Transcriber's note: Cover created by Transcriber and placed into the Public Domain.

Sir W. Beechy.

I. J. Hinchliff.

James Watt.

A
HISTORY
OF
INVENTIONS, DISCOVERIES,
AND ORIGINS.

By JOHN BECKMANN,
PROFESSOR OF ŒCONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GÖTTINGEN.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN,
By WILLIAM JOHNSTON.

Fourth Edition,
CAREFULLY REVISED AND ENLARGED BY
WILLIAM FRANCIS, Ph.D., F.L.S.,
EDITOR OF THE CHEMICAL GAZETTE;
AND
J. W. GRIFFITH, M.D., F.L.S.,
LICENTIATE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS.

VOL. II.

LONDON:
HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1846.

PRINTED BY RICHARD AND JOHN E. TAYLOR,
RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.

CONTENTS.

THE STEAM-ENGINE,
AND THE DISCOVERIES OF JAMES WATT.

Although the plan of this new edition of Beckmann’s ‘History of Inventions and Discoveries’ was to confine it to the subjects treated of in the original work, yet we feel it imperative to make an exception in favour of the Steam-Engine, the most important of all modern inventions.

The power of steam was not entirely unknown to the ancients, but before the æra rendered memorable by the discoveries of James Watt, the steam-engine, which has since become the object of such universal interest, was a machine of extremely limited power, inferior in importance and usefulness to most other mechanical agents used as prime movers. Hero of Alexandria, who lived about 120 years before the birth of Christ, has left us the description of a machine, in which a continued rotatory motion was imparted to an axis by a blast of steam issuing from lateral orifices in arms placed at right angles to it. About the beginning of the seventeenth century, a French engineer, De Caus, invented a machine by which a column of water might be raised by the pressure of steam confined in the vessel, above the water to be elevated; and in 1629, Branca, an Italian philosopher, contrived a plan of working several mills by a blast of steam against the vanes; from the descriptions, however, which have been left us of these contrivances, it does not appear that their projectors were acquainted with those physical properties of elasticity and condensation on which the power of steam as a mechanical agent depends.

In 1663, the celebrated Marquis of Worcester described in his Century of Inventions, an apparatus for raising water by the expansive force of steam only. From this work we extract the following short account of the first steam-engine. “68. An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire; not by drawing or sucking it upwards, for that must be as the philosopher calleth it, intra sphæram activitatis, which is but at such a distance. But this way hath no bounder, if the vessel be strong enough: for I have taken a piece of whole cannon, whereof the end was burst, and filled it three-quarters full of water, stopping and screwing up the broken end as also the touch-hole; and making a constant fire under it, within twenty-four hours it burst and made a great crack; so that having a way to make my vessels so that they are strengthened by the force within them, and the one to fill after the other, I have seen the water run like a constant stream, forty feet high: one vessel of water rarefied by fire, driveth up forty of cold water; and a man that tends the work is but to turn two cocks, that one vessel of water being consumed, another begins to force and refill with cold water, and so successively; the fire being tended and kept constant, which the self-same person may likewise abundantly perform in the interim, between the necessity of turning the said cocks.”

The next name to be mentioned in connection with the progressive history of the invention of the steam-engine, is that of Denis Papin, a native of France, who, being banished from his country, was established Professor of Mathematics at the University of Marburg, by the Landgrave of Hesse. He first conceived the important idea of obtaining a moving power by means of a piston working in a cylinder (1688), and subsequently (1690) that of producing a vacuum in the cylinder by the sudden condensation of steam by cold. In accordance with these ideas he constructed a model consisting of a small cylinder, in which was inserted a solid piston, and beneath this a small quantity of water; on applying heat to the bottom of the cylinder, steam was generated, the elastic force of which raised the piston; the cylinder was then cooled by removing the fire, when the steam condensed and became again converted into water, thus creating a vacuum in the cylinder, into which the piston was forced by the pressure of the atmosphere; there is, however, no evidence of his having carried that or any other machine into practical use, before machines worked by steam had been constructed elsewhere.

The first actual working steam-engine of which there is any record, was invented by Captain Savery an Englishman, to whom a patent was granted in 1698 for a steam-engine to be applied to the raising of water, &c. This gentleman produced a working-model before the Royal Society, as appears from the following extract from their Transactions:—“June 14th, 1699. Mr. Savery entertained the Royal Society with showing a small model of his engine for raising water by help of fire, which he set to work before them: the experiment succeeded according to expectation, and to their satisfaction.” This engine, which was used for some time to a considerable extent for raising water from mines, consisted of a strong iron vessel shaped like an egg, with a tube or pipe at the bottom, which descended to the place from which the water was to be drawn, and another at the top, which ascended to the place to which it was to be elevated. This oval vessel was filled with steam supplied from a boiler, by which the atmospheric air was first blown out of it. When the air was thus expelled, and nothing but pure steam left in the vessel, the communication with the boiler was cut off, and cold water poured on the external surface. The steam within was thus condensed and a vacuum produced, and the water drawn up from below in the usual way by suction. The oval steam-vessel was thus filled with water; a cock placed at the bottom of the lower pipe was then closed, and steam was introduced from the boiler into the oval vessel above the surface of the water. This steam being of high pressure, forced the water up the ascending tube, from the top of which it was discharged; and the oval vessel being thus refilled with steam, the vacuum was again produced by condensation, and the same process was repeated by using two oval steam-vessels, which would act alternately; one drawing water from below, while the other was forcing it upwards, by which an uninterrupted discharge of water was produced. Owing to the danger of explosion, from the high pressure of the steam which was used, and from the enormous waste of heat by unnecessary condensation, these engines soon fell into disuse.

Several ingenious men now turned their attention to the improvement of the steam-engine, with a view to reduce the consumption of fuel, which was found to be so immense as to preclude its use except under very favourable circumstances; and in 1705, Thomas Newcomen, a blacksmith or ironmonger, and John Cawley, a plumber and glazier, patented their atmospheric engine, in which at first condensation was effected by the affusion of cold water upon the external surface of the cylinder, which was introduced into a hollow casing by which it was surrounded. Having accidentally observed that an engine worked several strokes with unusual rapidity without the supply of condensing water, Newcomen found, on examining the piston, a hole in it through which the water poured on to keep it air-tight issued in the form of a little jet, and instantly condensed the steam under it; this led him to abandon the casing and to introduce a pipe furnished with a cock, into the bottom of the cylinder, by which water was supplied from a reservoir. Newcomen’s engine required the constant attendance of some person to open and shut the regulating and condensing valves, a duty which was usually entrusted to boys, called cock-boys. It is said that one of these boys, named Humphrey Potter, wishing to join his comrades at play, without exposing himself to the consequences of suspending the performance of the engine, contrived by attaching strings of proper length to the levers which governed the two cocks, to connect them with the beam, so that it should open and close the cocks as it moved up and down, with the most perfect regularity. By this simple contrivance the steam-engine for the first time became an automaton.

It was in repairing a working model of a steam-engine on Newcomen’s principle for the lectures of the professor of natural philosophy at the University of Glasgow, that James Watt directed his mind to the prosecution of those inventions and beautiful contrivances, by which he gave to senseless matter an almost instinctive power of self-adjustment, with precision of action more than belongs to any animated being, and which have rendered his name celebrated over the world.

At the time of which we speak, Newcomen’s engine was of the last and most approved construction. The moving power was the weight of the air pressing on the upper surface of a piston working in a cylinder; steam being employed at the termination of each downward stroke to raise the piston with its load of air up again, and then to form a vacuum by its condensation when cooled by a jet of cold water, which was thrown into the cylinder when the admission of steam was stopped. Upon repairing the model, Watt was struck by the incapability of the boiler to produce a sufficient supply of steam, though it was larger in proportion to the cylinder than was usual in working engines. This arose from the nature of the cylinder, which being made of brass, a better conductor of heat than cast-iron, and presenting, in consequence of its small size, a much larger surface in proportion to its solid content than the cylinders of working engines, necessarily cooled faster between the strokes, and therefore at every fresh admission consumed a greater proportionate quantity of steam. But being made aware of a much greater consumption of steam than he had imagined, he was not satisfied without a thorough inquiry into the cause. With this view he made experiments upon the merits of boilers of different constructions; on the effect of substituting a less perfect conductor, as wood, for the material of the cylinder; on the quantity of coal required to evaporate a given quantity of water; on the degree of expansion of water in the form of steam: and he constructed a boiler which showed the quantity of water evaporated in a given time, and thus enabled him to calculate the quantity of steam consumed at each stroke of the engine. This proved to be several times the content of the cylinder. He soon discovered that, whatever the size and construction of the cylinder, an admission of hot steam into it must necessarily be attended with very great waste, if in condensing the steam previously admitted, that vessel had been cooled down sufficiently to produce a vacuum at all approaching to a perfect one. If, on the other hand, to prevent this waste, he cooled it less thoroughly, a considerable quantity of steam remained uncondensed within, and by its resistance weakened the power of the descending stroke. These considerations pointed out a vital defect in Newcomen’s engine; involving either a loss of steam, and consequent waste of fuel; or a loss of power from the piston’s descending at every stroke through a very imperfect vacuum.

It soon occurred to Watt, that if the condensation were performed in a separate vessel, one great evil, the cooling of the cylinder, and the consequent waste of steam, would be avoided. The idea once started, he soon verified it by experiment. By means of an arrangement of cocks, a communication was opened between the cylinder, and a distinct vessel exhausted of its air, at the moment when the former was filled with steam. The vapour of course rushed to fill up the vacuum, and was there condensed by the application of external cold, or by a jet of water; so that fresh steam being continually drawn off from the cylinder to supply the vacuum continually created, the density of that which remained might be reduced within any assignable limits. This was the great and fundamental improvement.

Still, however, there was a radical defect in the atmospheric engine, inasmuch as the air being admitted into the cylinder at every stroke, a great deal of heat was abstracted, and a proportionate quantity of steam wasted. To remedy this, Watt excluded the air from the cylinder altogether; and recurred to the original plan of making steam the moving power of the engine, not a mere agent to produce a vacuum. In removing the difficulties of construction which beset this new plan, he displayed great ingenuity and powers of resource. On the old plan, if the cylinder was not bored quite true, or the piston not accurately fitted, a little water poured upon the top rendered it perfectly air-tight, and the leakage into the cylinder was of little consequence, so long as the injection water was thrown into that vessel. But on the new plan, no water could possibly be admitted within the cylinder; and it was necessary, not merely that the piston should be air-tight, but that it should work through an air-tight collar, that no portion of the steam admitted above it might escape. This he accomplished by packing the piston and the stuffing-box, as it is called, through which the piston-rod works, with hemp. A further improvement consisted in equalising the motion of the engine by admitting the steam alternately above and below the piston, by which the power is doubled in the same space, and with the same strength of material. The vacuum of the condenser was perfected by adding a powerful pump, which at once drew off the condensed and injected water, and with it any portion of air which might find admission; as this would interfere with the action of the engine if allowed to accumulate. His last great change was to cut off the communication between the cylinder and the boiler, when a portion only, as one-third or one-half, of the stroke was performed; leaving it to the expansive power of the steam to complete it. By this, œconomy of steam was obtained, together with the power of varying the effort of the engine according to the work which it has to do, by admitting the steam through a greater or smaller portion of the stroke.

These are the chief improvements which Watt effected at different periods of his life. He was born June 19, 1736, at Greenock, where he received the rudiments of his education. Having at an early age manifested a partiality for the practical part of mechanics, he went in his eighteenth year to London to obtain instruction in the profession of a mathematical instrument-maker, but remained there little more than a year, being compelled to return home on account of his health. In 1757, shortly after his return home, he was appointed instrument-maker to the University of Glasgow, and accommodated with premises within the precincts of that learned body. In 1763 he removed into the town of Glasgow, intending to practise as a civil engineer. His first patent is dated June 5, 1769, which parliament extended in 1775 for twenty-five years in consideration of the national importance of the inventions, and the difficulty and expense of introducing them to public notice. He died at his house at Heathfield in the county of Stafford, on the 25th of August, 1819, at the advanced age of eighty-four, after having realized an ample fortune, the well-earned reward of his industry and ability.

To enter into the history of the various applications of the steam-engine to the different branches of industry would carry us beyond the bounds of this work. “To enumerate its present effects,” says a well-known writer on the steam-engine[1], “would be to count almost every comfort and every luxury of life. It has increased the sum of human happiness, not only by calling new pleasures into existence, but by so cheapening former enjoyments as to render them attainable by those who before could never have hoped to share them: the surface of the land, and the face of the waters are traversed with equal facility by its power; and by thus stimulating and facilitating the intercourse of nation with nation, and the commerce of people with people, it has knit together remote countries by bonds of amity not likely to be broken. Streams of knowledge and information are kept flowing between distant centres of population, those more advanced diffusing civilization and improvement among those that are more backward. The press itself, to which mankind owes in so large a degree the rapidity of their improvement in modern times, has had its power and influence increased in a manifold ratio by its union with the steam-engine. It is thus that literature is cheapened, and by being cheapened, diffused; it is thus that reason has taken the place of force, and the pen has superseded the sword; it is thus that war has almost ceased upon the earth, and that the differences which inevitably arise between people and people are for the most part adjusted by peaceful negotiation.”

FOOTNOTES

[1] Dr. Lardner.

HISTORY OF INVENTIONS
AND
DISCOVERIES.

LENDING AND PAWNBROKING.

It appears singular to us at present that it should have been once considered unlawful to receive interest for lent money; but this circumstance will excite no wonder when the reason of it is fully explained. The different occupations by which one can maintain a family without robbery and without war, were at early periods neither so numerous nor so productive as in modern times; those who borrowed money required it only for immediate use, to relieve their necessities or to procure the conveniences of life; and those who advanced it to such indigent persons did so either through benevolence or friendship. The case now is widely different. With the assistance of borrowed money people enter into business, and carry on trades, from which by their abilities, diligence, or good fortune, so much profit arises that they soon acquire more than is requisite for their daily support; and under these circumstances the lender may undoubtedly receive for the beneficial use of his money a certain remuneration, especially as he himself might have employed it to advantage; and as by lending it he runs the risk of losing either the whole or a part of his capital, or at least of not receiving it again so soon as he may have occasion for it.

Lending on interest, therefore, must have become more usual in proportion as trade, manufactures, and the arts were extended; or as the art of acquiring money by money became more common: but it long continued to be detested, because the ancient abhorrence against it was by an improper construction of the Mosaic law converted into a religious prejudice[2], which, like many other prejudices more pernicious, was strengthened and confirmed by severe papal laws. The people, however, who often devise means to render the faults of their legislators less hurtful, concealed this practice by various inventions, so that neither the borrower nor lender could be punished, nor the giving and receiving of interest be prevented. As it was of more benefit than prejudice to trade, the impolicy of the prohibition became always more apparent; it was known that the new-invented usurious arts under which it was privately followed would occasion greater evils than those which had been apprehended from lending on interest publicly; it was perceived also that the Jews, who were not affected by papal maledictions, foreigners, and a few natives who had neither religion nor conscience, and whom the church wished least of all to favour, were those principally enriched by it.

In no place was this inconvenience more felt than at the Romish court, even at a time when it boasted of divine infallibility; and nowhere was more care employed to remove it. A plan, therefore, was at length devised, by which the evil, as was supposed, would be banished. A capital was collected from which money was to be lent to the poor for a certain period on pledges without interest. This idea was indeed not new; for such establishments had long before been formed and supported by humane princes. The emperor Augustus, we are told, converted into a fund the surplus of the money which arose to the State from the confiscated property of criminals, and lent sums from it, without interest, to those who could pledge effects equal to double the amount[3]. Tiberius also advanced a large capital, from which those were supplied with money for three years, who could give security on lands equivalent to twice the value[4]. Alexander Severus reduced the interest of money by lending it at a low rate, and advancing sums to the poor without interest to purchase lands, and agreeing to receive payment from the produce of them[5].

These examples of the ancients were followed in modern Italy. In order to collect money, the popes conferred upon those who would contribute towards that object a great many fictitious advantages, which at any rate cost them nothing. By bulls and holy water they dispensed indulgences and eternal salvation; they permitted burthensome vows to be converted into donations to lending-houses; and authorised the rich who advanced them considerable sums to legitimate such of their children as were not born in wedlock. As an establishment of this kind required a great many servants, they endeavoured to procure these also on the same conditions; and they offered, besides the above-mentioned benefits, a great many others not worth notice, to those who would engage to discharge gratis the business of their new undertaking; but in cases of necessity they were to receive a moderate salary from the funds. This money was lent without interest for a certain time to the poor only, provided they could deposit proper pledges of sufficient value.

