MAG 
cd, and are fixed with the petards to the 
gates or other places designed to be forced 
open. 
MADRIGAL, in the Italian, Spanish, 
and French poetry, is a short amorous poem, 
composed of a number of free and unequal 
verses, neither confined to the regularity of 
a sonnet, nor to the point of an epigram, 
but only consisting of some tender and de- 
licate thought, expressed with a beautiful, 
noble, and elegant simplicity. The madrigal 
is usually considered as the shortest of all 
the lesser kinds of poetry, except the epi- 
gram : it will admit of fewer verses than ei- 
ther the sonnet or the roundelay ; no other 
rule is regarded in mingling the rhymes, and 
the different kinds of verse, but the fancy 
and convenience of the author : however, 
this poem allows of less licence than many . 
others, both with respect to rhyme, mea- 
sure, and delicacy of expression. 
MAGAZINE, a place in which stores 
are kept, of arms, ammunition, provisions, 
&c. Every fortified town ought to be fur- 
nished with a large magazine, which should 
contain stores of alt kinds, sufficient to 
enable the garrison and inhabitants to hold 
out a long siege, and in which smiths, car- 
. penters, wheelwrights, &c. may be em- 
ployed, in making every thing belonging 
to the artillery, as carriages; waggons, &c. 
Magazine, powder, a place in which 
powder is kept in large quantities, and 
which, on account of the nature of the sub- 
stance preserved, should be arched and 
bomb-proof. According to the plan of 
Vauban, they are sixty feet long and twen- 
ty-five broad in the inside. The foundations 
are eight or nine feet thick, and ahont as 
many feet high from the foundation to the 
spring of the arch. As some inconveniences 
have arisen from this structure. Dr. Hutton 
proposes to find an arch of equilibration, 
which he would have constructed to a span 
of twenty feet, the pitch being ten feet : the 
exterior walls at top forming an angle of 
113 ”, and the height of the angular point 
above the top of the arch to be seven 
feet. 
MAGGOT. See Musca. 
MAGI, or Magians, an ancient religions 
sect in Persia, and other eastern countries, 
who maintained, that there were two prin- 
ciples, the one the cause of all good, the 
other the cause of all evil ; and abominating 
the adoration of images, worshipped God 
only by fire, which they looked upon as the 
brightest and most glorious symbol of Oro- 
MAG 
masdes, or the good God; as darkness is the 
truest symbol of Arimanius, or the evil god. 
This religion was reformed hy Zoroaster, 
who maintained that there was one supreme 
independent being ; and under him two 
principles or angels, one the angel of good- 
ness and light, and the other of evil and 
darkness : that there is a perpetual stmggle 
between them, which shall last to the 
end of the world; that then the angel of 
darkness and his disciples shall go into a 
world of their own, where they shall be pu- 
nished in everlasting darkness; and the 
angel of light and his disciples shall also go 
into a world of their own, where they shall 
he rewarded in everlasting light. The priests 
of the magi were the most skilful mathema- 
ticians and philosophers of the ages in which 
, they lived, insomuch that a learned man 
and a magian became equivalent terms. The 
vulgar looked on their knowledge as more 
than natural, and imagined them inspired 
by some supernatural power ; and hence 
those who practised wicked and mischievous 
arts, taking upon themselves the name of 
magians, drew on it that ill signification 
which the word magician now bears among 
us. This sect still subsists in Persia, under 
the denomination of gaurs, where they 
watch the sacred fire with the greatest care, 
and never suffer it to be extinguished. See 
Gaurs. 
MAGIC, originally signified only the 
knowledge of the more sublime parts of 
philsosophy ; but as the magi likewise pro- 
fessed astrology, divination, and sorcery, 
the term magi became odious, being used to 
signify an unlawful diabolical kind ofscience, 
acquired by th.e assistance of the devil and 
departed souls. See Astrology, Necro- 
mancy, &c. 
Natural magic is only the application of 
natural philosophy to the production of 
surprising but yet natural effects. The com- 
mon natinjal magic, found in books, gives 
us merely some childish and superstitious 
traditions of the sympathies and antipathies 
of things, or of their occult and peculiar pro- 
perties ; which are usually intermixed with 
many trifling experiments, admired rather 
for their disguise than for themselves. 
Magic lantern. See Lantern. 
Magic square, in arithmetic, a square 
figure made up of numbers in arithmetical 
proportion, so disposed in parallel and equal 
ranks, that the sums of each row, taken ei- 
ther perpendicularly, horizontally, or diago- 
nally, are equal : thus. 
