388 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



like distance with equal dispatch in mental and spiritual 

 affairs.' y So went on germination of the telegraph; but 

 the plant was of slow growth, and nearly a century had 

 yet to elapse before it began to expand and fructify. 



Meanwhile, in the quaint old town of Magdeburg, in 

 Germany, the Herr Burgomaster has been laboring with 

 things stranger than any that the alchemists knew ; and 

 Balthasar de Monconys, 1 Lieutenant of Police from Lyons, 

 having set out for the east to discover vestiges of the phil- 

 osophy of Trismegistus and Zoroaster, has heard of these 

 doings and has gone far out of his way to learn of them. 

 And thus, in October of 1663, Monconys is told of a 

 u globe made of nine minerals" which plays with feathers 

 u continually and without end," and which shows why the 

 moon always looks at us with the same face. Nor was he 

 surprised thereat; for what could not be done by the man 

 who had put two empty hemispheres of copper, not two 

 feet in diameter, face to face, and then proved to the Em- 

 peror Ferdinand and all the princes sitting in the Diet at 

 Ratisbon that thirty horses, (fifteen attached to each hemi- 

 sphere, and the two huge teams tugging in opposite direc- 

 tions), could not pull them apart? Verily, he was a won- 

 derful wizard the Herr Burgomaster. The Magdeburgers 

 said that he had a devil's contrivance which told him when 

 the storms were coming, and that while his prophecies 

 were always right it was dangerous to live near him for 

 the thunder one day fell on his house and broke a lot of 

 his infernal toys, and heaven might serve him worse next 

 time for tampering with the spirits of the air, which he 

 shut up and tortured in his tubes and globes.' 2 



But the Burgomaster knew his Magdeburgers and they 

 him, and there was little danger that the fellow-officials 

 with whom he dined and smoked and joked would hale 

 him before their courts for sorcery. Besides, he was coun- 

 cillor to his most serene and potent Highness, the Elector 



1 Monconys: Voyages. Lyons, 1665. 



2 Phil. Trans. Abridgt, vol. ii., 29. 