It was, however, soon observed that an establishment of this kind could neither be of extensive use nor of long duration. In order to prevent the secret lending of money, by the usurious arts which had begun to be practised, it was necessary that it should advance sums not only to those who were poor in the strictest sense of the word, but to those also who, to secure themselves from poverty, wished to undertake and carry on useful employments, and who for that purpose had need of capitals. However powerful the attractions might be, which, on account of the religious folly that then prevailed, induced people to make large contributions, they gradually lost their force, and the latter were lessened in proportion, especially as a spirit of reformation began soon after to break out in Germany, and to spread more and more into other countries. Even if a lending-house should not be exhausted by the maintenance of its servants, and various accidents that could not be guarded against, it was still necessary, at any rate, to borrow as much money at interest as might be sufficient to support the establishment. As it was impossible that it could relieve all the poor, the only method to be pursued was to prevent their increase, by encouraging trade, and by supplying those with money who wanted only a little to enable them to gain more, and who were in a condition and willing to pay a moderate interest. The pontiffs, therefore, at length resolved to allow the lending-houses to receive interest, not for the whole capitals which they lent, but only for a part, merely that they might raise as much money as might be sufficient to defray their expenses; and they now, for the first time, adopted the long-established maxim, that those who enjoy the benefits should assist to bear the burthen—a maxim which very clearly proves the legality of interest. When this opening was once made, one step more only was necessary to place the lending-houses on that judicious footing on which they would in all probability have been put by the inventor himself, had he not been under the influence of prejudice. In order that they might have sufficient stock in hand, it was thought proper to give to those who should advance them money a moderate interest, which they prudently concealed by blending it with the unavoidable expenses of the establishment, to which it indeed belonged, and which their debtors, by the practice a little before introduced, were obliged to make good. The lending-houses, therefore, gave and received interest. But that the odious name might be avoided, whatever interest was received, was said to be pro indemnitate; and this is the expression made use of in the papal bull.

All this, it must be confessed, was devised with much ingenuity: but persons of acuteness still discovered the concealed interest; and a violent contest soon arose respecting the legality of lending-houses, in which the greatest divines and jurists of the age took a part; and by which the old question, whether one might do anything wicked, or establish interest, in order to effect good, was again revived and examined. Fortunately for the pontifical court, the folly of mankind was still so great that a bull was sufficient to suppress, or at least to silence, the spirit of inquiry. The pope declared the holy mountains of piety, “sacri monti de pietà,” to be legal; and threatened those with his vengeance who dared to entertain any further doubts on the subject. All the cities now hastened to establish lending-houses; and their example was at length followed in other countries. Such, in a general view, is the history of these establishments: I shall now confirm it by the necessary proofs.

When under the appellation of lending-house we understand a public establishment where any person can borrow money upon pledges, either for or without interest, we must not compare it to the tabernæ argentariæ or mensæ nummulariæ of the Romans. These were banking-houses, at which the state and rich people caused their revenues to be paid, and on which they gave their creditors orders either to receive their debts in money, or to have the sums transferred in their own name, and to receive security for them. To assign over money and to pay money by a bill were called perscribere and rescribere; and an assignment or draft was called attributio. These argentarii, mensarii, nummularii, collybistæ and trapezitæ followed the same employment, therefore, as our cashiers or bankers. The former, like the latter, dealt in exchanges and discount; and in the same manner also they lent from their capital on interest, and gave interest themselves, in order that they might receive a greater. Those who among the ancients were enemies to the lending of money on interest brought these people into some disrepute; and the contempt entertained for them was probably increased by prejudice, though those nummarii who were established by government as public cashiers held so exalted a rank that some of them became consuls. Such banking-houses existed in the Italian States in the middle ages, about the year 1377. They were called apothecæ seu casanæ feneris[6], and in Germany Wechselbanke, banks of exchange; but they were not lending-houses in the sense in which I here understand them.

Equally distinct also from lending-houses were those banks established in the fourteenth century, in many cities of Italy, such, for example, as Florence, in order to raise public loans. Those who advanced money on that account received an obligation and monthly interest, which on no pretext could be refused, even if the creditor had been guilty of any crime. These obligations were soon sold with advantage, but oftener with loss; and the price of them rose and fell like that of the English stocks, but not so rapidly; and theologists disputed whether one could with a safe conscience purchase an obligation at less than the stated value, from a proprietor who was obliged to dispose of it for ready specie. If the State was desirous or under the necessity of repaying the money, it availed itself of that regale called by Leyser regale falsæ monetæ, and returned the capital in money of an inferior value. This establishment was confirmed, at least at Florence, by the pontiff, who subjected those who should commit any fraud in it to ecclesiastical punishment and a fine, which was to be carried to the papal treasury: but long before that period the republic of Genoa had raised a loan by mortgaging the public revenues. I have been more particular on this subject, because Le Bret[7] calls these banks, very improperly, lending-houses; and in order to show to what a degree of perfection the princely art of contracting and paying debts was brought so early as the fourteenth century.

Those who have as yet determined the origin of lending-houses with the greatest exactness, place it, as Dorotheus Ascanius, that is Matthias Zimmermann[8], does, in the time of Pope Pius II. or Paul II., who filled the papal chair from 1464 to 1471; and the reason for supposing it to have been under the pontificate of the latter is, because Leo X. in his bull, which I shall quote hereafter, mentions that pope as the first who confirmed an establishment of this kind. As the above account did not appear to me satisfactory, and as I knew before that the oldest lending-houses in Italy were under the inspection of the Franciscans, I consulted the Annals of the Seraphic Order, with full expectation that this service would not be omitted in that work; and I indeed found in it more materials towards the history of lending-houses than has ever been collected, as far as I know, by any other person.

As complaints against usury, which was practised by many Christians, but particularly by the Jews, became louder and more public in Italy in the fifteenth century, Barnabas Interamnensis, probably of Terni, first conceived the idea of establishing a lending-house. This man was originally a physician; had been admitted to the degree of doctor; was held in great respect on account of his learning; became a Minorite, or Franciscan; acquired in that situation every rank of honour, and died, in the first monastery of this order at Assisi (in monte Subasio[9]), in the year 1474. While he was employed in preaching under Pope Pius II. at Perugia, in the territories of the Church, and observed how much the poor were oppressed by the usurious dealings of the Jews, he made a proposal for raising a capital by collections, in order to lend from it on pledges to the indigent, who should give monthly, for the use of the money borrowed, as much interest as might be necessary to pay the servants employed in this establishment, and to support it. Fortunatus de Copolis, an able jurist of Perugia, who after the death of his wife became also a Franciscan, approved of this plan, and offered to assist in putting it into execution. To be assured in regard to an undertaking which seemed to approach so near to the lending on interest, both these persons laid their plan before the university of that place, and requested to know whether such an establishment could be allowed; and an answer being given in the affirmative, a considerable sum was soon collected by preaching, so that there was a sufficiency to open a lending-house. Notwithstanding this sanction, many were displeased with the design, and considered the receiving of interest, however small it might be, as a species of usury. Those who exclaimed most against it were the Dominicans (ex ordine Prædicatorum): and they seem to have continued to preach in opposition to it, till they were compelled by Leo X. to be silent; while the Franciscans, on the other hand, defended it, and endeavoured to make it be generally adopted. The dispute became more violent when, at the end of a year, after all expenses were paid, a considerable surplus was found remaining; and as the managers did not know how to dispose of it, they at length thought proper to divide it amongst the servants, because no fixed salaries had been appointed for them. Such was the method first pursued at Perugia; but in other places the annual overplus was employed in a different manner. The particular year when this establishment began to be formed I have nowhere found marked; but as it was in the time of Pius II., it must have been in 1464, or before that period[10]. It is very remarkable that this pontiff confirmed the lending-house at Orvieto (Urbs Vetus) so early as the above year; whereas that at Perugia was sanctioned, for the first time, by Pope Paul II. in 1467. It is singular also that Leo X., in his confirmation of this establishment, mentions Paul II., Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., Alexander VI. and Julius II.; but not Pius II. Pope Sixtus IV., as Wadding says, confirmed in 1472 the lending-house at Viterbo, which had, however, been begun so early as 1469, by Franciscus de Viterbo, a Minorite[11].

In the year 1479 Sixtus IV. confirmed the lending-house which had been established at Savona, the place of his birth, upon the same plan as that at Perugia. The bull issued for this purpose is the first pontifical confirmation ever printed[12]; for that obtained for Perugia was not, as we are told by the editor, to be found in the archives there in 1618, the time when the other was printed. I have never found the confirmation of those at Orvieto and Viterbo. Ascianus sought for them, but without success, in Bullarium Magnum Cherubini, and they are not mentioned by Sixtus. This pontiff, in his bull, laments that the great expenses to which he was subjected did not permit him to relieve his countrymen with money, but that he would grant to the lending-house so many spiritual advantages, as should induce the faithful to contribute towards its support; and that it was his desire that money should be lent from it to those who would assist gratis during a year in the business which it required. If none could be found to serve on these conditions, a moderate salary was to be given. He added a clause also respecting pledges; but passed over in silence that the debtors were to contribute anything for the support of the institution by paying interest, which Barnabas, whose name does not occur in the bull, introduced however at Perugia, and which the pope tacitly approved.

The greater part of the lending-houses in Italy were established in the fifteenth and following centuries by the Minorites Marcus Bononiensis, Michael a Carcano[13], Cherubinus Spoletanus, Jacobus de Marchia, Antonius Vercellensis, Angelus a Clavasio, and above all, Bernardinus Tomitano, named also Feltrensis and Parvulus. This man was born at Feltri, in the country of Treviso, in the year 1439. His father was called Donato Tomitano, and his mother Corona Rambaldoni; they were both of distinguished families, though some assert that he was of low extraction, and a native of Tomi, a small place near Feltri, on which account he got the name of Tomitano. The name of Parvulus arose from his diminutive stature, which he sometimes made a subject of pleasantry[14]. This much at any rate is certain, that he had received a good education. In 1456, when seventeen years of age, he suffered his instructors, contrary to the inclination of his father, to carry him to Padua, to be entered in the order of the Minorites; and on this occasion he changed his christian-name Martin into Bernardinus. As he was a good speaker, he was employed by his order in travelling through Italy and preaching. He was heard with applause, and in many parts the people almost paid him divine honours. The chief object of his sermons was to banish gaming, intemperance, and extravagance of dress; but he above all attacked the Jews, and excited such a hatred against them, that the governments in many places were obliged to entreat or to compel him either to quit their territories or not to preach in opposition to these unfortunate people, whom the crowds he collected threatened to massacre; and sometimes when he visited cities where there were rich Jews and persons who were connected with them in trade, he was in danger of losing even his own life. Taking advantage of this general antipathy to the Jews, he exerted himself, after the example of Barnabas, his brother Minorite, to get lending-houses established, and died at Pavia in the year 1494. The Minorites played a number of juggling tricks with his body, pretending that it performed miracles, by which means they procured him a place in the catalogue of the saints; and to render his name still more lasting, some of his sermons have been printed among the works of the writers of the Franciscan order[15].

The lending-houses in Italy, with the origin of which I am acquainted, are as follows:—The lending-house at Perugia was inspected in 1485 by Bernardinus, who enlarged its capital.

The same year he established one at Assisi, which was confirmed by Pope Innocent, and which was visited and improved by its founder in 1487[16].

In the year 1486, after much opposition, he established a lending-house at Mantua, and procured for it also the pope’s sanction[17]. Four years after, however, it had declined so much, that he was obliged to preach in order to obtain new donations to support it.

At Florence he met with still more opposition; for the rich Jews bribed the members of the government, who wished in appearance to favour the establishment of the lending-house, to which they had consented eighteen years before, while they secretly thwarted it; and some boys having once proceeded, after hearing a sermon, to attack the houses of the Jews, the Minorites were ordered to abstain from preaching and to quit the city[18]. It was however completely established; but by the Dominican Hieronymus Savonarola[19].

In the year 1488 Bernardinus established a lending-house at Parma, and procured for it the pope’s sanction, as well as for one at Cesena, where the interest was defined to be “pro salariis officialium et aliis montis oneribus perferendis.” About the conclusion of this year he was at the other end of Italy, where he re-established the lending-house at Aquila in the kingdom of Naples[20].

In the year following he established one at Chieti (Theate) in the same kingdom, another at Rieti (Reate) in the territories of the Church, a third at Narni (Narnia)[21]; and a fourth at Lucca, which was confirmed by the bishop, notwithstanding the opposition of the Jews, who did every thing in their power to prevent it.

In the year 1490 a lending-house was established at Piacenza (Placentia) by Bernardinus, who at the same time found one at Genoa which had been established by the before-mentioned Angelus a Clavasio[22]. At this period also a lending-house was established at Verona[23], and another at Milan by the Minorite Michael de Aquis.

In 1491 a lending-house was established at Padua, which was confirmed by Pope Alexander VI. in 1493[24]; and another was established at Ravenna[25].

In 1492 Bernardinus reformed the lending-house at Vicenza, where, in order to avoid the reproach of usury, the artifice was employed of not demanding any interest, but admonishing the borrowers that they should give a remuneration according to their piety and ability. As people were by these means induced to pay more interest than what was legally required at other lending-houses, Bernardinus caused this method to be abolished[26]. He established a lending-house also the same year in the small town of Campo S. Pietro, not far from Padua, and expelled the Jews who had lent upon pledges. At this period there were lending-houses at Bassano, a village in the county of Trevisi, and also at Feltri, which he inspected and improved[27].

In the year 1493 Bernardinus caused a lending-house to be established at Crema, in the Venetian dominions; another at Pavia, where he requested the opinion of the jurists, whom he was happy to find favourable to his design; and likewise a third at Gubbio, in the territories of the Church. At the same time another Franciscan established at Cremona a mons frumenti pietatis, from which corn was lent out on interest to necessitous persons; and it appears that there had been an institution of the like kind before at Parma[28].

In the year 1494, Bernardinus, a short time before his death, assisted to establish a lending-house at Montagnana, in the Venetian territories[29], and to improve that at Brescia, which was likely to decay, because the servants had not fixed salaries[30]. The same year another Franciscan established the lending-house at Modena.

In the year 1506 Pope Julius II. confirmed the lending-house at Bologna. That of Trivigi was established in 1509; and in 1512, Elizabeth of the family of Gonzaga, as widow of duke Guido Ubaldus, established the first lending-house in the duchy of Urbino at Gubbio, and procured permission for it to coin money[31].

The historical account I have here given, displays in the strongest light the great force of prejudice, and particularly of the prejudice of ecclesiastics. Notwithstanding the manifest advantages with which lending-houses were attended, and though a great part of them had been already sanctioned by the infallible court of Rome, many, but chiefly Dominicans, exclaimed against these institutions, which they did not call montes pietatis, but impietatis. No opposition gave the Minorites so much uneasiness as that of the Dominican Thomas de Vio, who afterwards became celebrated as a cardinal under the name of Cajetanus. This monk, while he taught at Pavia in 1498, wrote a treatise De Monte Pietatis[32], in which he inveighed bitterly against taking pledges and interest, even though the latter was destined for the maintenance of the servants. The popes, he said, had confirmed lending-houses in general, but not every regulation that might be introduced into them, and had only given their express approbation of them so far as they were consistent with the laws of the church. These words, he added, had been wickedly left out in the bulls which had been printed; but he had heard them, and read them, in the confirmation of the lending-house at Mantua. I indeed find that these words are not in the copy of that bull given in Wadding, which is said to have been taken from the original; nor in the still older confirmation of the lending-house at Savona. But even were they to be found there, this would not justify Cajetan’s opposition, as the pope in both these bulls recommended the plan of the lending-house at Perugia to be adopted, of which receiving interest formed a part. Bernardinus de Bustis[33], a Minorite, took up the cause in opposition to Cajetan, and, according to Wadding’s account, with rather too much vehemence. Among his antagonists were Barrianus and Franc. Papafava, a jurist of Padua[34]. As this dispute was revived with a great deal of warmth in the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was at length terminated by Pope Leo X., who in the tenth sitting of the council of the Lateran declared by a particular bull that lending-houses were legal and useful; that all doubts to the contrary were sinful, and that those who wrote against them should be placed in a state of excommunication[35]. The whole assembly, except one archbishop, voted in favour of this determination; and it appears from a decree of the council of Trent, that it also acknowledged their legality, and confirmed them[36]. Notwithstanding this decision, there were still writers who sometimes condemned them; and who did not consider all the decrees, at least the above one of the Lateran council, as agreeable to justice. Among these was Dominicus de Soto, a Dominican. All opposition, however, in the course of time subsided, and in the year 1565, Charles Borromeo, the pope’s legate at the council of Milan, ordered all governments and ecclesiastics to assist in establishing lending-houses[37].

Of the lending-houses established after this period in Italy, I shall mention those only of Rome and Naples. It is very remarkable that the pope’s capital should have been without an institution of this kind till the year 1539, and that it should have been formed by the exertions of Giovanni Calvo, a Franciscan. Paul III., in his bull of confirmation, ordered that Calvo’s successors in rank and employment should always have the inspection of it, because the Franciscans had taken the greatest pains to endeavour to root out usury[38].

The lending-house at Naples was first established in 1539 or 1540. Two rich citizens, Aurelio Paparo, and Leonardo or Nardo di Palma, redeemed all the pledges which were at that time in the hands of the Jews, and offered to deliver them to the owners without interest, provided they would return the money which had been advanced on them. More opulent persons soon followed their example; many bequeathed large sums for this benevolent purpose; and Toledo, the viceroy, who drove the Jews from the kingdom, supported it by every method possible. This lending-house, which has indeed undergone many variations, is the largest in Europe; and it contains such an immense number of different articles, many of them exceedingly valuable, that it may be considered as a repository of the most important part of the moveables of the whole nation. About the year 1563, another establishment of the like kind was formed under the title of banco de’ poveri. At first this bank advanced money without interest, only to relieve confined debtors; afterwards, as its capital increased, it lent upon pledges, but not above the sum of five ducats without interest. For larger sums the usual interest was demanded[39].

