, which the labourer 

 holds in his hand ; 2. the swiple or that part which 

 strikes the corn ; 3. the caplins, or leathern thongs 

 that bind the hand-staff and swiple; 4. the middle 

 .band, being the leathern thong, or fish-skin, that ties 

 the caplins together. 



FLAKES ; a sort of platform made of hurdles, 

 used for drying codfish. They are usually placed 

 near the shores of fishing-harbours. Flake signifies 

 also a small stage hung over a ship's side to calk or 

 repair any breach We speak also of a flake of 

 snow. 



FLAMBEAU ; a kind of large taper, made of 

 hempen wicks, by pouring melted wax on their top, 

 and letting it run down to the bottom. This done, 

 lay them to dry, after which roll them on a table, 

 and join four of them together by means of a red-hot 

 iron ; and then pour on more wax, till the flambeau 

 is brought to the size required. Flambeaus are of 

 different lengths, and made either of white or yellow 

 wax. They serve to give light in the streets at 

 night, or on occasion of illuminations. 



FLAME. Newton and others have considered 

 flame as an ignited vapour, or red-hot smoke. This, 

 in a certain sense, may be true ; but, no doubt, it 

 contains an inaccurate comparison. It appears to be 

 well ascertained, that flame always consists of volatile 

 inflammable matter, in the act of combustion, or 

 combination with the oxygen of the atmosphere. 

 Many metallic substances are volatilized by heat, 

 and burn with a flame, by the contact of the air in 

 this rare state. Sulphur, phosphorus, and some 

 other bases of acids, exhibit the same phenomenon. 

 But the flames of organized substances are in gene- 

 ral produced by the extrication and ascension of 

 liy drogen gas, with more or less of charcoal. When 

 the circumstances are not favourable to the perfect 

 combustion of these products, a portion of the coal 

 passes through the luminous current unburned, and 

 forms smoke. Soot is the condensed matter of 

 smoke. As the artificial light of lamps and candles 

 is afforded by the flame they exhibit, it seems a mat- 

 ter of considerable importance to society, to ascer- 

 tain how the most luminous flame may lie produced 



with the least consumption of combustible matter. 

 There does not appear to be any danger of error in 

 concluding, that the light emitted will be greatest, 

 when the matter is completely consumed in the 

 shortest time. It is therefore necessary, that a 

 stream of volatilized combustible matter, of a proper 

 figure, at a very elevated temperature, should pass 

 into the atmosphere with a certain determinate velo- 

 city. If the figure of this stream should not be duly 

 proportioned that is to say, if it be too thick its 

 internal parts will not be completely burned, for 

 want of contact with the air. If its temperature be 

 below that of ignition, it will not burn when it comes 

 into the open air. And there is a certain velocity, 

 at which the quantity of atmospherical air which 

 comes in contact with the vapour will be neither too 

 great nor too small ; for too much air will diminish 

 the temperature of the stream of combustible mat. 

 ter so much as very considerably to impede the 

 desired effect ; and too little will render the combus- 

 tion languid. We have an example of a flame too 

 large, in the mouths of the chimneys of furnaces, 

 where the luminous part is merely superficial, or of 

 the thickness of about an inch or two, according to 

 circumstances, and the internal part, though hot, 

 will not set fire to paper passed into it through an 

 iron tube ; the same defect of air preventing the 

 combustion of the paper as prevented the interior 

 fluid itself from burning. And in the lamp of 

 Argand, we see the advantage of an internal current 

 of air, which renders the combustion perfect by the 

 application of air on both sides of a thin flame. So 

 likewise a small flame is whiter and more luminous 

 than a larger ; and a short snuff of a candle, giving 

 out less combustible matter in proportion to the cir- 

 cumambient air, the quantity of light becomes 

 increased to eight or ten times what a long snuff 

 would have afforded. See Caloric, Combustion, Fire, 

 and Damps. 



FLAMEL, NICHOLAS ; an adept of the fourteenth 

 century, who acquired property to an enormous 

 extent. He was born of poor parents, at Pontoise, 

 whence he removed to Paris, and there practised in 

 the double capacity of a scrivener or notary, and a 

 miniature painter. Here he was reported to have 

 amassed a fortune of 1,500,000 crowns an immense 

 sum in those days. His great wealth attracted the 

 notice of Charles VI., who commissioned his master 

 of requests to inquire into the means by which he had 

 become so opulent. FlamePs account was, that 

 having purchased " an old, thick book, gilt on the 

 edges, and written on tree-bark, in fair Latin charac- 

 ters, with a cover of thin copper, on which were 

 sculptured many unknown and singular devices," he 

 studied it for twenty-one years, without being able to 

 discover more than that it was a treatise on the phi- 

 losopher's stone. In the course of a pilgrimage, 

 however, to the shrine of St James of Compostella, 

 he met a converted Jew, named Sanchez, who taught 

 him to decipher the paintings, and accompanied him 

 back to France, with a view of translating the whole 

 work. Sanchez died at Orleans ; but not before his 

 pupil had so well profited by his instructions as to be 

 able to decipher the whole contents of the volume ; 

 on which he immediately went to work, and, as he 

 declares, "on Monday, the 17th of January, 1382, 

 about noon, turned half a pound of quicksilver into 

 pure silver ; and on the 25th of April, in the same 

 year, in the presence of his wife, at about five o'clock 

 in the afternoon, converted the same quantity of 

 quicksilver into pure gold." Flamel hereupon founded 

 fourteen hospitals (tliat of the Quinze-Vingts among 

 others), built at his own expense three new churches 

 (including that of St Jacques de la Boucherie, and 

 that of the Innocents ; in the former of which he and 



