164 CHYMI8TRY. 



again, the snuff of a candle. The " rival lustre" 

 (only it is a dead one, and wants the " speculation" 

 of the other), is charcoal, and nothing but charcoal. 



To the unreflecting, it may seem very wonderful, 

 if not altogether incredible, that marble palaces, and 

 loaves of bread, and blooming roses, and clean hands, 

 and eloquent tongues, and smiling faces, should all 

 be made, and made with equal ease, out of burnt 

 sticks. But such parties should consider whose 

 working they are thinking of; and then the whole 

 becomes as simple as it is true. And, if the patience 

 of any reader, not accustomed to think on such sub- 

 jects, shall have carried him thus far, we have no 

 doubt that he will find in their " airy passage" from 

 old to new, and from death to life, enough to make 

 him wonder why he has not been an observer of 

 nature all the days of his life ; and, perchance, he 

 may regret that he has not. But there is no need 

 for regret ; that only wastes time, and makes bad 

 worse in all cases where we suffer it to intrude. 

 There is plenty of time still, if it were well applied ; 

 and there stands at the porch of nature no snarling 

 Cerberus, with his three heads, all wrong ones, and 

 his " confusion of tongues." 



How this singular action of matter in the state 

 of air is carried on in all cases, so as to produce the 

 endless variety that we see in nature, we cannot of 

 course know ; but we do know the results of it in 

 many instances, and that knowledge is the founda- 

 tion of nine-tenths of those arts by the practice of 

 which we get our food, our clothing, and all our ac- 

 commodations and comforts. Men have "groped 

 their way" to some portion of that knowledge ; but 

 it is only since the introduction of modern or pneu- 

 matic chymistry, that is, the science of " the secrets 

 of airs," that it has been followed as a regular 

 science: and when -we think of gas-lights, and 

 steamboats, and ten thousand other things that we 

 possess in consequence of it, we cannot be too 