At what time the first lending-house was established at Venice I have not been able to learn[40]. This State seems to have long tolerated the Jews; it endeavoured to moderate the hatred conceived against these people, and gave orders to Bernardinus to forbear preaching against them[41]. It appears to me in general, that the principal commercial cities of Italy were the latest to avail themselves of this invention; because they knew that to regulate interest by law, where trade was flourishing, would be ineffectual or useless; or because the rich Jew merchants found means to prevent it.

The name mons pietatis, of which no satisfactory explanation has been as yet given, came with the invention from Italy, and is equally old, if not older. Funds of money formed by the contributions of different persons, for some end specified, were long before called montes. In the first centuries of the Christian æra, free gifts were collected and preserved in churches by ecclesiastics, partly for the purpose of defraying the expense of divine service, and partly to relieve the poor. Such capitals, which were considered as ecclesiastical funds, were by Prudentius, in the beginning of the fifth century, called montes annonæ and arca numinis[42]. Tertullian calls them deposita pietatis[43]; and hence has been formed montes pietatis. At any rate I am of opinion that the inventor chose and adopted this name in order to give his institution a sacred or religious appearance, and to procure it more approbation and support.

I find however that those banks employed in Italy, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to borrow money in the name of States, for which the public revenues were mortgaged and interest paid, were also called montes[44]. In this sense the word is used by Italian historians of much later times; and those are greatly mistaken, who, with Ascian and many others, consider all these montes as real lending-houses. These loan-banks or montes received various names, sometimes from the princes who established them, sometimes from the use to which the money borrowed was applied, and sometimes from the objects which were mortgaged. Of this kind were the mons fidei, or loan opened by Pope Clement VII. in the year 1526, for defending his capital[45]; the mons aluminarius, under Pope Pius IV., for which the pontifical alum-works were pledged; the mons religionis, under Pius V., for carrying on the war against the Turks; and the montes farinæ, carnium, vini, &c., when the duties upon these articles were pledged as a security. To facilitate these loans, every condition that could induce people to advance money was thought of. Sometimes high interest was given, if the subscribers agreed that it should cease, and the capital fall to the bank after their death; and sometimes low interest was given, but the security was heritable and could be transferred at pleasure. The former were called montes vacabiles, and the latter montes non vacabiles. Sometimes the State engaged to pay back the capital at the end of a certain period, such for example as nine years, as was the case in regard to the mons novennalis, under Paul IV.; or it reserved to itself the option of returning the money at such a period as it might think proper, and sometimes the capital was sunk and the interest made perpetual. The first kind were called montes redimibiles, and the second irredimibiles[46]. One can here clearly discover the origin of life-rents, annuities, tontines, and government securities; but the further illustration of this subject I shall leave to those who may wish to employ their talents on a history of national debts. I have introduced these remarks, merely to rectify a mistake which has become almost general, and which occasioned some difficulties to me in this research; and I shall only observe further, that the popes gave to their loans, in order to raise their sinking credit, many of those spiritual advantages which they conferred on the montes pietatis. This error therefore was more easily propagated, as both were called montes; and hence it has happened that Ascianus and others assert that many lending-houses were misapplied by the popes in order to raise public loans.

From the instances here adduced, one may see that the first lending-houses were sanctioned by the pontiffs, because they only could determine to the Catholics in what cases it was lawful for them to receive interest. This circumstance seems to have rendered the establishment of them out of Italy difficult. At any rate the Protestants were at first averse to imitate an institution which originated at the court of Rome, and which, according to the prevailing prejudice of the times, it alone could approve; and from the same consideration they would not adopt the reformation which had been made in the calendar.

The first mention of a lending-house in Germany, which I have as yet met with, is to be found in the permission granted by the emperor Maximilian I. to the citizens of Nuremberg, in the year 1498, to drive the Jews from the city, and to establish an exchange-bank. The permission further stated, “That they should provide for their bank proper managers, clerks, and other persons to conduct it according to their pleasure, or as necessity might require; that such of their fellow-citizens as were not able to carry on their trades, callings, and occupations without borrowing and without pledging their effects, should, on demand, according to their trade and circumstances, receive money, for which pledges, caution and security should be taken; that at the time of payment a certain sum should be exacted by way of interest; that the clerks and conductors of the bank should receive salaries for their service from the interest; and that if any surplus remained it should be employed for the common use of the city of Nuremberg, like any other public fund.”

It here appears that the lending-houses in Germany were first known under the name of exchange-banks, by which was before understood any bank where money was lent and exchanged; but it does not thence follow, as Professor Fischer thinks[47], that they were an Italian invention. The citizens of Nuremberg had not then a lending-house, nor was one established there till the year 1618. At that period they procured from Italy copies of the regulations drawn up for various houses of this kind, in order to select the best. Those of the city of Augsburg however were the grounds on which they built, and they sent thither the persons chosen to manage their lending-house, that they might make themselves fully acquainted with the nature of the establishment at that place[48]. In the year 1591, the magistrates of Augsburg had prohibited the Jews to lend money, or to take pledges; at the same time they granted 30,000 florins as a fund to establish a lending-house, and the regulations of it were published in 1607[49].

In the Netherlands, France and England, lending-houses were first known under the name of Lombards, the origin of which is evident. It is well known that in the thirteenth and following centuries many opulent merchants of Italy, which at those periods was almost the only part of Europe that carried on an extensive trade, were invited to these countries, where there were few mercantile people able to engage deeply in commerce. For this reason they were favoured by governments in most of the large cities; but in the course of time they became objects of universal hatred, because they exercised the most oppressive usury, by lending at interest and on pledges. They were called Longobardi or Lombardi, as whole nations are often named after a part of their country, in the same manner as all the Helvetians are called Swiss, and the Russians sometimes Moscovites. They were, however, called frequently also Caorcini, Caturcini, Caursini, Cawarsini, Cawartini, Bardi, and Amanati; names, which in all probability arose from some of their greatest houses or banks. We know, at any rate, that about those periods the family of the Corsini were in great consideration at Florence. They had banks in the principal towns for lending money; they demanded exorbitant interest; and they received pledges at a low value, and retained them as their own property if not redeemed at the stated time. They eluded the prohibition of the church against interest when they found it necessary, by causing the interest to be previously paid as a present or a premium; and it appears that some sovereigns borrowed money from them on these conditions. In this manner did Edward III. king of England, when travelling through France in the year 1329, receive 5000 marks from the bank of the Bardi, and give then in return, by way of acknowledgement, a bond for 7000[50]. When complaints against the usurious practices of these Christian Jews became too loud to be disregarded, they were threatened with expulsion from the country, and those who had rendered themselves most obnoxious on that account, were often banished, so that those who remained were obliged to conduct themselves in their business with more prudence and moderation. It is probable that the commerce of these countries was then in too infant a state to dispense altogether with the assistance of these foreigners. In this manner were they treated by Louis IX. in 1268, and likewise by Philip the Bold; and sometimes the popes, who would not authorise interest, lent their assistance by prohibitions, as was the case in regard to Henry III. of England in 1240.

In the fourteenth century, the Lombards in the Netherlands paid to government rent for the houses in which they carried on their money transactions, and something besides for a permission. Of this we have instances at Delft in 1313, and at Dordrecht in 1342[51]. As in the course of time the original Lombards became extinct, these houses were let, with the same permission, for the like employment[52]; but governments at length fixed the rate of interest which they ought to receive, and established regulations for them, by which usurious practices were restrained. Of leases granted on such conditions, an instance occurs at Delft in the year 1655. In 1578, William prince of Orange recommended to the magistrates of Amsterdam Francis Masasia, one of the Lombards, as they were then called, in order that he might obtain for him permission to establish a lending-house[53], as many obtained permission to keep billiard-tables, and Jews letters of protection. In the year 1611, the proprietor of such a house at Amsterdam, who during the latter part of his lease had gained by his capital at least thirty-three and a half per cent., offered a very large sum for a renewal of his permission; but in 1614, the city resolved to take the lombard or lending-house into their own hands, or to establish one of the same kind. However odious this plan might be, a dispute arose respecting the legality of it, which Marets[54] and Claude Saumaise endeavoured to support. The public lending-house or lombard at Brussels was established in 1619; that at Antwerp in 1620, and that at Ghent in 1622. All these were established by the archduke Albert, when he entered on the governorship, with the advice of the archbishop of Mechlin; and on this occasion the architect Wenceslaus Coberger was employed, and appointed inspector-general of all the lending-houses in the Spanish Netherlands[55]. Some Italians assert that the Flemings were the first people who borrowed money on interest for their lending-houses; and they tell us that this practice began in the year 1619[56]. We are assured also, that after a long deliberation at Brussels, it was at length resolved to receive money on interest at the lending-houses. It however appears certain that in Italy this was never done, or at least not till a late period, and that the capitals of the lending-houses there were amassed without giving interest.

This beneficial institution was always opposed in France; chiefly because the doctors of the Sorbonne could not divest themselves of the prejudice against interest; and some in modern times who undertook there to accommodate people with money on the like terms, were punished by government[57]. A lending-house however was established at Paris under Louis XIII., in 1626; but the managers next year were obliged to abandon it[58]. In 1695, some persons formed a capital at Marseilles for the purpose of establishing one there according to the plan of those in Italy[59]. The present mont de piété at Paris, which has sometimes in its possession forty casks filled with gold watches that have been pledged, was, by royal command, first established in 1777[60].

[The following is the rate of profit or interest which pawnbrokers in this country are entitled to charge per calendar month. For 2s. 6d. one halfpenny; 5s. one penny; 7s. 6d. three halfpence; 10s. twopence; 12s. 6d. twopence halfpenny; 15s. threepence; 17s. 6d. threepence halfpenny; £1 fourpence; and so on progressively and in proportion for any sum not exceeding 40s. For every sum exceeding 40s. and not exceeding 42s. eightpence; and for every sum exceeding 42s. and not exceeding £10, threepence to every pound, and so on in proportion for any fractional sum. Where any intermediate sum lent on a pledge exceeds 2s. 6d. and does not exceed 40s., a sum of fourpence may be charged in proportion to each £1. Goods pawned are forfeited on the expiration of a year, exclusive of the date of pawning. But it has been held that the property is not transferred, but that the pawnbroker merely has a right to sell the article; and consequently that, on a claim after this period, with tender of principal and interest, the property must be restored if unsold (Walker v. Smith, 5 Barn. and Ald. 439). Pledges must not be taken from persons intoxicated or under twelve years of age. In Great Britain pawnbrokers must take out a license, which costs £15 within the limits of the old twopenny-post, and £7 10s. in other parts. No license is required in Ireland. A second license, which costs £5 15s., is required to take in pledge articles of gold and silver.

From 1833 to 1838 the number of pawnbrokers in the metropolitan district increased from 368 to 386; in the rest of England and Wales, from 1083 to 1194; and in Scotland, from 52 to 88; making a total of 1668 establishments, paying £15,419 for their licenses, besides the licenses which many of them take out as dealers in gold and silver. The business of a pawnbroker was not known in Glasgow until August 1806, when an itinerant English pawnbroker commenced business in a single room, but decamped at the end of six months; and his place was not supplied until June 1813, when the first regular office was established in the west of Scotland for receiving goods in pawn. Other individuals soon entered the business, and the practice of pawning had become so common, that in 1820, in a season of distress, 2043 heads of families pawned 7380 articles, on which they raised £739 5s. 6d. Of these heads of families 1375 had never applied for or received charity of any description; 474 received occasional aid from the relief committee, and 194 were paupers. The capital invested in this business in 1840 was about £26,000. Nine-tenths of the articles pledged are redeemed within the legal period. There are no means of ascertaining the exact number of pawnbrokers’ establishments in the large towns of England. In 1831, the number of males above the age of twenty employed in those at Manchester was 107; at Liverpool, 91; Birmingham, 54; Bristol, 33; Sheffield, 31.

The following curious return was made by a large pawnbroking establishment at Glasgow to Dr. Cleland, who read it before the British Association in 1836. The list comprised the following articles:—539 men’s coats, 355 vests, 288 pairs of trowsers, 84 pairs of stockings, 1980 women’s gowns, 540 petticoats, 132 wrappers, 123 duffies, 90 pelisses, 240 silk handkerchiefs, 294 shirts and shifts, 60 hats, 84 bed-ticks, 108 pillows, 262 pairs of blankets, 300 pairs of sheets, 162 bed-covers, 36 tablecloths, 48 umbrellas, 102 bibles, 204 watches, 216 rings, and 48 Waterloo medals. There were about thirty pawnbrokers in Glasgow in 1840. In the manufacturing districts, during the prevalence of strikes, or in seasons of commercial embarrassment, many hundreds of families pawn the greater part of their wearing apparel and household furniture. The practice of having recourse to the pawnbrokers on such occasions is quite of a different character from the habits of dependence into which many of the working classes suffer themselves to fall, and who, “on being paid their wages on the Saturday, are in the habit of taking their holiday clothes out of the hands of the pawnbroker to enable them to appear respectably on the Sabbath, and on the Monday following they are again pawned and a fresh loan obtained to meet the exigencies of their families for the remainder of the week.” It is on these transactions and on such as arise out of the desire of obtaining some momentary gratification that the pawnbrokers make their large profits. It is stated in one of the reports on the poor laws that a loan of threepence, if redeemed the same day, pays annual interest at the rate of 5200 per cent.; weekly, 866 per cent.;

4d., annual interest 3900 per cent., or 650 p. c. weekly;
12d., annual interest 1300 per cent., or 216 p. c. weekly.

It is stated that on a capital of sixpence thus employed (in weekly loans), pawnbrokers make in twelve months 2s. 2d.; on five shillings they gain 10s. 4d.; on ten shillings, 22s. 3¼d.; and on twenty shillings lent in weekly loans of sixpence, they more than double their capital in twenty-seven weeks, and should the goods pawned remain in their hands for the term of twelve months (which seldom occurs), they then frequently derive 100 per cent.[61]]

FOOTNOTES

[2] J. D. Michaelis, in Syntagma Commentationum, ii. p. 9; and his Mosaisches Recht. iii. p. 86.

[3] Sueton. Vita Augusti, cap. 41.

[4] Taciti Annal. vi. 17.—Sueton. Vita Tiberii, cap. 48.—Dio Cassius, lviii. 21.

[5] Ælius Lamprid. Vita Alex. Severi, cap. 21.

[6] M. Manni circa i sigilli antichi dei secoli bassi, vol. xxvii. p. 86. The author here quotes from an ancient city-book the following passage:—“Franciscus fenerator pro se et apotheca seu casana fenoris, quam tenebat in via Quattro Pagoni,” &c.

[7] Algemeine Welthistorie, xlv. p. 10.

[8] This theologian, born at Eperies in Hungary in 1625, was driven from his native country on account of his religion, and died superintendant at Meisse in 1689. He wrote, besides other works, Dorothei Asciani Montes Pietatis Romanenses, historice, canonice, et theologice detecti. Lipsiæ, 1670, 4to. This book is at present very scarce. I shall take this opportunity of mentioning also the following, because many who have written on lending-houses have quoted it, though they never saw it:—Montes Pietatis Romanenses, das ist, die Berg der Fromheit oder Gottesforcht in der Stadt Rom. Durch Elychnium Gottlieb. Strasburg, 1608, 8vo. It contains nothing of importance that may not be found in Ascianus.

[9] Of this Barnabas I know nothing more than what I have here extracted from Waddingii Annales Minorum, tom. xiv. p. 93. Wadding refers to Marian. lib. v. c. 40. § 17; and Marc. 3. p. lib. 5. cap. 58. The former is Marianus Florentinus, whose Fasciculus Chronicoram Ordinis Minorum, which consists of five books, was used in manuscript by Wadding, in composing his large work, and in my opinion has never been printed. Marc. is Marcus Ulyssoponensis, whose Chronica Ordinis Minorum I have not been able to procure, though it is translated into several languages. See Waddingii Scriptores Ordinis Minorum. Romæ 1650, fol. pp. 248, 249.

[10] This is confirmed by M. B. Salon, in t. 2. Contr. de Justit. et Jure, in ii. 2 Thom. Aquin. qu. 88. art. 2. controv. 27: “Hujus modi mons non erat in usu apud antiquos. Cœpit fere a 150 annis, tempore Pii II.” In C. L. Richard’s Analysis Conciliorum Generalium et Particularium, Venetiis, 1776, 4 vol. fol. iv. p. 98, I find that the first lending-house at Perugia was established in the year 1450; but Pius II., under whose pontificate it appears by various testimonies to have been founded, was not chosen pope till the year 1458.

[11] Bussi, Istoria della città di Viterbo. In Roma, 1742, fol. p. 271.

[12] It may be found in Bolle et Privilegi del Sacro Monte della Pietà di Roma. In Roma, 1618: ristampati l’anno 1658. This collection is commonly bound up with the following work, which was printed in the same year and again reprinted: Statuti del Sacro Monte della Pietà di Roma. This bull is inserted entire by Ascianus, p. 719, but in the Collection of the pontifical bulls it is omitted.

