THUNDERBOLTS 157 



thus be better called a lightning-preventer than a lightning- 

 conductor : it conducts electricity, but it prevents lightning. 

 At first, all lightning-rods used to be made with knobs on 

 the top, and then the electricity used to collect at the 

 surface until the electric force was sufficient to cause a spark. 

 In those happy days, you had the pleasure of seeing that 

 the lightning was actually being drawn off from your 

 neighbourhood piecemeal. Knobs, it was held, must be 

 the best things, because you could incontestably see the 

 sparks striking them with your own eyes. But as time 

 went on, electricians discovered that if you fixed a fine 

 metal point to the conductor of an electric machine it was 

 impossible to get up any appreciable charge because the 

 electricity kept always leaking out by means of the point. 

 Then it was seen that if you made your lightning-rods 

 pointed at the end, you would be able in the same way 

 to dissipate your electricity before it ever had time to come 

 to a head in the shape of lightning. From that moment 

 the thunderbolt was safely dead and buried. It was 

 urged, indeed, that the attempt thus to rob Heaven of its 

 thunders was wicked and impious ; but the common- sense 

 of mankind refused to believe that absolute omnipotence 

 could be sensibly defied by twenty yards of cylindrical iron 

 tubing. Thenceforth the thunderbolt ceased to exist, save 

 in poetry, country houses, and the most rural circles ; even 

 the electric fluid was generally relegated to the provincial 

 press, where it still keeps company harmoniously with 

 caloric, the devouring element, nature's abhorrence of a 

 vacuum, and many other like philosophical fossils : while 

 lightning itself, shorn of its former glories, could no longer 

 wage impious war against cathedral towers, but was com- 

 pelled to restrict itself to blasting a solitary rider now 

 and again in the open fields, or drilling more holes in the 

 already crumbling summit of !Mount Ararat. Yet it will 



