MA QNETISM. 265 



guage a certain grace and mastery, which practice can 

 alone impart. Let every movement be made with care, and 

 avoid slovenliness from the outset. Experiment, as I have 

 said, is the language by which we address Nature, and 

 through which she sends her replies; in the use of this 

 language a lack of straightforwardness is as possible, and 

 as prejudicial, as in the spoken language of the tongue. 

 If, therefore, you wish to become acquainted with the 

 truth of Nature, you must from the first resolve to deal 

 with her sincerely. 



Now remove your needle from its loop, and draw it 

 from eye to point along one of the ends of the magnet; 

 resuspend it, and repeat your former experiment. You 

 now find that each extremity of the magnet attracts one 

 end of the needle, and repels the other. The simple 

 attraction observed in the first instance, is now replaced 

 by a dual force. Eepeat the experiment till you have 

 thoroughly observed the ends which attract and those 

 which repel each other. 



Withdraw the magnet entirely from the vicinity of your 

 needle, and leave the latter freely suspended by its fiber. 

 Shelter it as well as you can from currents of air, and if 

 you have iron buttons on your coat, or a steel penknife in 

 your pocket, beware of their action. If you work at night, 

 beware of iron candlesticks, or of brass ones with iron rods 

 inside. Freed from such disturbances, the needle takes up 

 a certain determinate position. It sets its length nearly 

 north and south. Draw it aside and let it go. After 

 several oscillations it will again come to the same position. 

 If you have obtained your magnet from a philosophical in- 

 strument maker, you will see a mark on one of its ends. Sup- 

 posing, then, that you drew your needle along the end 

 thus marked, and that the point of your needle was the 

 last to quit the magnet, you will find that the point turns 

 to the south, the eye of the needle turning toward the 

 north. Make sure of this, and do not take the statement 

 on my authority. 



Now take a second darning-needle like the first, and 

 magnetize it in precisely the same manner; freely suspended 

 it also will turn its eye to the north and its point to the 

 south. Your next step is to examine the action of the two 

 needles which you have thus magnetized upon each other. 



Take one of them in your hand, and leave the other BUS- 