[13] This Michael travelled and preached much in company with Bernardinus, and died at Como in 1485.—Wadding, xiv. p. 396.

[14] The Piccolimini, nephews of the pope, having once paid their respects to him at Siena, he told them he was their namesake.—Wadding, xiv. p. 447.

[15] Waddingii Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, p. 58. Fabricii Biblioth. Mediæ et Infimæ Æt. i. p. 586.

[16] Wadding, xiv. pp. 398, 433.

[17] It may be found entire in Wadding, xiv. p. 411. It was ordered that the pledges should be worth double the sum lent, and that they should be sold if not redeemed within a year.

[18] Wadding, xiv. p. 446.

[19] D. Manni circa i Sigilli Antichi, tom. xxvii. p. 92, where much information respecting this subject may be found.

[20] Wadding, xiv. p. 451.

[21] Ibid. pp. 462, 465.

[22] Ibid. xiv. pp. 480, 481.

[23] Ibid. p. 517.

[24] Ibid. xiv. pp. 93, 482.

[25] Ibid. p. 514.

[26] Ibid. xv. pp. 6, 65.

[27] Wadding, xv. pp. 7, 9, 12.

[28] Ibid. xv. pp. 37, 45, 46.

[29] Ibid. xv. 67.

[30] Ibid. xv. p. 68. Bernardinus considered the giving of wages as a necessary evil.

[31] Della Zecca di Gubbio, e delle Geste de’ Conti e Duchi di Urbino; opera di Rinaldo Reposati. Bologna, 1772, 4to.

[32] It is to be found in the well-known large collection of juridical writings quoted commonly under the title Tractatus Tractatuum. Venetiis, 1584, fol. p. 419, vol. vi. part 1. It has also been printed separately.

[33] His works were printed together, in folio, at Brescia in 1588.

[34] The work of the former appeared in 1496. The writings of both are printed in the work of Ascianus, or Zimmermann, which has been often quoted already.

[35] This bull, which forms an epoch in the history of lending-houses, may be found in S. Lateranen. Concilium Novissimum. Romæ, 1521, fol. This scarce work, which I have now before me, is inserted entire in Harduini Acta Conciliorum, tom. ix. Parisiis, 1714, fol. The bull may be found p. 1773. It may be found also in Bullarium Magnum Cherubini, i. p. 560; Waddingii Annal. Minor. xv. p. 470; Ascianus, p. 738; and Beyerlinck’s Theatrum Vitæ Hum. v. p. 603.

[36] This is the conclusion formed by Richard, in Analysis Conciliorum, because in sess. 22, cap. 8, lending-houses are reckoned among the pia loca, and the inspection of them assigned to the bishops.

[37] Waddingii Annal. Minor. xv. p. 471.

[38] Ibid. xvi. p. 444; Ascianus, p. 766.

[39] (Summonte) Historia de Napoli, 1749, 4to, vol. iv. p. 179.—Giannone, vol. iv.—De’ Banchi di Napoli, da Michele Rocco. Neap. 1785, 3 vols. 8vo, i. p. 151.

[40] Vettor Sandi, in Principi di Storia civile della Republica di Venezia. In Venezia 1771, 4to, vol. ii. p. 436. The author treats expressly of the institution of this bank, but the year when it commenced is not mentioned.

[41] Waddingii Annal. Minor. xv. p. 67.

[42] Hymnus ii. honorem Laurentii. The poet relates, that in the third century the pagan governor of the city demanded the church treasure from Laurentius the deacon.

[43] This passage, with which Senkenberg was not acquainted, may be found in Tertullian’s Apolog. cap. 39, edition of De la Cerda, p. 187.

[44] This word however is not to be found in the Glossarium Manuale.

[45] See the bull in Bullarium Magnum, n. 17.

[46] See Petr. Gregorius Tholosanus de Republica. Francof. 1609, 4to, lib. xiii. c. 16, p. 566; and Ascianus, p. 753.

[47] Geschichte des Teutschen Handels, ii. p. 454.

[48] Gokink’s Journal für Teutschland, 1784, i. p. 504, where may be found the first and the newest regulations respecting the lending-house at Nuremberg.

[49] Stettens Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg. Frankf. 1742, 2 vols. 4to, i. p. 720, 789, 833.

[50] Fœdera, vol. iv. p. 387.

[51] Beschryving der Stadt Delft. 1729, fol. p. 553.

[52] Salmasius de Fœnore trapezitico. Lugd. 1640, 8vo, p. 744.

[53] De Koophandel van Amsterdam. Rott. 1780, 8vo, i. p. 221.

[54] S. de Marets Diss. de trapezitis.

[55] Beyerlinck, Magnum Theatrum Vitæ, tom. v. p. 602.

[56] Richard, Analysis Concilior. iv. p. 98.

[57] Turgot, Mem. sur le prêt à intérest, &c. Par. 1789, 8vo.

[58] Sauval, Hist. de la Ville de Paris.

[59] Rufel, Hist. de la Ville de Marseille; 1696. fol. ii. p. 99.

[60] Tableau de Paris. Hamb. 1781. 8vo, i. p. 78.

[61] Waterston’s Cyclopædia of Commerce.

CHEMICAL NAMES OF METALS.

As those metals earliest known, viz. copper, iron, gold, silver, lead, quicksilver and tin, received the same names as the nearest heavenly bodies, which appear to us largest, and have been distinguished by the like characters, two questions arise: Whether these names and characters were given first to the planets or to the metals? When, where, and on what account were they made choice of; and why were the metals named after the planets, or the planets after the metals? The latter of these questions, in my opinion, cannot be answered with any degree of certainty; but something may be said on the subject, which will not, perhaps, be disagreeable to those fond of such researches, and who have not had an opportunity of examining it.

That the present usual names were first given to the heavenly bodies, and at a later period to the metals, is beyond all doubt; and it is equally certain that they came from the Greeks to the Romans, and from the Romans to us. It can be proved also that older nations gave other names to these heavenly bodies at much earlier periods. The oldest appellations, if we may judge from some examples still preserved, seem to have originated from certain emotions which these bodies excited in the minds of men; and it is not improbable that the planets were by the ancient Egyptians and Persians named after their gods, and that the Greeks only adopted or translated into their own language the names which those nations had given them[62]. The idea that each planet was the residence of a god, or that they were gods themselves, has arisen, according to the most probable conjecture, from rude nations worshiping the sun, which, on account of his beneficent and necessary influence over all terrestrial bodies, they considered either as the deity himself, or his abode, or, at any rate, as a symbol of him. In the course of time, when heroes and persons who by extraordinary services had rendered their names respected and immortal, received divine honours, particular heavenly bodies, of which the sun, moon and planets seemed the fittest, were also assigned to these divinities[63]. By what laws this distribution was made, and why one planet was dedicated to Saturn and not to another, Pluche did not venture to determine: and on this point the ancients themselves are not all agreed[64]. When the planets were once dedicated to the gods, folly, which never stops where it begins, proceeded still further, and ascribed to them the attributes and powers for which the deities, after whom they were named, had been celebrated in the fictions of their mythologists. This in time laid the foundation of astrology; and hence the planet Mars, like the deity of that name, was said to cause and to be fond of war; and Venus to preside over love and its pleasures.

The next question is, Why were the metals divided in the like manner among the gods, and named after them? Of all the conjectures that can be formed in answer to this question, the following appears to me the most probable. The number of the deified planets made the number seven so sacred to the Egyptians, Persians and other nations, that all those things which amounted to the same number, or which could be divided by it without a remainder, were supposed to have an affinity or a likeness to and connexion with each other[65]. The seven metals, therefore, were considered as having some relationship to the planets, and with them to the gods, and were accordingly named after them. To each god was assigned a metal, the origin and use of which was under his particular providence and government; and to each metal were ascribed the powers and properties of the planet and divinity of the like name; from which arose, in the course of time, many of the ridiculous conceits of the alchemists.

The oldest trace of the division of the metals among the gods is to be found, as far as I know, in the religious worship of the Persians. Origen, in his Refutation of Celsus, who asserted that the seven heavens of the Christians, as well as the ladder which Jacob saw in his dream, had been borrowed from the mysteries of Mithras, says, “Among the Persians the revolutions of the heavenly bodies were represented by seven stairs, which conducted to the same number of gates. The first gate was of lead; the second of tin; the third of copper; the fourth of iron; the fifth of a mixed metal; the sixth of silver, and the seventh of gold. The leaden gate had the slow tedious motion of Saturn; the tin gate the lustre and gentleness of Venus; the third was dedicated to Jupiter; the fourth to Mercury, on account of his strength and fitness for trade; the fifth to Mars; the sixth to the Moon, and the last to the Sun[66].” Here then is an evident trace of metallurgic astronomy, as Borrichius calls it, or of the astronomical or mythological nomination of metals, though it differs from that used at present. According to this arrangement, tin belonged to Jupiter, copper to Venus, iron to Mars, and the mixed metal to Mercury. The conjecture of Borrichius, that the transcribers of Origen have, either through ignorance or design, transposed the names of the gods, is highly probable: for if we reflect that in this nomination men at first differed as much as in the nomination of the planets, and that the names given them were only confirmed in the course of time, of which I shall soon produce proofs, it must be allowed that the causes assigned by Origen for his nomination do not well agree with the present reading, and that they appear much juster when the names are disposed in the same manner as that in which we now use them[67].

This astrological nomination of metals appears to have been conveyed to the Brahmans in India; for we are informed that a Brahman sent to Apollonius seven rings, distinguished by the names of the seven stars or planets, one of which he was to wear daily on his finger, according to the day of the week[68]. This can be no otherwise explained than by supposing that he was to wear the gold ring on Sunday; the silver one on Monday; the iron one on Tuesday, and so of the rest. Allusion to this nomination of the metals after the gods occurs here and there in the ancients. Didymus, in his Explanation of the Iliad, calls the planet Mars the iron star. Those who dream of having had anything to do with Mars are by Artemidorus threatened with a chirurgical operation, for this reason, he adds, because Mars signifies iron[69]. Heraclides says also in his allegories, that Mars was very properly considered as iron; and we are told by Pindar that gold is dedicated to the sun[70].

Plato likewise, who studied in Egypt, seems to have admitted this nomination and meaning of the metals. We are at least assured so by Marsilius Ficinus[71]; but I have been able to find no proof of it, except where he says of the island Atlantis, that the exterior walls were covered with copper and the interior with tin, and that the walls of the citadel were of gold. It is not improbable that Plato adopted this Persian or Egyptian representation, as he assigned the planets to the demons; but perhaps it was first introduced into his system only by his disciples[72]. They seem, however, to have varied from the nomination used at present; as they dedicated to Venus copper, or brass, the principal component part of which is indeed copper; to Mercury tin; and to Jupiter electrum. The last-mentioned metal was a mixture of gold and silver; and on this account was probably considered to be a distinct metal, because in early periods mankind were unacquainted with the art of separating these noble metals[73].

The characters by which the planets and metals are generally expressed when one does not choose to write their names, afford a striking example how readily the mind may be induced to suppose a connexion between things which in reality have no affinity or relation to each other. Antiquaries and astrologers, according to whose opinion the planets were first distinguished by these characters, consider them as the attributes of the deities of the same name. The circle in the earliest periods among the Egyptians was the symbol of divinity and perfection; and seems with great propriety to have been chosen by them as the character of the sun, especially as, when surrounded by small strokes projecting from its circumference, it may form some representation of the emission of rays. The semicircle is in like manner the image of the moon, the only one of the heavenly bodies that appears under that form to the naked eye. The character ♄ is supposed to represent the sythe of Saturn; ♃ the thunderbolts of Jupiter; ♂ the lance of Mars, together with his shield; ♀ the looking-glass of Venus; and ☿ the caduceus or wand of Mercury.

The expression by characters adopted among the older chemists agrees with this mythological signification only in the character assigned to gold. Gold, according to the chemists, was the most perfect of metals, to which all others seemed to be inferior in different degrees. Silver approached nearest to it; but was distinguished only by a semicircle, which, for the more perspicuity, was drawn double, and thence had a greater resemblance to the most remarkable appearance of the moon; the name of which this metal had already obtained. All the other metals, as they seemed to have a greater or less affinity to gold or silver, were distinguished by marks composed of the characters assigned to these precious metals. In the character ☿ the adepts discover gold with a silver colour. The cross placed at the bottom, which among the Egyptian hieroglyphics had a mysterious signification[74], expresses, in their opinion, something I know not what, without which quicksilver would be silver or gold. This something is combined also with copper, the possible change of which into gold is expressed by the character ♀. The character ♂ declares the like honourable affinity also; though the half-cross is applied in a more concealed manner; for, according to the most proper mode of writing, the point is wanting at the top, or the upright line ought only to touch the horizontal, and not to intersect it. Philosophical gold is concealed in steel; and on this account it produces such valuable medicines. Of tin one-half is silver, and the other consists of the something unknown: for this reason the cross with the half moon appears in ♃. In lead this something is predominant, and a similitude is observed in it to silver. Hence in its character ♄ the cross stands at the top, and the silver character is only suspended on the right-hand behind it.

The mythological signification of these characters cannot be older than the Grecian mythology; but the chemical may be traced to a much earlier period. Some, who consider them as remains of the Egyptian hieroglyphics[75], pretend that they may be discovered on the table of Isis, and employ them as a proof of the high antiquity, if not of the art of making gold, at least of chemistry. We are told also that they correspond with many other characters which the adepts have left us as emblems of their wisdom.

If we are desirous of deciding without prejudice respecting both these explanations, it will be found necessary to make ourselves acquainted with the oldest form of the characters, which in all probability, like those used in writing, were subjected to many changes before they acquired that form which they have at present. I can, however, mention only three learned men, Salmasius[76], Du Cange[77], and Huet[78], who took the trouble to collect these characters. As I am afraid that my readers might be disgusted were I here to insert them, I shall give a short abstract of the conclusion which they form from them; but I must first observe that the oldest manuscripts differ very much in their representation of these characters, either because they were not fully established at the periods when they were written, or because many supposed adepts endeavoured to render their information more enigmatical by wilfully confounding the characters; and it is probable also that many mistakes may have been committed by transcribers.

The character of Mars, according to the oldest mode of representing it, is evidently an abbreviation of the word Θοῦρος, under which the Greek mathematicians understood that deity; or, in other words, the first letter Θ, with the last letter ς placed above it. The character of Jupiter was originally the initial letter of Ζεύς; and in the oldest manuscripts of the mathematical and astrological works of Julius Firmicus the capital Ζ only is used, to which the last letter ς was afterwards added at the bottom, to render the abbreviation more distinct. The supposed looking-glass of Venus is nothing else than the initial letter, a little distorted, of the word Φωσφόρος, which was the name of that goddess. The imaginary sythe of Saturn has been gradually formed from the first two letters of his name Κρόνος, which transcribers, for the sake of dispatch, made always more convenient for use, but at the same time less perceptible. To discover in the pretended caduceus of Mercury the initial letter of his Greek name Στίλβων, one needs only look at the abbreviations in the oldest manuscripts, where they will find that the Σ was once written as Ϲ; they will remark also that transcribers, to distinguish this abbreviation still more from the rest, placed the C thus, ◡; and added under it the next letter τ. If those to whom this deduction appears improbable will only take the trouble to look at other Greek abbreviations, they will find many that differ still further from the original letters they express than the present character ☿ from the Ϲ and τ united. It is possible that later transcribers, to whom the origin of this abbreviation was not known, may have endeavoured to give it a greater resemblance to the caduceus of Mercury. In short, it cannot be denied that many other astronomical characters are real symbols, or a kind of proper hieroglyphics, that represent certain attributes or circumstances, like the characters of Aries, Leo, and others quoted by Salmasius.

But how old is the present form of these characters? According to Scaliger[79], they are of great antiquity, because they are to be found on very old gems and rings. If the ring No. 104 in Goræus be old and accurately delineated, this must indeed be true; for some of these characters may be very plainly distinguished on the beazel[80]. We are told by Wallerius that they were certainly used by the ancient Egyptians, because Democritus, who resided five years in Egypt, speaks of them in the plainest terms. I do not know whence Wallerius derived this information, but it proves nothing. He undoubtedly alludes to the laughing philosopher of Abdera, who lived about 450 years before our æra, but no authentic writings of his are now extant. Fabricius says that we have a Latin translation of a work of his, De Arte Sacra, Patavii, 1572, which, however, is certainly a production of much later times. I have it now before me from the library of our university; and I find that it is not the whole book, but only an abstract, and written in so extravagant a manner that the deception is not easily discovered. It contains chemical processes, but nothing of the characters of metals; which is the case also with the letters of Democritus, published by Lubbinus[81].

[By way of contrast to the seven metals with which the ancients were acquainted, we may enumerate those known at the present day. They are as follows:—

FOOTNOTES

[62] See Goguet, Origines. Bailly, Hist. de l’Astron. Ancienne.

[63] Jablonski, Pantheon Ægypt. 1750, p. 49.

