THUNDER AND LIGHTNING. 567 



refused to sanction an act which appeared to it almost 

 equivalent to the public restoration of Paganism. 1 Down 

 through the Middle Ages the control of thunder and light- 

 ning was a part of the recognized equipment of the 

 sorcerer or witch so that Prospero's 



To the dread rattling thunder 

 Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak 

 With his own bolt, 



bespeaks no more than ordinary thaumaturgic skill. 



Literature, ancient and modern, abounds in allusions to 

 atmospheric electrical phenomena long before their true 

 nature was known. Pliny describes St. Elmo's Fire as 

 well as Shakespeare does. 2 Seneca, 3 and Caesar,* and Livy 5 

 all record spears with flames at their points in the Roman 

 camp, and Fynes Morison sees the same fires on the staves 

 of Montjoy's horsemen at the siege of Kinsale, in 1601 f the 

 ancient Romans and the modern Scot being as ignorant, 

 one as the other, that electricity had anything to do with 

 the strange appearance. It is hardly credible that the 

 force of inverted prophecy could carry any one to the ex- 

 treme of finding in this mention by Caesar and Seneca of 

 the fiery spears pre-knowledge of the Franklinian dis- 

 covery; but such is the fact, and that the argument was 

 sufficient to convince so profound a philosopher as Arago, 7 

 will always furnish an excuse for others whose sense of 

 similitude proves capable of overbalancing their judgment. 



As the world divested itself of the influence of supersti- 



1 Gibbon: Decline and Fall, ii., 122. 



2 " I boarded the King's ship, now on the beak, 



Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin 



I flamed amazement: sometimes I'd divide 



And burn in many places; on the top mast, 



The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly; 



Then meet and join. The Tempest. Act i., Sc. 2. 



3 Quest. Nat., i. * De Bello Af., 6. 



5 Hist., c. ii. 6 Phil. Trans., Vol. 48, 754. 



7 Arago: Eloge Hist, de Alex. Volta, Acad. desSci., 26 July, 1831. 



