Page 25. We are point blank opposed to allowing females any advantages for education, which can possibly induce their ladyships to set up for literata. “Knowledge is Power,” and whereas the “seraphic sex” are prone to acquire knowledge with more facility, and communicate it with more felicity than the rough samples of humanity with whom Madam Destiny has had the impudence to connect them by ties (pretty easily severed nowadays) we are amazingly apprehensive that ladies will not only monopolize our trade of authorship, but usurp our places in Church, State and Medicine. We have often shed cataracts of tears (Della Crusca) over the following lines of Pope, which, though addressed to lady Montague, will apply equally well to nine hundred and ninety-nine other lady luminaries, in whose presence the light of DrCausticis like the glimmer of a glow worm in the glare of sunshine.
“In beauty or witNo mortal as yetTo question your empire has daredBut men of discerningHave thought that in learningToyield to a woman is hard.”
“In beauty or witNo mortal as yetTo question your empire has daredBut men of discerningHave thought that in learningToyield to a woman is hard.”
“In beauty or witNo mortal as yetTo question your empire has daredBut men of discerningHave thought that in learningToyield to a woman is hard.”
“In beauty or wit
No mortal as yet
To question your empire has dared
But men of discerning
Have thought that in learning
Toyield to a woman is hard.”
But with leave of the pope, we lords of the lower part of creation will not “yield to a woman.” We will rather letLord Bacon and the ladies know, by dint of the right of the strongest, that knowledgeis notpower, but thatphysical strength is power.
We are excessively provoked with the conductors of the North American Review, who in the No. of that work, dated October, 1835, p. 430, have reviewed, or rather eulogized certain Poems by Mrs Sigourney, and by Miss Gould. And what makes such conduct the more preposterous is that those ladiesdeservethe encomiums of their admiring Reviewers. They have, likewise, brought into bold relief a great number of lady-authors, such as Miss Burney, Miss Edgworth, Miss Baillie, Miss Martineau, Miss Mitford, Mrs Somerville, Mrs Hemans, Miss Sedgwick, Miss Leslie, Mrs Child, Mrs Hale, &c., whose names and whose merits, correct policy would have consigned to oblivion. Now, be it known, by these presents, that the more merit there happens to be attached to a lady-author, the more her productions shouldnotbe taken honorable notice of by a gentleman-critic.
Page 54. Some doctors, however, do not coincide in opinion with Dr Caustic on this subject. Dr Miller, in a“Report on the malignant disease, which prevailed in New York, in the autumn of 1805,” has the following passage:
“We live in the latitude of pestilence, and our climate now perhaps is only beginning to display its tendency to produce this terrible scourge. The impurities which time and a police, rather moulded in conformity to the usages of more northern countries than the exigencies of our own, have been long accumulating, are now annually exposed to the heats of a burning summer, and send forth exhalations of the highest virulence.”
Page 82, we told your worships, that Perkins was supported by Aldini, and promised some additional remarks by way of illustrating our assertion. We now intend to prove not only that we were correct in our statement, but that light, heat or caloric, electricity, Galvanism, Perkinism, animal spirits, the social feelings, especially whenloveis concerned, and the stimulus of society, are all intimately connected or different modifications of the same matter.
We will show thatlightandheatare the same thing in essence, by the authority of some of our prime philosophers whom it would be heresy to dispute or gainsay.
“Universal space,” says Dr Franklin, “so far as we know of it, seems filled with a subtil fluid, whose motion, or vibration, is called light.
“This fluid may possibly be the same with that which attracted by and entering into other more solid matter, dilates the substance, by separating the constituent particles and so rendering somesolids fluid, and maintaining the fluidity of others; of which fluid when our bodies are totally deprived, they are said to be frozen; when they have a proper quantity they are in health, and fit to perform all their functions; it is then called natural heat; when too much, it is called fever; and when forced into the body in too great a quantity from without, it gives pain by separating and destroying the flesh, and is then called burning; and the fluid so entering and acting is called fire.”Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. iii. p. 5, 6.
Now we will see what Lavoisier, according to Fourcroy, can tell us on this subject.
“The comparison which the more modern philosophers, and particularly my illustrious friend Monge, have established betweencaloric and light, so as to consider these two effects as theproduct of modifications of the same body, isentitled to much more attention. It is established on a great number of experiments; it naturally and simply explains most of the phenomena; and it agrees with the sublime economy of nature, which multiplies effects much more than the bodies which produce them.
“Fire,” he continues, “is disengaged, and shows itself in the form ofheat, when it is gently and slowly driven out of bodies into the composition of which it entered; but it shines in the form oflightwhen it flies out of compounds, in a very compressed state, by a swift motion.
“According to this ingenious hypothesis,caloricmay becomelight, andlighton the other hand may becomecaloric. For this purpose it is only necessary that the first should assume more rapidity in its motion, and the second undergo a diminution of velocity.”Nicholsons’ Fourcroy, vol. i. p. 57.
Our next step in this our wonderful process is to prove, that light, which is the same as heat, may also be identified withelectricity.
Here I shall produce the authority of a writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica, who appears to be a very sound philosopher. Under the title Electricity, article 83, you will find that gunpowder has been fired by the electric blast; from which the writer reasons as follows.