[64] These contradictions are pointed out by Goguet, in a note, p. 370. A better view of them may be found in Hygini Astronom. (ed. Van Staveren), xlii. p. 496.

[65] Jablonski, Panth. p. 55. Vossius de Idololatria, ii. 34, p. 489. Bruckeri Histor. Philosoph. i. p. 1055.

[66] Origenes Contra Celsum, lib. vi. 22. I expected to have received some explanation of this passage from the editors of Origen, and in those authors who have treated expressly on the religious worship of the Persians; but I find that they are quoted neither by Hyde; Philip a Turre, whose Monumenta Veteris Antii is printed in Thesaurus Antiquitat. et Histor. Italiæ; nor by Banier in his Mythology.

[67] Borrichius arranges the words in the following manner: “Secundam portam faciunt Jovis, comparantes ei stanni splendorem et mollitiem; tertiam Veneris æratam et solidam; quartam Martis, est enim laborum patiens, æque ac ferrum, celebratus hominibus; quintam Mercurii propter misturam inæqualem ac variam, et quia negotiator est; sextam Lunæ argenteam; septimam Solis auream.”—Ol. Borrichius De Ortu et Progressu Chemiæ.” Hafniæ, 1668, 4to, p. 29. Professor Eichhorn reminded me, as allusive to this subject, of the seven walls of Ecbatana, the capital of Media, the outermost of which was the lowest, and each of the rest progressively higher, so that they overtopped each other. Each was of a particular colour. The outermost was white; the second black; the third purple; the fourth blue; the fifth red, or rather of an orange colour; and the summit of the sixth was covered with silver, and that of the seventh, or innermost, with gold. Such is the account given by Herodotus, i. 98; and it appears to me not improbable that they may have had a relation to the seven planets, though nothing is hinted on that subject by the historian.

[68] Philostrat. Vita Apollonii, iii. 41, p. 130. How was the ring for Wednesday made? Perhaps it was hollow, and filled with quicksilver. Gesner, in Commentaria Societat. Scien. Gotting. 1753, iii. p. 78, thinks that these rings might have been made or cast under certain constellations.

[69] Oneirocritica, v. 37.

[70] Isthm. Od. ver. 1. Of the like kind are many passages in Eustathius on Homer’s Iliad, b. xi., and also the following passages of Constantinus Manasses, where he describes the creation of the stars, in his Annales (edit. Meursii, Lugd. 1616), p. 7, and p. 263: “Saturnus nigricabat, colore plumbeo; Jupiter ut argentum splendebat; Mars flammeus conspiciebatur; Sol instar auri puri lucebat; (Venus uti stannum;) Mercurius instar æris rubebat; Luna in morem glaciei pellucida suam et ipsa lucem emittebat,” &c.

[71] In his Preface to Critias. Platonis Opera; Francof. 1602, fol. p. 1097.

[72] It is probable that Ficinus had in view a passage in Olympiodori Commentar. in Meteora Arist. Ven. 1551, fol. lib. iii. p. 59.

[73] This distribution, which is ascribed to the Platonists, may be found also in the scholiasts on Pindar, at the beginning of the fifth Isthmian Ode, p. 459.

[74] Jablonski, Pantheon Ægypt. i. p. 282, 283, 287; and ii. p. 131. This author makes it the representation of something which cannot be well named. Kircheri Œdipus Ægypt. t. ii. pars ii. p. 399. Romæ, 1653, fol.

[75] Goguet, ii. pp. 370, 371, considers them as remains of the original hieroglyphics; but he is of opinion that we received them in their present form from the Arabians.

[76] Plinianæ Exercitat. in Solinum, p. 874.

[77] Gloss. ad Script. Med. et Infimæ Græcitatis.

[78] In his Annotations on Manilii Astronomicon (in usum Delphini). Par. 1679, 4to, p. 80.

[79] In his Annotations on Manilii Astron. Strasb. 1665, 4to, p. 460.

[80] In Gorii Thesaurus Gemmarum antiquarum astriferarum, Florent. 1750, 3 vols. fol., I found nothing on this subject. Characters of the moon and of the signs in the zodiac often occur; but no others are to be seen, except in tab. 33, where there is a ring, which has on it the present characters of Mars and Venus. In general the planets are represented by seven small asterisks, or by six and the character of the moon. Besides, the antiquity of this gem cannot be ascertained.

[81] See the collection of Greek letters of Eilh. Lubbinus. Commelin. 1601, 8vo.

ZINC.

Zinc is one of those metals which were not known to the Greeks[82], Romans, or Arabians. This we have reason to conjecture, because it has not been distinguished by a chemical character like the rest; but it is fully proved, by our not finding in the works of the ancients any information that appears even to allude to it. I know but of one instance where it is supposed to have been found among remains of antiquity. Grignon pretends that something like it was discovered in the ruins of the ancient Roman city in Champagne[83]. Such an unexpected discovery deserved to have been investigated with the utmost minuteness; but it seems to have been examined only in a very superficial manner; and as that was the case, it is impossible to guess what kind of a metal or metallic mixture this author considered as zinc.

It is not surprising that this metal should have remained so long unknown, for it has never yet been found in the metallic state. Its ores are often and in a great degree mixed with foreign ingredients; and when they are melted, it sublimes in a metallic form, and is found adhering above to the cool sides of the furnace; but a particular apparatus is necessary, else the reduced metal partly evaporates, and is partly oxidized, by which means it appears like an earth, and exhibits to the eye no traces of metal.

That mixture of zinc and copper called at present brass, tomback, pinchbeck, princes-metal, &c., and which was first discovered by ores, abundant in zinc, yielding when melted not pure copper, but brass, was certainly known to the ancients. Mines that contained ores, from which this gold-coloured metal was produced, were held in the highest estimation; when exhausted, the loss of them was regretted; and it was supposed that the metal would never be again found. In the course of time it was remarked, no one knows by what accident, that an ore, which must have been calamine, when added to copper while melting, gave it a yellow colour. This ore was therefore used, though it was not known what metal it contained, in the same manner as oxide of cobalt was employed in colouring glass before mineralogists were acquainted with that metal itself. Aristotle and Strabo speak of an earth of that kind, the use of which in making brass has been retained through every century. Ambrosius, bishop of Milan, in the fourth century; Primasius, bishop of Adrumetum in Africa, in the sixth; and Isidore, bishop of Seville, in the seventh, mention an addition by which copper acquired a gold colour, and which undoubtedly must have been calamine. When in course of time more calamine was discovered, the ancient method of procuring brass from copper-ore that contained zinc was abandoned; and it was found more convenient first to extract from it pure copper, and then to convert it into brass by the addition of calamine.

Those desirous of inquiring further into the knowledge which the ancients had of this metal must examine the meaning of the word cadmia, which seems to have had various significations. This task I have ventured to undertake; and though I cannot clear up everything that occurs respecting it, I shall lay before my readers what information I have been able to obtain on the subject, because perhaps it may amount to somewhat more than is to be found in the works of old commentators. Cadmia signified, then, in the first place, a mineral abounding in zinc, as well as any ore combined with it, and also that zinc-earth which we call calamine. Those who should understand under it only the latter, would not be able to explain the greater part of the passages in the ancients where it is mentioned. It is probable that ore containing zinc acquired this name, because it first produced brass[84]. When it was afterwards remarked that calamine gave to copper a yellow colour, the same name was conferred on it also. It appears, however, that it was seldom found by the ancients[85]; and we must consider cadmia in general as signifying ore that contained zinc. Gold-coloured copper or brass was long preferred to pure or common copper, and thought to be more beautiful the nearer it approached to the best aurichalcum. Brass therefore was supposed to be a more valuable kind of copper; and on this account Pliny says that cadmia was necessary for procuring copper, that is brass. Copper, as well as brass, was for a great length of time called æs, and it was not till a late period that mineralogists, in order to distinguish them, gave the name of cuprum to the former[86]. Pliny says that it was good when a large quantity of cadmia had been added to it, because it not only rendered the colour more beautiful, but increased the weight. In the like manner a quintal of copper in Hungary produces a hundred and fifty pounds of brass. The same author remarks also that the cadmia (fossilis) was not used in medicine: this however is to be understood only of the raw ore, for some physicians prepared oxide of zinc from ore that contained zinc, as he afterwards tells us; and Galen extols the calamine found in Cyprus on account of its superior effects, because, perhaps, the oxide could be obtained from it much purer.

In the second place, cadmia, among the ancients, was what we call (ofenbruch) furnace-calamine, or what in melting ore that contains zinc, or in making brass, falls to the bottom of the furnace, and which consists of more or less calcined zinc. As this furnace-calamine assumes various appearances, according to the manner of melting, and according to many other circumstances that in part cannot be defined, and as the ancients comprehend all its varieties under the general name of cadmia, and give to each variety, according to its form, consistence and colour, a particular name also, a confusion of names has hence arisen which cannot now be cleared up, especially as it is not thought worth while to distinguish all its incidental variations. Our physicians esteem only the pure oxide of zinc; and as they know how to obtain it, they are not under the necessity of using impure furnace-calamine. In our melting-houses it is employed, without much nicety in the choice, for making zinc or brass[87].

What here appears to me most singular is, that the ancients should have given the same names to furnace-calamine as they gave to ores that contained zinc. The affinity of these substances they could conjecture only from their effects, or perhaps they were induced to do so from observing that furnace-calamine was not produced but when the different kinds of cadmia, as they were called, were melted; that is, when yellow and not red copper was obtained. Ofenbruch got the name of furnace-calamine at Rammelsberg, when it was observed that it could be employed instead of native calamine for making brass[88]. Were the ancients then in any measure acquainted with this use of it? Galen and Dioscorides speak only of its use in medicine, and say nothing of its being employed in the preparation of brass. The Arabian writers, particularly the translators of the Greek physicians, speak in a much clearer manner of the preparation of brass; but the appellations which they employ are so indeterminate in their signification, that an answer to the above question cannot be deduced from them. Climia, which some pronounce calimia and from which the modern Greeks made kelimia, and the Latins lapis calaminaris, seems to have entirely the same meaning as cadmia. Tutia, which occurs first in the eleventh century, in Avicenna, and which the Greeks write toutia, or perhaps more properly thouthia, signifies sometimes pompholyx; but in common it seems to express also minerals that contain zinc, and likewise furnace-calamine[89]. Could it be proved that the tutia of the Arabs and later Greeks was furnace-calamine, or the tutia of our druggists, the oldest account with which I am acquainted of furnace-calamine, employed in making brass, would occur in Zosimus, who, according to every appearance, lived in the fifth century[90]. This author tells us, that in order to make brass, Cyprus copper must be melted, and pounded tutia must be strewed over it. Salmasius suspects that Zosimus here means only calamine: but however this may be, his receipt has been retained till the present time in books on the arts; for these recommend not calamine, but tutia[91].

We can with more certainty affirm that this use of furnace-calamine, in making brass, was known to Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth century; for he says, first, that yellow copper was made by the addition of calamine, which he calls lapis calaminaris. He tells us afterwards, that Hermes taught how to give a gold colour to copper by throwing pounded tutia into the melted metal. Tutia, says he, which is used in the transmutation of metals, is not a native mineral, but an artificial mixture, produced in the furnace when copper-ore is melted; and he advises glass-gall to be strewed over the ore, otherwise calamine and tutia will lose their force in the fire[92]. It would appear that the last-mentioned name, in the thirteenth century, signified only furnace-calamine, and that its use for making brass was at that period known.

For many centuries, however, the ofenbruch (furnace-calamine), with which, as we are told, the furnaces at Rammelsberg overflowed, was thrown aside as useless, till at length, in the middle of the sixteenth century, Erasmus Ebener first showed that it might be used instead of native calamine for making brass. This Ebener, descended from the noble family of that name at Nuremberg, was a man of great learning, and an able statesman. He was employed by his native city, and by foreign princes, on occasions of the highest importance. In 1569 he was privy-counsellor to Julius duke of Brunswick, and died in 1577, at Helmstadt, where he was buried. I regret much that I can give no further account of this important discovery; the time even when it was made is not known with certainty. Lœhneyss says that it was sixty years before the period when he wrote. But at what period did he write? The oldest edition, with which I am acquainted, of his treatise on mines, is of the year 1617, so that this discovery would fall about the year 1557[93]. Calvör caused to be printed an old account of the Rammelsberg mines, which was said to have been published in 1565. According to that work, Ebener made the above-mentioned observation at Nuremberg, about seventeen years before, that is, about the year 1548. Schluter assigns as the period about 1550, and Honemann about 1559. We may therefore very safely place it in the middle of the sixteenth century, and probably the discovery happened in 1553, at which time Ebener was sent to duke Henry, with whom he continued a long time, as we are expressly told by Doppelmayer. This use of calamine refuse induced the managers of the profitable brass-works in the Harz forest to pick up carefully that which before had been thrown aside. Duke Julius, who endeavoured to improve every branch of manufacture, and particularly what related to metallurgy, and who, agreeably to the then prevailing mode of princes, suffered himself to be duped with the hopes of making gold, improved the brass-works at Buntheim, below Harzburg, and by these means brought a great revenue to the electoral treasury.

Another production of zinc, artificial white vitriol, was also long prepared, used and employed in commerce before it was known that it was procured from this metal. That it was not known before the middle of the sixteenth century, and that it was first made at Rammelsberg, may with confidence be affirmed. Schluter ascribes the invention of it to duke Julius, and places it in the year 1570: but it must be somewhat older than the above-quoted account of Rammelsberg; for the author, who wrote about 1565[94], relates, that in his time one citizen only, whom he calls Henni Balder, boiled white vitriol; and it appears that this person kept the process a secret. That the invention was not then new, is evident from his adding, that what its effects might be in medicine had not been examined; but that its use in making eye-water had been known almost as early as the time when it was discovered. This agrees with another account, according to which the method of boiling white vitriol was found out at the time when Christopher Sander, whose service to the Harz is well-known, was tithe-gatherer. Honemann says that Sander was tithe-gatherer at the mines of the Upper Harz before the year 1564, but that in this year he was principal tithe-gatherer and director of the mines and melting-houses at Goslar. Sander himself, in a paper dated August 3, 1575, seems to ascribe the invention of white vitriol to duke Julius[95].

At first this salt was called Erzalaun, a name occasioned by its likeness to alum, but afterwards it was more frequently known by those of Gallitzenstein, Golitzenstein, and Calitzenstein. The latter names however appear to be older than white vitriol itself; as we find that green vitriol, even before the year 1565, was called green Gallitzenstein. May not the word be derived from gallæ; because it is probable that vitriol and galls were for a long time the principal articles used for making ink and in dyeing? I am of opinion that the white vitriol, which is produced in the mines of Rammelsberg in the form of icicles, gave rise to the discovery and manufacture of this salt. The former, so early as the year 1565, was called white native vitriol, or white Gogkelgut, and was packed up in casks, and in that manner transported for sale[96]. I shall not here enter into the old conjectures respecting the origin and component parts of this vitriol; but it deserves to be remarked, that Henkel and Neumann[97] observed in it a mixture of zinc, by which Brandt, a member of the Swedish council of mines, was led to prove, that, when pure, it consists of vitriolic acid and oxide of zinc; and this was afterwards confirmed by Hellot[98].

I come now, in the last place, to the history of this metal, which, when furnace-calamine was used, could not remain long unobserved, as it is sometimes found amongst it uncalcined in metallic drops. It is worthy of remark, that Albertus Magnus, who first described the use of furnace-calamine in making brass, is the oldest author in whose works mention is made of zinc. He calls it marchasita aurea. This was properly a stone, the metallic particles of which were so entirely sublimated by fire, that nothing but useless ashes remained behind. It contained fixed quicksilver, communicated a colour to metals, on which account it was well known to the alchemists, burned in the fire, and was at length entirely consumed. It was found in various parts, but that at Goslar was the best, because the copper it contained seemed to have in it a mixture of gold. To give this copper however a still greater resemblance to gold, some tin was added to it, by which means it became more brittle. This marchasita also rendered copper white as silver. Thus far Albertus. It obtained without doubt the name of marchasita aurea, because zinc communicates a yellow colour to copper; and for the same reason the Greeks and the Arabians called cadmia golden or aurea. But how could Albertus say that marchasite made copper white? Did he commit a mistake, and mean tin? To me this appears not probable, as at one time he seems to call it argentea. I imagine that he knew that copper, when mixed with as much zinc as possible, that is, according to Scheffer, eighty-nine pounds to a hundred, became white; and it appears that by this he wished to establish its affinity with quicksilver.

The next author who gives an intelligible account of this metal is Theophrastus Paracelsus, who died in 1541. I do not however imagine that it was forgotten in this long interval, at least by those who were called alchemists. I am rather of opinion, that on account of the great hopes which it gave them by the colouring of copper, they described it purposely in an obscure manner, and concealed it under other names, so that it was not discovered in their works. There are few who would have patience to wade through these, and the few who could do so, turn their attention to objects of greater importance than those which occupy mine. Gold and silver excepted, there is no metal which has had formerly so many and so wonderful names as zinc[99]. For this reason, chemists long believed that zinc was not a distinct metal, but only a variety of tin or bismuth; and with these perhaps it may hence have been often confounded.

