Magic and miracles.  Inventive ingenuity did not restrict itself to the production of useful contrivances, it added amusing ones.  Soon after the introduction of science into Italy, the houses of the virtuosi began to abound in all kinds of curious mechanical surprises, and, as they were termed, magical effects.  In the latter the invention of the magic-lantern greatly assisted.  Not without reason did the ecclesiastics detest experimental philosophy, for a result of no little importance ensued—­the juggler became a successful rival to the miracle-worker.  The pious frauds enacted in the churches lost their wonder when brought into competition with the tricks of the conjurer in the market-place:  he breathed flame, walked on burning coals, held red-hot iron in his teeth, drew basketfuls of eggs out of his mouth, worked miracles by marionettes.  Yet the old idea of the supernatural was with difficulty destroyed.  A horse, whose master had taught him many tricks, was tried at Lisbon in 1601, found guilty of being, possessed by the devil, and was burnt.  Still later than that many witches were brought to the stake.

Discoveries in astronomy and chemistry.  Once fairly introduced, discovery and invention have unceasingly advanced at an accelerated pace.  Each continually reacted on the other, continually they sapped supernaturalism.  De Dominis commenced, and Newton completed, the explanation of the rainbow; they showed that it was not the weapon of warfare of God, but the accident of rays of light in drops of water.  De Dominis was decoyed to Rome through the promise of an archbishopric, and the hope of a cardinal’s hat.  He was lodged in a fine residence, but carefully watched.  Accused of having suggested a concord between Rome and England, he was imprisoned in the castle of St Angelo, and there died.  He was brought in his coffin before an ecclesiastical tribunal, adjudged guilty of heresy, and his body, with a heap of heretical books, was cast into the flames.  Franklin, by demonstrating the identity of lightning and electricity, deprived Jupiter of his thunder-bolt.  The marvels of superstition were displaced by the wonders of truth.  The two telescopes, the reflector and the achromatic, inventions of the last century, permitted man to penetrate into the infinite grandeurs of the universe, to recognize, as far as such a thing is possible, its illimitable spaces, its measureless times; and a little later the achromatic microscope placed before his eyes the world of the infinitely small.  The air-balloon carried him above the clouds, the diving- bell to the bottom of the sea.  The thermometer gave him true measures of the variations of heat; the barometer, of the pressure of the air.  The introduction of the balance imparted exactness to chemistry, it proved the indestructibility of matter.  The discovery of oxygen, hydrogen, and many other gases, the isolation of aluminum, calcium,