“As it therefore appears, that the electric fluid, when it moves through bodies either with great rapidity or in very great quantity will set them on fire,it seems scarce disputable, that this fluid is the same with theelement of fire. This being once admitted, the source from whence the electric fluid is derived into the earth and atmosphere must be exceedingly evident, being no other than the sun or source of light itself.” The writer then proceeds to show, that an iron wire has been melted by the discharge of a battery of electricity, and furnishes proofs which must convince the most incredulous, of the correctness of his theory.
Thus far we have proceeded triumphantly in making itabundantly evident that light, heat, and electricity are the same in substance; so that if your worships will permeate this subject with due retention and some small share of true philosophical perspicacity, you will find that heat and electricity are the dregs or sediment of light, and by digesting Dr Black’s theory of latent heat, you will find that the matter of heat, light, and electricity exists in very vast abundance in all bodies and substances.
We next will prove that Galvanism is a modification of electricity. Here we will advert to the theory of Galvani and Aldini, as stated by C. H. Wilkinson, lecturer on Galvanism in Soho square, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, &c. &c. This gentleman informs us, that “the animal body is a description ofLeyden phial, or magic battery, in one part of which there is an excess of electricity, and in the other a deficiency.The conducting body communicates the fluid of the part where it is abundant to the partwhere it is defective; and in this passage of the electricity, the muscular contractions are obtained in the same way as the discharges are produced by the Leyden phial or magic batteries. As theconducting bodiesin electricity are the sole agents in the discharge of the Leyden phial, so the same bodies alone serve likewise to excite muscular contractions.”Wilkinson’s Elements of Galvanism, p. 82.
We next will prove that Perkins’s points are the proper conductors of animal electricity. From a specification which Mr Perkins published in the Repertory of Arts, it would seem thatzincis the principal ingredient in the tractors.
“Zinc,” says Fourcroy, “is a conductor of electricity like all other metals, and nothing particular has hitherto been discovered in it with respect to this property; however, thepowerful manner in which it effects the sensibility of the human body in Galvanic experiments seems to give it herein a sort of prerogativeor pre-eminence over other metallic substances. If we place a plate of zinc under the tongue, andcover the upper surface of this organ with another metal, and especially a piece of gold or silver, and then incline the extremity of this last, so as to approach it to the plate of zinc, at the moment when the two metals come into contact with each other, the person who performs the experiments feels a very perceptible pricking sensation, heat, irritation, and a sort of acerb taste in the tongue, almost always accompanied with amomentousglare, or luminous circle, which suddenly appears before his eyes. No metal produces this singular effect with such force as zinc is observed to do.”
This animal electricity is likewise a modification of what we callanimal spirits, and may be termed thestimulus of society. That this was well known to the wisest of men, is evident from this adage of Solomon: “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” The want of a proper communication among animal Leyden phials is the cause of the gloom of thesolitaire. The wish to partake of the benefits of the stimulus of society makes man a gregarious animal, and induces the human race to congregate in large cities, and to be fond of routs, balls, assemblies, in which the aforesaid human electric phials are beaminganimal electricityin every direction, and thus a flow of animal spirits is communicated by a pleasing contagion to all present.
When we see an animal Leyden phial superabounding with animal electricity, we say it is aspirited animal. When said animal happens to be a hero, a tiger, an irritated ram cat, or a black snake intent on his game, visible flashes of electricity will blaze from the eyes, and communicate very sensible shocks to a spectator. Thus the Gaul, who was commanded to cut off the head of Marius, a celebrated Roman general, and a personage full of the mostpositive sort of animal electricity, received such astrokeof lightning from the battery of that hero’s head, and at the same time was sothunderstruckwith the exclamation of “Tune, homo,audes occidere Caium Marium?” that the dagger dropped bloodless from the hands of the ruthless assassin. Thus Alexander, when hampered in the chief city of the Oxydracæ, kept his foes at a distance by the fire that flashed from his eyes in whole torrents of animal electricity. How often do we see a Congressional spouter, or an itinerant field preacherelectrizea large assembly by repeated discharges of this mysterious fluid. In all cases of fanaticism it is mistaken for the fire of devotion, and causes grimaces, contortions, convulsions, and other strange symptoms, which, however, are easily accounted for by the theory of the “animal Leyden phial.”
But the prettiest experiments ever made with animal electricity, I have seen sometimes exhibited by a female philosopher to a levee of her admirers. On such occasions, the lady’s eyes seem to be fountains ofanimal electricity. This electricity, however, is notvitreousandresinous, butpositiveandnegative. The former expressed by aglance of approbation, and the latter by aflash of disdain. The different effects which discharges of these different kinds of electricity exhibit in the subjects of experiment may be rated among the most wonderful of phenomena. The former transports a man, Southey-like, to “the atmosphere of the highest of all possible heavens,” the latter sinks him “down! down! to the Domdaniel cave at the roots of the ocean.” But as this is a branch of natural philosophy to which, for forty years, past I have not paid the least attention, I shall not attempt further to instruct your worships therein, but refer you to the experiments so delectably set forth in the poems of Little, Johannes Bonefonius, Secundus, and other adepts in that curious science.