The name zinc occurs first in Paracelsus. He expressly calls it a distinct metal, the nature of which was not sufficiently known; which could be cast, but was not malleable, and which was produced only in Carinthia. Was he then unacquainted with the zinc of Goslar, which was known at an earlier period to Albertus Magnus[100]? George Agricola, who wrote about the year 1550, speaks however of the Goslar zinc, but he calls it liquor candidus, and in German conterfey[101]. Mathesius, who published his sermons in 1562, says, “at Freyberg there is red and white zinc.” Perhaps he did not mean the metal, but minerals that contained zinc. George Fabricius, who died in 1571, conjectures that stibium is what the miners call cincum, which can be melted, but not hammered.

It is seen by these imperfect accounts that this metal must have been scarce, even in the middle of the sixteenth century, and that it was not in the collection of Agricola, which was considerable for that period. Libavius, who died in 1616, mentions it several times, but he regrets, in one of his letters, that he had not been able to procure any of it[102]. Was this owing to the prohibition of duke Julius, by which it was forbidden to be sold? This prohibition is quoted by Pott from Jungii Mineralogia, with which I am unacquainted; but as Pott has already, by his unintelligible quotations, made me spend many hours to no purpose, I shall not waste more in searching for it. The prohibition alluded to is mentioned neither by Rehtmeier nor by any other author. The foolish taste for alchemy, which prevailed then at the duke’s court, makes it not altogether improbable that one was issued[103]; and if that was really the case, it was occasioned not so much by any dread of this metal being misused, as Pott thinks, but by the high hopes which were entertained of its utility in making gold. The first accurate and certain account of the method of procuring zinc at Goslar, is, as far as I know, given by Lœhneyss, in 1617, though he considers it to be the same as bismuth[104]. Joh. Schrœder of Westphalia, who died in 1664, calls it marcasita pallida.

The first person who purposely procured this metal from calamine, by the addition of some inflammable substance, was undoubtedly Henkel, who gave an account of his success in the year 1741, though he concealed the whole process[105]. After him, Dr. Isaac Lawson, a Scotsman, seems to have made experiments which proved the possibility of obtaining zinc in this manner on a large scale; and in 1737 Henkel heard that it was then manufactured in England with great advantage. Of this Lawson I know nothing more than what is related by Dr. Watson[106]. Anthony von Swab, member of the Swedish council of mines, procured this metal afterwards from calamine by distillation, in 1742; as did Marggraf in 1746, who appears however not to have been acquainted with the Swedish experiment. In the year 1743, one Champion established zinc works at Bristol, which were continued by his successor James Emerson, who established works of the like kind at Henham, in the neighbourhood. The manner in which the metal was procured, has been described by Dr. Watson in his Chemical Essays.

The greater part of this metal, used in Europe, was undoubtedly brought from the East Indies. The Commercial Company in the Netherlands, between the years 1775 and 1779, caused to be sold, on their account, above 943,081 pounds of it[107]. In the year 1780, the chamber of Rotterdam alone sold 28,000 pounds; and I find, by printed catalogues, that the other chambers, at that period, had not any of it in their possession. If the account given by Raynal be true, the Dutch East India Company purchased annually, at Palimbang, a million and a half of pounds[108]. In 1781, the Danish Company at Copenhagen purchased 153,953 pounds of tutenage, which had been carried thither in two vessels, at the rate of from four and one-eighth to four and a quarter schillings Lubec per pound. It is probable that the English and Swedes import this article also. It would be of some consequence if one could learn in what part of India, when, and in what manner this metal was first procured, and in what year it was first carried thence to Europe. According to the scanty information which we have on the subject, it comes from China, Bengal, Malacca[109], and the Malabar coast, from which copper and tin are also imported. In the oldest bills of lading of ships belonging to the Netherlands I find no mention of zinc; but it is possible that it may be comprehended under the name of Indian tin; for so it was at first called. Savot, who died about the year 1640, relates, on the authority of a contemporary writer[110], that some years before the Dutch had taken from the Portuguese a ship laden with this metal, which was sold under the name of speautre. It is probable therefore that it was brought to Europe so early as the beginning of the seventeenth century. Indian tin is mentioned by Boyle.

It is probable that this metal was discovered in India before anything of the European zinc had been known in that country; but we are still less acquainted with the cause of the discovery than with the method of procuring the metal. We are told that an Englishman, who, in the above century, went to India, in order to discover the process used there, returned with an account that it was obtained by distillation ver descensum.

Respecting the origin of the different names of this metal, I can offer very little. Conterfey signified formerly every kind of metal made in imitation of gold[111]. Frisch says it was called zink, from which was formed first zinetum, and afterwards zincum, because the furnace-calamine assumes the figure of (zinken or zacken) nails or spikes; but it is to be remarked that these names do not occur before the discovery of this metal, though ofenbruch was known long before. Fulda speaks of the Anglo-Saxon sin, zink, which he translates obryzum. Spiauter, speauter, and spialter, from which Boyle made speltrum, and also tutaneg or tuttanego, came to us from India with the commodity. Under the last-mentioned name is sometimes comprehended a mixture of tin and bismuth. Calaem is also an Indian appellation given to this metal, and has a considerable likeness to calamine; but I am of opinion with Salmasius that the latter is not derived from the former, as lapis calaminaris occurs in the thirteenth century, and calaem was first brought to us by the Portuguese from India.

[Most of the zinc works in this country are situated in the neighbourhood of Birmingham and Bristol; a few furnaces also exist in the neighbourhood of Sheffield, among the coal-pits surrounding that town; there is also one at Maestag in Glamorganshire. The ores worked at Bristol and Birmingham are principally obtained from the Mendip-hills and Flintshire; those at Sheffield from Alston Moor. The greater part however of the zinc used in this country is imported in ingots and plates from Silesia, by way of Hamburg, Antwerp, Dantzic, &c. We receive annually from 100,000 to 170,000 cwts. from Germany; of this quantity, about 80,000 cwt. are entered for home consumption, and the rest is exported for India.

From its moderate price and the ease with which it can be worked, zinc is now extensively used for making water-cisterns, baths, pipes, covering of roofs, and a great many architectural purposes. It has also of late been employed in the curious art of transferring printing, known under the name of Zincography, but owing to the ease with which this metal becomes coated with a film of oxide or carbonate, by exposure to the air, the plates cannot be preserved for any great length of time.]

FOOTNOTES

[82] [It has been observed by an anonymous reviewer (British and Foreign Medical Review, vol. viii. p. 361) that a passage in Strabo authorises the belief that the ancients were acquainted with this metal in its separate state, and that it is the false silver, ψευδάργυρον, of that ancient geographer.]

[83] Bulletin des fouilles d’une ville Romaine, p. 11.

[84] Plin. lib. xxxiv. sect. 22.

[85] Zinc-ore, besides being mentioned by Aristotle and Strabo, is mentioned by Galen, De Simplic. Medicam. Facultatibus, lib. ix. p. 142. As he found no furnace-calamine when he resided in Cyprus, he procured from the overseer of the mines some raw cadmia, which had been found in the mountains and rivulets, and which certainly must have been calamine.

[86] At first it was called æs cyprium, but in the course of time only cyprium; from which was at length formed cuprum. It cannot however be ascertained at what periods these appellations were common. The epithet cupreus occurs in manuscripts of Pliny and Palladius; but one cannot say whether later transcribers may not have changed cyprius into cupreus, with which they were perhaps better acquainted. The oldest writer who uses the word cuprum is Spartian; who says, in the Life of Caracalla, “cancelli ex ære vel cupro.” But may not the last word have been added to the text as a gloss? Pliny, book xxxvi. 26, says, “Addito cyprio et nitro;” which Isidore, xvi. 15, p. 393, expresses by the words adjecto cupro et nitro. The superiority of the Cyprian copper gave occasion to this appellation; as the best iron or steel was called chalybs, from the Chalybes (a people of Galatia) who prepared the finest, and carried on the greatest trade with it. But in what did the superiority of this Cyprian copper consist? In its purity, or in its colour, which approached near to that of gold? That island produced a great deal of ore which contained zinc, and abounded also with calamine. Pliny says, “in Cypro prima fuit æris inventio.” Red copper however had been known there from the earliest periods, so that the honour of its invention must be allowed to that island without any contradiction; and Pliny must undoubtedly allude in the above passage to some particular kind.

[87] Dioscorides, book v. c. 84, first mentions some sorts of cadmia, βοτρυίτις, πλακωτὴ and ὀστρακῖτις. These, according to Galen and Pliny, are undoubtedly certain kinds of (ofenbruch) furnace-calamine; but Salmasius in his book De Homonymis, p. 230, and Sarracen in his Annotations, p. 113, are of opinion that Dioscorides considered them as native kinds of cadmia, or minerals abundant in zinc. I cannot however allow myself to believe that Dioscorides, who was so careful, and who immediately after describes the artificial preparation of cadmia clearly and properly, should have thus erred. Besides, every kind of ofenbruch (furnace-calamine) must have discovered its origin from fire to such a good judge of minerals as Dioscorides. I am convinced that he, as well as Galen and Pliny, considered the above kinds as furnace-calamine.

Pompholyx was the name of the white flowers of zinc which Dioscorides, v. 85, p. 352, compares to wool, and which by chemists were formerly called lana philosophica. The ancients collected these flowers when produced by the melting of zinc-ore; but they obtained them also by an apparatus which is fully described by Dioscorides and Galen, and which approaches near to that used for collecting arsenic in the poison melting-houses, as they are usually called.

[88] This however I will not with certainty affirm. As calmey and galmey have probably taken their rise from cadmia or calimia, and as both these words signified proper calamine, as well as ofenbruch, the latter, perhaps, may at an earlier period have signified furnace-calamine.

[89] Proofs respecting this subject may be found in Salmasius De Homonymis.

[90] It is not certainly known when this Zosimus Panopolitanus lived. His works, which must contain abundance of information respecting the history of chemistry, have never yet been printed. The greater part of them were preserved in the king’s library at Paris. The receipt to which I allude has been inserted by Salmasius, p. 237.

[91] We read in Observations sur la Physique, vi. p. 255, that for many years tutia has been collected and sold in the bishopric of Liege. Lehmann endeavours to show that it was made by the Jews in Poland. Novi Comment. Acad. Petrop. xii. p. 381. As the use of tutia [which is an impure oxide of zinc found in the chimneys of the furnaces in which zinc-ores are roasted, or in which zinciferous lead-ores are smelted] has been almost abandoned, because physicians prefer pure flowers of zinc, and because those who make pinchbeck employ purified zinc, it is probable that this substance will soon be entirely neglected.

[92] De Mineralibus. Coloniæ, 1569, 12mo, p. 350, lib. iv. cap. 5; and lib. v. cap. 7, p. 388.

[93] The other edition was printed at Stockholm and Hamburg, by Liebezeit, and is the same as that mentioned by H. Gatterer, in Anleitung den Harz zu bereisen, i. p. 313, and ii. p. 13.

[94] “White vitriol also is made at Goslar, but by one citizen only, named Henni Balder. It is not procured by the evaporation of copper like other vitriol; but when large quantities of ore are roasted in the furnaces, a red substance is from time to time collected on the refuse of the ore, and found in some places half an ell thick. This substance, which is saltish, is formed into a lye, and boiled in small leaden pans. The rest of the process I do not know, but I observed that it crystallizes like saltpetre, but is stronger and whiter. It is also cast into small cakes about the thickness of one’s hand. This vitriol is employed by the leather-dressers, and may be used for many things instead of alum; but it cannot be used in dressing white skins, because it makes them yellowish.”

[95] Bruckmann, ii. p. 446. [Schwartze, in his Pharm. Tabell. 2nd edit. p. 779, states that white vitriol was known towards the end of the thirteenth or at the commencement of the fourteenth century.]

[96] Calvor, Historische Nachricht, p. 199 and 200. Properly it is written and pronounced jöckel. It is very remarkable that in Iceland this word at present signifies icicles.

[97] Chemie, von Kessel, iv. 2, p. 832, where may be found the old opinions on this subject.

[98] Brandt, in Acta Upsaliens. 1735. Hellot, in Mémoires de l’Acad. des Sciences, Paris, 1735, p. 29. [Sulphate of zinc or white vitriol is at present manufactured in considerable quantity for pharmaceutical purposes, and for the calico-printer.]

[99] A great many may be found collected in Fuchs, Geschichte des Zinks. Erfurt, 1778, 8vo.

[100] Paracelsi Opera. Strasb. 1616, fol. I shall here transcribe the principal passage. Of zinc:—There is another metal, zinc, which is in general unknown. It is a distinct metal of a different origin, though adulterated with many other metals. It can be melted, for it consists of three fluid principles, but it is not malleable. In its colour it is unlike all others, and does not grow in the same manner; but with its ultima materia I am as yet unacquainted, for it is almost as strange in its properties as argentum vivum. It admits of no mixture, will not bear the fabricationes of other metals, but keeps itself entirely to itself.

[101] De Re Metallica, lib. ix. p. 329.

[102] In J. Hornung’s Cista Medica. Lipsiæ.

[103] How much duke Julius, who in other respects did great service to his country, suffered himself to be duped by the art of making gold, appears from an anecdote given by Rehtmeier, p. 1016. Of this anecdote I received from M. Ribbentrop an old account in manuscript, which one cannot read without astonishment. There is still shown, at the castle of Wolfenbuttle, an iron stool, on which the impostor, Anna Maria Zieglerinn, named Schluter Ilsche, was burnt, February 5, 1575.

[104] Page 83:—“When the people at the melting-houses are employed in melting, there is formed under the furnace, in the crevices of the wall, among the stones where it is not well plastered, a metal which is called zinc or conterfeht; and when the wall is scraped, the metal falls down into a trough placed to receive it. This metal has a great resemblance to tin, but it is harder and less malleable, and rings like a small bell. It could be made also, if people would give themselves the trouble; but it is not much valued, and the servants and workmen only collect it when they are promised drink-money. They however scrape off more of it at one time than at another; for sometimes they collect two pounds, but at others not above two ounces. This metal, by itself, is of no use, as, like bismuth, it is not malleable; but when mixed with tin, it renders it harder and more beautiful, like the English tin. This zinc or bismuth is in great request among the alchemists.”

[105] Kieshistorie, p. 571, and particularly p. 721.

[106] Pott refers to Lawson’s Dissert. de Nihilo, and quotes some words from it; but I cannot find it; nor am I surprised at this, as it was not known to Dr. Watson.—See Chemical Essays, iv. p. 34. Pryce, in Mineral. Cornub., p. 49, says, “The late Dr. J. Lawson, observing that the flowers of lapis calaminaris were the same as those of zinc, and that its effects on copper were also the same with that semi-metal, never remitted his endeavours till he found the method of separating pure zinc from that ore.” The same account is given in the supplement to Chambers’s Dictionary, 1753, art. calm. and zinc; and in Campbell’s Political Survey of Britain, ii. p. 35. The latter however adds, that Lawson died too early to derive any benefit from his discovery.

[107] Ricards Handbuch der Kaufleute, i. p. 57.

[108] Raynal says that the company purchase it at the rate of twenty-eight florins three-quarters per hundred weight, and that this price is moderate. At Amsterdam, however, the price was commonly from seventeen to eighteen florins banco. According to a catalogue which I have in my possession, the price, on the 9th of May, 1788, was seventeen florins, and on the 22nd of January, 1781, it was only sixteen.

[109] Linschoten, b. ii. c. 17. The author calls it calaem, the name used in the country. It is a kind of tin.

[110] De Nummis Antiquis; in Grævii Thes. Antiq. Rom. xi. p. 1195.

[111] Matthesius, Pred. v. p. 250.—“Conterfeil is a metal of little value, formed by additions and colouring substances, so that it resembles gold or silver, as an image, or anything counterfeited, does its archetype. Thus copper is coloured by calamine and other mixtures, in such a manner that it appears to be pure gold.” In the police ordinance issued at Strasburg in 1628, young women are forbidden to wear gold or silver, or any conterfaite, and everything that might have the appearance of gold or silver.

CARP.

So obscure is the ichthyology of the ancients, or so little care has been taken to explain it, that the question whether our carp were known to Aristotle, Pliny, and their contemporaries, cannot with any great degree of probability be determined. Besides, that subject is attended with much greater difficulties than the natural history of quadrupeds. Among four-footed animals there is a greater variety in their bodily conformation, which at any rate strikes the eye more, and can be more easily described than that of fishes, which in general are so like in shape, that an experienced systematic naturalist finds it sometimes difficult to determine the characters of the genera and species. It is not surprising therefore that the simple descriptions of the ancients, or rather the short accounts which they give us of fish, do not afford information sufficient to enable us to distinguish with accuracy the different kinds. Quadrupeds may terrify us by their ferocity, or endeavour to avoid us by shyness and craft; but it is still possible to observe their sexes, their age, and their habits, and to remark many things that are common to one or only a few species. Fishes, on the other hand, live in an element in which we cannot approach them, and which for the most part conceals them from our observation. The chase, since the earliest periods, and in modern times more than formerly, has been the employment of idle persons, who bestow upon it greater attention the fewer those objects are which can attract their curiosity or employ their minds: but fishing has almost always been the laborious occupation of poor people, who have no time to make observations, as they are obliged to follow it in order to find a subsistence; and mankind in general seldom see fish except on their tables or in collections of natural history. On this account those properties of fish by which their species could be determined, were less known. The descriptions of four-footed animals which have been handed down to us from the time of the Greek and Roman writers, give us, at any rate, some information; but from those of fishes, which are more uncommon, we can scarcely derive any; unless one were as acute or easy of belief as many collectors of petrefactions, who imagine that they can distinguish each species of fish in the impressions which they see in stones. More however might be done towards elucidating the ichthyology of the ancients than has hitherto been attempted. It would be necessary only to make a beginning by collecting the species and names which can with certainty be determined, together with the authorities, and separating them from the rest; and an abstract should be formed of what is said in the ancients respecting the unknown species, or whatever may in any measure serve to make us acquainted with them; but mere conjectures ought never to be given as proofs, nor ought the opinions of commentators, or the explanations of dictionaries to be adopted without sufficient grounds. If these are to be believed without further examination, the names cyprini and lepidoti must be considered as those of carp; and the proposed question would be soon answered: but that opinion has scarcely probability in its favour when one searches after proofs.

