performed all other electrical experiments, which are usually exhibited by an excited globe or tube. This happened in 1752, a month after the electricians in France, pursuing the method which he had proposed, had verified the same theory; but without any knowledge of what they had done. In 1753, he further discovered, that the air was sometimes electrified positively, and sometimes negatively; and that the clouds would change from positive to negative electricity several times in the course of one thundergust. He soon perceived, that this important discovery was capable of being applied to practical use; and he proposed a method, which he soon accomplished, of securing buildings from being damaged by lightning, by means of conductors; the use of which is now universally known.

That the electric matter, which forms and animates the thunder-clouds, issues from places far below the surface of the earth, and that it buries itself there, is probable from the deep holes which have, in many places, been made by lightning; and from the flashes which have been seen to rise from wells and subterraneous cavities; as well as from the inundations accompanying thunder-storms, and occasioned by water bursting out of the bowels of the earth.—But the limits to which I am confined will not permit me to recapitulate all the inquiries and reasonings to which the various wonderful phenomena of lightning and thunder have given rise: I shall therefore proceed to a few observations, which respect the safety of persons that are exposed to the perils of a thunder-storm.

Dr. Franklin advises those who are apprehensive of danger from lightning, to be in the middle of a room (provided it be not under a metal lustre suspended by a chain) sitting on one chair, and laying their feet on another. It is still safer, he says, to

bring two or three mattresses, or beds, into the middle of the room, and folding them double, to place the chairs upon them; for, as they are not such good conductors as the walls, the lightning will not choose to pass through them: but the safest place of all is in a hammock, hung with silken cords, at an equal distance from all the sides of a room. Dr. Priestley observes, that the place of most absolute safety must be the cellar, and especially the middle of it; for when a person is lower than the surface of the earth, the lightning must strike the earth before it can possibly reach him. In the fields, the place of safety is within a few yards of a tree, but not quite near it. Nevertheless, Beccaria cautions persons not to depend on the neighbourhood of a higher, or, in all cases, a better conductor than their own body; since, according to his repeated observations, the lightning by no means descends in one undivided track; but bodies of various kinds conduct their share of it at the same time, in proportion to their quantity and conducting power!.

Among the awful phenomena of Nature, none have excited more terror than lightning and thunder. Some of the profligate Roman emperors, of whom history records that they procured themselves to be deified, confessed, by their trembling and hiding themselves, when they heard the thunder, that there was a Divine Power greater than their own-calo

Earl Stanhope, in his Principles of Electricity, written when he was lord Mahon, observes, that damage may be done by lightning, not only by the main stroke and lateral explosion, but likewise by that which he calls the returning stroke; that is, by the sudden violent return of that part of the natural share of electricity of any conducting body, or any combination of conducting bodies, which had been gradually expelled from such body or bodies respectively, by the superinduced elastic electrical pressure of a thunder-cloud's electrical atmospheres. See further on this subject, Franklin's Letters, Priestley's Hist. of Electricity, &c.

tonantem Jovem'. The greatest security against the terrors of a thunder-storm, although no certain one against its effects, is that life of piety and virtue which is the best guardian of every earthly blessing. The good man, who knows that every event is under the direction of an over-ruling Providence, and that this life is only a part of his existence, introductory to the blissful scenes of immortality, will behold the terrors of the storm with unshaken resolution; grateful to the Supreme Being if permitted to escape from the danger; and acquiescing in the Divine Will, if thus to be conveyed, by an easy and instantaneous passage, to that heaven where his conversation had long been, and to that God with whom he delighted to walk.

These sentiments are beautifully expressed in the following lines, written in a midnight thunder-storm, by the celebrated Mrs. Carter, and addressed to a lady:

Let coward Guilt with pallid Fear,
To shelt'ring caverns fly,

And justly dread the vengeful fate
That thunders thro' the sky.

Horace. The ancient Romans gave the appellation or Tonans, the Thunderer, to Jupiter, their supreme deity; and the emperor Augustus consecrated a temple to Jupiter the Thunderer, on account of his deliverance from a great danger to which he had been exposed in his Cantabrian expedition; when travelling by night, the vehicle in which he was carried was scorched by lightning, and a slave that bore his torch, instantly killed. Tonanti Jovi ædem consecravit, liberatus periculo, cum expeditione Cantabrica per nocturnum iter lectieam ejus fulgor perstrinxisset, servumque prælucentem exanimasset. Sueton. Octav. 29. And the poet Lucan adduces the thunder as a convincing proof, that Jupiter was the sole ruler of the skies:

Per fulmina tantum

Sciret adhuc solum cœlo regnare Tonantem. Phars. lib. iii. Jove's thunder will convince them of his reign.

ROWE.

Protected by that Hand, whose law
The threat'ning storms obey,
Intrepid Virtue smiles secure,
As in the blaze of day.

In the thick cloud's tremendous gloom,
The lightnings lurid glare,

It views the same All-gracious Pow'r,
That breathes the vernal air.

Thro' Nature's ever-varying scene,
By diff'rent ways pursued,

The one eternal end of Heav'n
Is universal good.

The same unchanging Mercy rules
When flaming ether glows,

As when it tunes the linnet's voice,
Or blushes in the rose.

By Reason taught to scorn those fears
That vulgar minds molest;
Let no fantastic terrors break
My dear Narcissa's rest.

Thy life may all the tend'rest care
Of Providence defend;

And delegated angels round

Their guardian wings extend.

When, thro' creation's vast expanse,
The last dread thunders roll,
Untune the concord of the spheres,
And shake the rising soul;

Unmoved mayst thou the final storm,

Of jarring worlds survey,

That ushers in the glad serene

Of everlasting day.

Dr. Russell has the following pretty lines addressed to a lady fearful of thunder:

Say, whence this sudden chill, my fair,
When thunder rattles thro' the air?
Why quits your blood each distant part,
And hastes to guard the lab'ring heart?

The flash that strikes the villain dead,
Is taught to spare the guiltless head;
Or should by this the virtuous die,
'Twere but on lightning's wings to fly,
And gain with greater speed the sky.

No. L.

ON ELECTRICITY.

Causa latet, vis est notissima.

The cause is secret, but th' effect is known.

OVID.

ADDISON.

THE phenomena of Electricity are so various, so brilliant, and so remote from the appearances under which natural bodies are commonly presented to our observation, that while they amuse the superficial, and excite the attention of the most incurious observer, they are adapted to exercise the faculties of the most intelligent philosopher, in the investigation of their causes and relations. The number and variety of the experiments which have been made in this branch of philosophy, within our own times, is astonishing. The scarcity of observations made in the preceding ages, and even by our immediate predecessors, on a subject which has proved so fruitful in our hands, is almost equally surprising. From the time of Thales the Milesian, who flourished about 640 years before Christ, and Theophrastus, the disciple of Aristotle, who lived about 300 years after, down to the middle of the seventeenth century, all that had been said, or that was known of electricity, might be contained within the compass of a primer. Even the more modern writers of general