36 



ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT 



docles. This celebrated philosopher, and very excellent poet, flourished 

 about four centuries before the Christian sera. His opinions, like those of 

 almost all the earliest sages, were given in metre, in a didactic poem, " On 

 Nature," of which only a few fragments have descended to our own 

 times. He was a native of Sicily, and his talents and his country are cele- 

 brated by Lucretius, who was nevertheless of a very different school of 

 philosophy, in verses so elegant and so descriptive, that I cannot refrain 

 from presenting you with a hteral but very humble translation of them ; 

 introduced, more especially as they are, with observations upon different 

 rival philosophers, who employed one, two, and various other numbers of 

 the commonly esteemed elements, and in various combinations, as the 

 basis of their respective theories. 



Nor wanders leas the sage who air with fire 



Would fain commix, or limpid stream with earth ; 



Or those the whole who join, fire, ether, earth, 



And pregnant showers, and thence the world deduce. 



Thas sung Empedocles, in honest fame 



First of his sect ; whom Agrigentum bore 



In cloud-capt Sicily. Its sinuons shores 



Th' Ionian main, with hoarse, unwearied wave, 



Surrounds, and sprinkles with its briny dew : 



And, from the fair ^olian fields, divides 



With narrow frith that spurns th' impetuous surge. 



Here vast Charybdis raves ; here jEtna rears 



His infant thunders, his dread jaws unlocks, 



And heav'n and earth with fiery ruin threats. 



Here many a wonder, many a scene sublime, 



As on he journeys, checks the traveller's steps ; 



And shows, at once, a land in harvest rich, 



And rich in sages of illustrious fame. 



But naught so woud'rous, so illustrious naught, 



So fair, so pure, so lovely, can it boast, 



Empedocles, as thou ! whose song divine, 



By all rehears'd, so clears each mystic lore, 



That scarce mankind believ'd thee born of man. 



Yet e'en Empedocles, and those above 



Already sung, of far inferior fame, 



Though doctrines frequent from their bosoms flow'd 



Like inspiration, sager and more true 



Than e'er the Pythian maid, with laurels crown'd. 



Spoke from the tripod at Apollo's shrine ; 



E'eu those mistook the principles of things, 



And greatly wander'd ia attempt so great. 



Let our controvertists of the present day learn a lesson of liberality from 

 this correct and pohshed reasoner, whose own theory is well known to have 

 been that of Epicurus, to which I have just adverted, namely, that one sub- 

 stance is just as much entitled to the character of a constituent element as 

 another,— ^and that every thing equally proceeds from and in turn is resolved 

 into the primitive and invisible atoms or principles of matter. 



It is to this theory alone that all the experiments of modern chemistry 

 are giving countenance. Air, water, and earth suspected to be compounds 

 in the time of Epicurus, have been proved to be such in our own day ; 

 while of the actual nature of heat or fire, mankind are just as uninformed 

 now as they were then. 



In the process, however, of destroying these supposed elements, che- 

 mistry has occasionally seemed to detect others ; and hence, instead of 

 air, fire, earth, and water, as simple or indecomposable substances, we have 

 had phlogiston, acids, and alkalies ; sulphur and phosphorus ; oxygene, hy- 

 drogene, nitrogene, and carbon, progressively arising before us, and lay- 

 ing claim to an imperishable existence. AU of them , however, have fallen. 