I shall not here lay before the reader everything completely that the ancients have said respecting the cyprini, and which is in part so corrupted by transcribers, that no certain meaning can be drawn from it. Were I to treat of the ichthyology of the ancients, it might be necessary; but as that is not the case, I shall only quote such parts of it as have been employed by Rondelet and others to prove that they were our carp. Their principal grounds seem to be, that among all the fish of the ancients no others occur which can with any probability be considered as carp. If the cyprini therefore were not carp, these must not have been named by the ancients; and that undoubtedly will not readily be admitted. It is well known what a high value the ancients, particularly the Orientals, set upon fish, of which they had a great variety; and it appears that they preferred them to all dishes prepared from four-footed animals or fowls. Fish seem to have been the choicest delicacies of voluptuaries, and in that respect they are oftener mentioned by historians than fowls. Physicians also, to whom the most sumptuous tables have in all ages been of the greatest benefit, speak of fish oftener in their writings than of dishes made of the flesh of other animals. In the ancient cookery, the number of dishes prepared from fish is indeed great in comparison of those dressed from fowls. Turdi and attagines are much praised; but had pheasants, snipes, partridges, and others, been as much esteemed then as they are now, these would not have been forgotten, or would have occurred oftener. Fish at present form the principal food in Greece, as well as at Constantinople, and a great abundance and variety of them may be found there in the markets; but fowls which have been caught or shot are seldom exposed for sale. When the Egyptian and Greek monks wished to distinguish themselves by abstinence and temperance, they denied themselves all kinds of fish, as the richest delicacies, in the same manner as pretended devotees among the Europeans deny themselves flesh. But though all this may be true, it does not prove that our carp must occur in the writings of the ancients. The Roman voluptuaries, indeed, left very little untried that was likely to gratify their appetite; but it was impossible for them to make a trial of everything. There may have been particular reasons which prevented them from meeting with carp; and who will venture to affirm that all the knowledge of the ancients must be contained in those few of their writings which have been preserved to us by accidents?

If one, freed from these prejudices, should now ask why the cyprinus must be our carp, the answer will be, because what we read of the tongue and scales of the cyprini cannot be applied with so much propriety to any species of fish as to the Cyprinus carpio of Linnæus. Aristotle informs us that the cyprini had properly no tongue, but that their soft fleshy palate might very readily be taken for one[112]. Athenæus affirms that they had a tongue, but that it lay in the upper part of the mouth or palate; and in confirmation of this he refers to Aristotle[113]. This assertion of Athenæus however is very dubious; for these words are not to be found in the works of Aristotle which have been preserved, though the same meaning might be indeed forced, in case of necessity, from the passage first quoted. It is possible that Athenæus, as Casaubon[114] has already conjectured, may here, as well as in other parts, allude to some book of Aristotle not now extant. Besides, he calls the fish of which he speaks, not cyprinus, but cyprianus; and a question therefore arises, whether he may not have meant some other kind. This much at any rate appears certain from the passage of Aristotle, that the cyprinus had a thick fleshy palate; and that indeed is the case with our carp, so that the head, on account of the delicacy and agreeable taste of the palate, is reckoned the most relishing part. By that circumstance however nothing is proved; as it is not peculiar to carp alone, but common to every species of the same family, such as the bream, tench, &c. Fish of this kind, says Bloch, have properly no tongue; that which appears to be one is merely a cartilaginous substance which projects through those band-like parts that enclose it on each side. This proof would have more weight, did we find it related, that in the time of Aristotle, the tongue was considered as an exquisite morsel: but that is not mentioned; and H. Krunitz is mistaken, when he says that Heliogabalus, to satisfy his luxurious appetite, was induced to try a fricassee of the tongues of carp: it consisted only of the tongues of peacocks and nightingales[115]. Had the ancients really used carp on their tables, we must have ascribed to them the discovery of these delicious fish.

The other proof which is brought from the scales consists in what is said by Dorion, in Athenæus[116], that the cyprianus was called also by some lepidotus, or scaly. As nearly all fish have scales, the scales of this species must have been extremely large, as they got that name by way of eminence; and it must be indeed allowed, that the above epithet would suit our carp exceedingly well, as their scales are very large. But this circumstance alone proves nothing, as the Mullus and Mugil have still larger scales; and to the first genus belonged one of the fish most esteemed by the ancients[117]. Strabo mentions the lepidotus among the sacred fish of the Nile; but whether it be the same as that of which Dorion speaks, cannot be determined. It is certain that the Nile contains carp still; for Norden saw them caught at the waterfall near Essuane, which is the ancient Syene. Did we know that the modern Greeks at present call carp cyprini, this would prove more; for it is an undoubted fact that the ancient names have for the most part been retained in Greece. We are assured by Massarius[118], that the Greeks still use the name cyprinus; but Gyllius says that it is employed only by a few: and this is confirmed by Bellon, who mentions all the names of carp which he heard in Greece, and which are entirely different from the ancient[119]; but he adds, that carp in Ætolia are still called cyprini. Both the before-mentioned circumstances respecting the cyprini agree extremely well with our carp; but as they will suit other kinds equally well, they afford no complete proof, but only a probability which amounts to this, that among the large-scaled fish, carp in particular have a fleshy palate; and it is readily admitted that the ancients were acquainted with all kinds, and chose names for them with more foundation than is done at present.

In opposition to this probability it may be said that Oppian and Pliny reckon the cyprini among the sea-fish, to which kind our carp do not belong. This reply however, which some have indeed made, is not of great weight. In the first place, both these writers seem to have been in an error; for what Pliny says of the cyprini is evidently taken from Aristotle, and the latter does not tell us that these fish live in the sea, but rather the contrary. The Roman author, as Dalechamp remarks, added the words in mari, if they were not added by some transcriber. Oppian as a poet does not always adhere strictly to truth; and he makes more of the freshwater fish of Aristotle to be inhabitants of the sea. In the second place, I consider the distinction made between sea-fish, freshwater fish and those kept in ponds, to be not always very certain or well founded. Who knows whether the greater part of the last may not have been originally sea-fish? This is the more probable in regard to carp, as Professor Foster says that carp are sometimes caught in the harbour at Dantzic[120].

In order to answer the question here proposed, another point may be considered. As all nations at present give these fish the same name, it is probable that it was brought with them from that country where they were first found, and from which they were procured. Cassiodorus, who lived in the sixth century, is the oldest author as yet known in whom that name has been observed[121]. In a passage where he speaks of the most delicate and costly fish, which at that time were sent to the tables of princes, he says, “Among these is the carpa, which is produced in the Danube.” In the earliest Latin translation of Aristotle, the word cyprinus, as Camus says, is expressed by carpra. In the thirteenth century this fish was called by Vincentius de Beauvais[122] carpera, and by Cæsarius carpo; and it is highly probable that both these names allude to our carp. By the above passage of Cassiodorus, the opinion that these fish were the cyprini of the ancients obtains a new, but at the same time a very feeble proof; for the cyprinus was found also in the Danube, as we learn from Ælian[123], who among the fish of the Ister, mentions black cyprini; and these, according to the conjecture of Professor Schneider, were the black fish of the Danube which Pliny considers as unhealthful or poisonous, and like which there were some in Armenia. Our carp indeed are not poisonous, but Pliny alludes to a particular variety, and what he says was only report, to which something must have given rise, as also to the idea of carp with a death’s head, and the head of a pug-dog, as some have been represented by writers of the sixteenth century. The carpo of Cæsarius appears to have been our carp, because its scales had a very great resemblance to those of the latter; for we are told in the work already quoted, that the devil, once indulging in a frolic, appeared in a coat of mail, and had scales like the fish carpo. The carpera of Vincent de Beauvais is still less doubtful, as the same craft in avoiding rakes and nets is ascribed to that fish as is known to be employed by our carp. Sometimes they thrust their heads into the mud and suffer the net to pass over them; and sometimes they join the head and tail together, and separating them suddenly, throw themselves towards the surface of the water, and springing often four or five feet above the net, make their escape.

But whence did this name arise? The origin assigned by Vincentius, or the anonymous author of the lost books De Natura Rerum, like another mentioned in ridicule by Gesner, is too silly to be repeated. More learned at any rate is the derivation of Menage, who traces it from cyprinus, which was afterwards transformed into cuprinus, cuprius, cuprus, cupra, curpa, and lastly into carpa. For my part, I am more inclined to derive it from a dialect which was spoken on the banks of the Danube, and to believe that it was brought with the fish from the southern part of Europe; but I am too little acquainted with that dialect to be able to render my conjecture very probable; and the etymologists I consulted, such as Wachter, Ihre, Johnson, &c., afforded me no assistance. Fulda gave me some hopes, as he allows the word to be of German extraction; but I must confess that his derivation is too far-fetched, and like the chemistry of the adepts, to me not perfectly intelligible.

It may perhaps not be superfluous here to observe that one must not confound carpa and carpo, or our carp, with carpio. The latter belongs to the genus of the salmon and trout; and in the Linnæan system is called Salmo carpio. It is found chiefly in the Lago di Garda, the ancient Lacus Benacus, on the confines of Tyrol. The oldest account of this fish is to be found in works of the sixteenth century, such as the poems of Pierius Valerianus, and in Jovius de Piscibus. According to Linnæus, it is found in the rivers of England; but that is false. This celebrated naturalist suffered himself to be misled by Artedi, who gives the char or chare, mentioned by Camden in his description of Lancashire, as the Salmo carpio. Pennant however, by whom it is not mentioned among the English fish, says expressly that the char is not the carpio of the Lago di Garda, but rather a variety of the Salmo alpinus[124].

That our carp were first found in the southern parts of Europe, and conveyed thence to other countries, is undoubtedly certain. Even at present they do not thrive in the northern regions, and the further north they are carried the smaller they become[125]. Some accounts of their transportation are still to be found. If it be true that the Latin poem on the expedition of Attila is as old as the fifth or sixth century, and if the fish which Walther gave to the boatman who ferried him over the Rhine, and which the latter carried to the kitchen of Gunther king of the Franks, were carp, this circumstance is a proof that these fish had not been before known in that part of France which bordered on the Rhine[126]. The examination of this conjecture I shall however leave to others. D’Aussy quotes a book never printed, of the thirteenth century, entitled Proverbes, and in which is given an account of the best articles produced at that time by the different parts of the kingdom, and assures us that a great many kinds of fish were mentioned in it, but no carp, though at present they are common all over France.

It appears also that there were no carp in England in the eleventh century, at least they do not occur in the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary of Ælfric, who in 1051 died archbishop of York[127]. We are assured likewise that they were first brought into the kingdom in the fifth year of the reign of Henry VIII., or in 1514, by Leonard Mascal of Plumsted in Sussex[128]. What we read in the Linnæan System, that these fish were first brought to England about the year 1600, is certainly erroneous. Where that celebrated naturalist, under whom I had the pleasure of studying, acquired this information, I do not know.

Denmark is indebted for these fish to that celebrated statesman Peter Oxe, who introduced them into the kingdom as well as cray-fish, and other objects for the table. He died in the year 1575.

We are told that these fish were brought from Italy to Prussia, where they are at present very abundant, by a nobleman whose name is not mentioned. This service however may be ascribed with more probability to the upper burg-grave, Caspar von Nostiz, who died in 1588, and who in the middle of the sixteenth century first sent carp to Prussia from his estate in Silesia, and caused them to be put into the large pond at Arensberg not far from Creuzburg. As a memorial of this circumstance, the figure of a carp, cut in stone, was shown formerly over a door at the castle of Arensberg. This colony must have been very numerous in the year 1535, for at that period carp were sent from Königsberg to Wilda, where the archduke Albert then resided. At present (1798) a great many carp are transported from Dantzic and Königsberg to Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. It appears to me probable that these fish after that period became everywhere known and esteemed, as eating fish in Lent and on fast-days was among Christians considered to be a religious duty, and that on this account they endeavoured to have ponds stocked with them in every country, because no species can be so easily bred in these reservoirs.

I shall observe in the last place, that the Spiegel-carpen, mirror-carp, distinguished by yellow scales, which are much larger, though fewer in number, and which do not cover the whole body, are not mentioned but by modern writers. Bloch says that they were first described by Johnston under the name of royal carp. The passage where he does so I cannot find; but in plate xxix. there is a bad engraving, with the title Spiegel-karpen, which however have scales all over their bodies, and cannot be the kind alluded to. On the other hand, the Spiegel-karpen are mentioned by Gesner, who, as it appears, never saw them. In my opinion, Balbinus, who wrote in the middle of the sixteenth century, was the first person who gave a true and complete description of them; and according to his account, they seem to have come originally from Bohemia. The first correct figure of them is to be found in Marsigli.

FOOTNOTES

[112] Histor. Animal. lib. iv. cap. 8.

[113] Lib. vii. p. 309.

[114] Animadvers. vii. 17, p. 540.

[115] Lampridii Vita Heliogab. c. 20.

[116] Lib. vii. p. 309.

[117] This fish was a first-rate article of luxury among the Romans, and was purchased at a dear rate. Juvenal says, “Mullum sex millibus emit, æquantem sane paribus sestertia libris.” See Plin. lib. ix. c. 17. The Italians have a proverb, “La triglia non mangia chi la piglia,” which implies, that he who catches a mullet is a fool if he eats it and does not sell it. When this fish is dying, it changes its colours in a very singular manner till it is entirely lifeless. This spectacle was so gratifying to the Romans, that they used to show the fish dying in a glass vessel to their guests before dinner.

[118] Fr. Massarii in ix. Plinii. libr. Castigat. Bas. 1537, 4to.

[119] A great service would be rendered to the natural history of the ancients, if some able systematic naturalist would collect all the Greek names used at present. Tournefort and others made a beginning.

[120] Philosophical Transact. vol. lxi. 1771, part i. 310.

[121] Variorum, p. 380.

[122] Speculum Naturale.

[123] De Nat. Anim. xiv.—Plin. xxxi. sect. 19.—Antig. Car. c. 181.

[124] British Zoology, vol. iii. p. 259.

[125] Pontoppidan, Natürliche Historie von Norwegen, ii. p. 236.

[126] De Prima Expedit. Attilæ, ed. Fischer. Lips. 1780, 4to.

[127] Printed at the end of Somneri Dict. Saxonicum.

[128] See Anderson’s Hist. of Commerce, and Pennant’s Zoology, p. 300. Both these authors refer to Fuller’s British Worthies. [The carp existed in England before the year 1486: for in Dame Juliana Berners’ work on Angling, which was published at St. Albans (hence called the Book of St. Albans) in 1486, we find the following passage: speaking of the carp, she says “That it is a deyntous fysshe, but there ben but few in Englonde. And therefore I wryte the lesse of hym. He is an euyll fysshe to take. For he is so stronge enarmyd in the mouthe, that there maye noo weke harnays hold him.”]

CAMP-MILLS.

Under this appellation are understood portable or moveable mills, which can be used, particularly in the time of war, when there are neither wind- nor water-mills in the neighbourhood, and which on that account formerly accompanied armies in the same manner as camp-ovens and camp-forges. Some of these mills have stones for grinding the corn, and others are constructed with a notched roller like those of our coffee-mills. Some of them also are so contrived that the machinery is put in motion by the revolution of the wheels of the carriage on which they are placed; and others, and perhaps the greater part of those used, are driven by horses or men, after the wheels of the carriage are sunk in the ground, or fastened in some other manner.

To the latter kind belongs that mill of which Zonca[129] has given a coarse engraving, but without any description. He says it was invented by Pompeo Targone, engineer to the well-known marquis Ambrose Spinola; and he seems to place the time of the invention about the end of the sixteenth century. This mill is the same as that described by Beyer in his Theatrum Machinarum Molarium, and represented in the twenty-seventh plate of that work[130]. Beyer remarks that it was employed by Spinola.

The inventor, as his name shows, was an Italian, who made himself known, in particular, at the celebrated siege of Rochelle, under Louis XIII., at which he was chosen to assist, because in the year 1603, when with Spinola, who was consulted respecting the operations at Rochelle, he had helped by means of a mole to shut the harbour of Ostend during the tedious siege of that place. He was likewise in the French service, as intendant des machines du roi; but his numerous and expensive undertakings did not succeed according to his expectations[131]. He invented also a particular kind of gun-carriages, and a variety of warlike machines[132].

Another old figure of such a mill was shown to me by Professor Meister, in Recueil de Plusieurs Machines Militaires, printed in 1620. This machine was driven by the wheels of the carriage; but whether it was ever used the author does not inform us.

Lancellotti[133] ascribes this invention to the Germans, about the year 1633.

Carriages for transporting camp-forges and mill-machinery are mentioned by Leonard Fronsperger[134], but he does not say whether complete mills were affixed to them.

FOOTNOTES

[129] Novo Teatro di Machine ed Edificii, di Vittorio Zonca. Padoua, 1621, and reprinted in 1656, fol. The greater part of the machines delineated in this scarce book are engines for raising heavy bodies; but many of them are used in various trades and manufactures, and may serve in some measure to illustrate the history of them.

[130] J. M. Beyer’s Schauplatz der Mühlen-Bau-kunst. Leipzig, 1735, fol. Reprinted at Dresden, 1767.

[131] All those authors who have written expressly on the fate of the Huguenots, the History of Richelieu, Louis XIII., and the siege of Rochelle, make mention of Targone.

[132] Histoire de la Milice Françoise, par Daniel. Amst. 1724, i. p. 332.

[133] L’Hoggidi, overo gl’Ingegni non inferiori a’ passati. Ven. 1636, 8vo.

[134] Kriegsbuch, Frankf. 1596, fol. p. 9.

MIRRORS[135].

It is highly probable that a limpid brook was the first mirror[136], but we have reason to think that artificial mirrors were made as mankind began to exercise their art and ingenuity on metals and stones. Every solid body, capable of receiving a fine polish, would be sufficient for this purpose; and indeed the oldest mirrors mentioned in history were of metal. Those which occur in Job[137] are praised on account of their hardness and solidity; and Moses relates[138], that the brazen laver, or washing-basin, was made from the mirrors of the women who had assembled at the door of the tabernacle to present them, and which he caused them to deliver up. As the women appeared in full dress at divine worship, it was necessary for them to have looking-glasses after the Egyptian manner. With these the washing-basins, according to the conjecture of most interpretators, were only ornamented, covered, or perhaps hung round; and Michaelis[139] himself was once of this opinion. But why should we not rather believe that the mirrors were melted and formed into washing-basins? As soon as mankind began to endeavour to make good mirrors of metal, they must have remarked that every kind of metal was not equally proper for that use, and that the best could be obtained only from a mixture of different metals. In the mirrors however which were collected by Moses, the artists had a sufficient stock of speculum metal, and were not under the necessity of making it themselves; and for this reason they could much more easily give to the whole basin a polished surface, in which the priests, when they washed, might survey themselves at full length. At any rate such a basin would not be the only one employed instead of a mirror. Artemidorus[140] says that he who dreams of viewing himself in a basin, will have a son born to him by his maid. Dreams indeed are generally as groundless as this interpretation; but one can hardly conjecture that Artemidorus would have thought of such a dream, had it not been very common for people to contemplate themselves in a basin. There were formerly a kind of fortune-tellers, who pretended to show in polished basins to the simple and ignorant, what they wished to know[141]. The ancients also had drinking-vessels, the inside of which was cut into mirrors, so disposed that the image of the person who drank from them was seen multiplied[142]. Vopiscus mentions, among the valuable presents of Valerian to the emperor Probus, when a tribune, a silver cup of great weight, which was covered on the inside with mirrors of this sort[143].

Menard and others conjecture that mirrors in the time of Homer were not much used, because he mentions them on no occasion, not even where he describes in so circumstantial a manner the toilet of Juno[144]. In answer to this, however, I have two things to observe. In the first place, it is not to be expected that Homer should have mentioned every article with which he was acquainted; and secondly, we are assured by Callimachus, where he evidently has imitated the passage of Homer before-quoted[145], that neither Juno nor Pallas employed a mirror when they dressed. Mythology therefore did not allow the poet to introduce a mirror upon the toilet of that deity. Polydore Vergilius, Boccace, Menard, and others have all fallen into the error of making Æsculapius the inventor of mirrors, though Cicero[146] seems to say the same thing; but the best commentators have long since observed very justly, that the Roman philosopher alludes not to a mirror but to a probe, the invention of which we may allow to the father of medicine, who was at first only a surgeon.

When one reflects upon the use made of metal mirrors, particularly at Rome, to add to magnificence and for other purposes, and how many artists, during many successive centuries, were employed in constructing them, and vied to excel each other in their art, one cannot help conjecturing that this branch of business must at those periods have been carried to a high degree of perfection. It is therefore to be regretted that they have not been particularly described by any writer, and that on this account the art was entirely lost after the invention of glass mirrors, which are much more convenient. No one at that time entertained the least suspicion that circumstances would afterwards occur which would render these metal mirrors again necessary, as has been the case in our days by the invention of the telescope. Our artists then were obliged to make new experiments in order to discover the best mixture for mirrors of metal; and this should be a warning to mankind, never to suffer arts which have been once invented and useful to become again unknown. A circumstantial description of them should at any rate be preserved for the use of posterity, in libraries, the archives of human knowledge.

When we compare metals in regard to their fitness for mirrors, we shall soon perceive that the hardest of a white colour possess in the highest degree the necessary lustre. For this reason platina is preferable to all others, as is proved from the experiments made by the Count von Sickengen. Steel approaches nearest to this new metal, and silver follows steel; but gold, copper, tin and lead, are much less endowed with the requisite property. I have however observed among the ancients no traces of steel mirrors; and it is probable they did not make any of that metal, as it is so liable to become tarnished, or to contract rust. An ancient steel-mirror is indeed said to have been once found, but as some marks of silvering were perceived on it, a question arises whether the silvered side was not properly the face of the mirror[147]. Besides, every person knows that a steel mirror would not retain its lustre many centuries amidst ruins and rubbish.

The greater part of the ancient mirrors were made of silver, not on account of costliness and magnificence, as many think, but because silver, as has been said, was the fittest and the most durable of all the then known unmixed metals for that use. In the Roman code of laws, when silver plate is mentioned, under the heads of heirship and succession by propinquity, silver mirrors are rarely omitted; and Pliny[148], Seneca[149], and other writers, who inveigh against luxury, tell us, ridiculing the extravagance of the age, that every young woman in their time must have a silver mirror. These polished silver plates may however have been very slight, for all the ancient mirrors, preserved in collections, which I have ever seen, are only covered with a thin coat of that expensive metal; and in the like manner our artists have at length learned a method of making the cases of gold and silver watches so thin and light, that every footman and soldier can wear one. At first the finest silver only was employed for these mirrors, because it was imagined that they could not be made of that which was standard; but afterwards metal was used of an inferior quality. Pliny tells us so expressly, and I form the same conclusion from a passage of Plautus[150]. Philematium having taken up a mirror, the prudent Scapha gives her a towel, and desires her to wipe her fingers, lest her lover should suspect by the smell that she had been receiving money. Fine silver however communicates as little smell to the fingers as gold; but it is to be remembered that the ancients understood much better than the moderns how to discover the fineness of the noble metals by the smell, as many modes of proof which we use to find out the alloy, were to them unknown. Money-changers therefore employed their smell when they were desirous of trying the purity of coin[151]. The witty thought of Vespasian, who, when reproached on account of his tax upon urine, desired those who did so to smell the money it produced, and to tell him whether it had any smell of the article which was the object of it, alludes to this circumstance. In the like manner many savage nations at present can by their smell determine the purity of gold[152].

We are informed by Pliny, that Praxiteles, in the time of Pompey the Great, made the first silver mirror, and that mirrors of that metal were preferred to all others. Silver mirrors however were known long before that period, as is proved by the passage of Plautus above-quoted. To reconcile this contradiction, Meursius remarks that Pliny speaks only of his countrymen, and not of the Greeks, who had such articles much earlier, and the scene in Plautus is at Athens. This therefore seems to justify the account of Pliny, but of what he says afterwards I can find no explanation. Hardouin is of opinion, that mirrors, according to the newest invention, at that period, were covered behind with a plate of gold, as our mirrors are with an amalgam. But as the ancient plates of silver were not transparent, how could the gold at the back part of them produce any effect in regard to the image? May not the meaning be, that a thin plate of gold was placed at some distance before the mirror in order to throw more light upon its surface? But whatever may have been the case, Pliny himself seems not to have had much confidence in the invention.

Mirrors of copper, brass and gold, I have found mentioned only by the poets, who perhaps employed the names of these metals because they best suited their measure, or because they wished to use uncommon expressions, and thought a golden mirror the noblest. By the brass ones perhaps are to be understood only such as were made of mixed copper. Did golden mirrors occur oftener, I should be inclined to refer the epithet rather to the frame or ornaments than to the mirror itself; for at present we say a gold watch, though the cases only may be of that metal.

Mirrors seem for a long time to have been made of a mixture of copper and tin, as is expressly said by Pliny[153], who adds, that the best were constructed at Brundisium. This mixture, which was known to Aristotle, produces a white metal, which, on account of its colour, may have been extremely proper for the purpose, and even at present the same mixture, according to the careful experiments made by Mr. Mudge, an Englishman[154], produces the best metal for specula. It appears that the ancients had not determined the proportion very accurately; for Pliny assures us twice that in his time mirrors of silver were preferred. It is indeed not easy to ascertain the quantity of each metal that ought to be taken, and the most advantageous degree of heat; upon which a great deal depends. One of the principal difficulties is to cast the metal without blisters or air-holes, and without causing any part of the tin to oxidize, which occasions knots and cracks, and prevents it from receiving a fine polish. A passage of Lucian[155], which no one as yet has been able to clear up, alludes certainly, in my opinion, to these faults. A mixture of copper and tin is so brittle, that it is very liable to crack; and a mirror formed of it, if not preserved with great care, soon becomes so dim, that it cannot be used till it has been previously cleaned and polished. For this reason a sponge with pounded pumice-stone was generally suspended, from the ancient mirrors, and they were kept likewise in a case or box, as may be seen by the greater part of those still extant. Mirrors of silver were less subject to this inconvenience, and I am inclined to think that the latter on this account made the former be disused, as we are informed by Pliny.

As ancient mirrors of metal are still to be found in collections of antiquities, it might be of some importance to the arts if chemical experiments were made on their composition. Those who have hitherto given us any account of them have contented themselves with describing their external figure and shape. Count Caylus[156] is the only person, as far as I know, who caused any chemical experiments to be undertaken on this subject. They were made on a mirror found near Naples, by M. Roux, who asserts that the composition was a mixture of copper and regulus of antimony, with a little lead. Antimony however was not known to the ancients. If that metal was really a component part, the mirror must have been the work of more modern times, or it must be allowed that the artist had metal combined with antimony without knowing it; but the latter is not probable. The experiments made by Roux do not seem to me to have proved in a satisfactory manner the presence of regulus of antimony; moreover, no certain information can be derived from them, for the antiquity of the mirror was not ascertained; nor was it known whether it ought to be reckoned amongst the best or the worst of the period when it was made.

Those mirrors, which were so large that one could see one’s self in them at full length, must, in all probability, have consisted of polished plates of silver; for to cast plates of such a size of copper and tin would have required more art than we can allow to those periods; and I do not know whether our artists even now would succeed in them[157].

We read in various authors, that, besides metals, the ancients formed stones into mirrors, which were likewise in use. It is undoubtedly certain that many stones, particularly of the vitreous kind, which are opake and of a dark colour, would answer exceedingly well for that purpose; but let the choice have been ever so good, they would not, in this respect, have been nearly equal to metals. These of all mineral bodies have the most perfect opacity; and for that reason the greatest lustre: both these properties are produced by their solidity; and hence they reflect more perfectly, and with more regularity, the rays of light that proceed from other bodies. Our glass mirrors, indeed, are properly metallic. Stones, on the other hand, have at any rate some, though often hardly perceptible, transparency; so that many of the rays of light are absorbed, or at least not reflected. Mention of stone mirrors occurs also so seldom in the ancients, that we may conclude they were made rather for ornament than real utility. In general, we find accounts only of polished plates or panels of stone, fixed in the walls of wainscoted apartments, which were celebrated on account of their property of reflection.

Pliny[158] praises in this respect the obsidian stone, or, as it is now called, the Icelandic agate. Everything that he says of it will be perfectly intelligible to those who are acquainted with this species of stone or vitrified lava. The image reflected from a box made of it, which I have in my possession, is like a shadow or silhouette; but with this difference, that one sees not only the contour, but also the whole figure distinctly, though the colours are darkened. To form it into images and utensils, which Pliny speaks of, must have been exceedingly difficult, on account of its brittleness. I saw at Copenhagen, among other things made of it, a drinking-cup and cover, on which the artist had been employed four years.

Domitian, when he suspected that plots were formed against him, caused a gallery, in which he used to walk, to be lined with phengites, which by its reflection showed everything that was done behind his back[159]. Under that appellation we are undoubtedly to understand a calcareous or gypseous spar, or selenite, which is indeed capable of reflecting an image; but we cannot therefore pretend to say that the ancients formed mirrors of it; nor do I explain what Pliny says, where he speaks of the phengites, as if whole buildings had been once constructed of it[160]. That kind of stone, for various reasons, and particularly on account of its brittleness, is altogether unfit for such a purpose. At those periods, the windows of houses were open, and not filled up with any transparent substance, but only covered, sometimes by lattices or curtains. It is probable, therefore, that those openings of the walls of the building mentioned by Pliny, where the windows used to be, were filled up with phengites, which, by admitting a faint light, prevented the place from being dark even when the doors were shut; so that Pliny might say, “It appeared as if the light did not fall into the building, but as if it were inclosed in it.”

I might be accused of omission did I not here mention also a passage of Pliny[161], where he seems to speak of a mirror made of an emerald, which Nero used to assist him to see the combats of the gladiators. Cary asserts that Nero was short-sighted, and that his emerald was formed like a concave lens. The former is expressly said by Pliny[162], but the latter, though by Abat considered not improbable[163], I can scarcely allow myself to believe, because such an interpretation of Pliny’s words is too forced, and because they can be explained much better in another manner. As no mention of such an excellent help to short-sighted people is to be found in any other ancient author, we must allow, if Cary’s opinion be adopted, that this property of the concave emerald was casually remarked, and that no experiments were made to cut any other natural or artificial glass in the same form for the like use, because people imagined that this property was peculiar to the emerald alone, which was then commonly supposed to be endowed with the power of greatly strengthening the eye-sight. Much more probable to me is the explanation of an Italian, which Abat also does not entirely reject, that the emerald had a smooth polished surface, and served Nero as a mirror[164]; and the passage of Pliny alluded to seems to have been thus understood by Isidore[165] and Marbodæus. It may here be objected, that real emeralds are too small to admit of being used as mirrors; but the ancients speak of some sufficiently large for that purpose, and also of artificial ones[166]; so that we may with certainty conclude, that they classed among the emeralds fluor-spar green vitrified lava, or the green Icelandic agate as it is called, green jasper, and also green glass. The piece of green glass in the monastery of Reichenau, which is seven inches in length, three inches in thickness, and weighs twenty-eight pounds three-quarters; and the large cup at Genoa, which is however full of flaws[167], have been given out to be emeralds even to the present time.

Mirrors were made also of rubies, as we are assured by Pliny[168], who refers to Theophrastus for his authority; but this precious stone is never found now of such a size as to render this use possible; and Gary and the anonymous Italian before-mentioned have proved very properly that Pliny has committed a gross mistake, which has not been observed by Hardouin. Theophrastus, in the passage alluded to[169], does not speak of a ruby, but of the well-known black marble of Chio, though he calls both carbunculus, a name given to the ruby on account of its likeness to a burning coal, and to the black marble on account of its likeness to a quenched coal or cinder; and the latter, as well as the obsidian stone, was used sometimes for mirrors.

The account how mirrors were formed by the native Americans, before they had the misfortune to become acquainted with the Europeans, is of considerable importance in the history of this art. These people had indeed mirrors which the Europeans could not help admiring. Some of them were made of black, somewhat transparent, vitrified lava, called by the Spaniards gallinazo, and which is of the same kind as the obsidian stone employed by the Romans for the like purpose. Of this substance the Americans had plane, concave, and convex mirrors. They had others also made of a mineral called the Inca’s stone[170], which, as has been already said by Bomare, Sage, Wallerius, and other mineralogists, was a compact pyrites or marcasite, susceptible of a fine polish; and on that account often brought to Europe, and worn formerly in rings under the name of the stone of health. Ulloa says the Inca’s stone is brittle, opake, and of a somewhat bluish colour; it has often veins which cannot be polished, and where these veins are it frequently breaks. The mirrors formed of it, which he saw, were from two to three inches in diameter; but he saw one which was a foot and a half. The opinion which some have entertained, that these mirrors were cast, has no other foundation than the likeness of polished marcasite to cast brass. This mineral is very proper for reflecting images; and I am inclined to think that the Peruvians had better mirrors than the Greeks or the Romans, among whom we find no traces of marcasite being employed in that manner. It appears, however, that the Indians had mirrors also of silver, copper, and brass[171].