A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume 2 (of 2)
by Johann Beckmann · English · Gutenberg #48152 · 1,408,463 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume 2 (of 2)
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume 2 (of 2)
Author: Johann Beckmann
Editor: William Francis
J. W. Griffith
Translator: William Johnston
Release date: February 4, 2015 [eBook #48152]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48152
Credits: Produced by Charlie Howard and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF INVENTIONS, DISCOVERIES, AND ORIGINS, VOLUME 2 (OF 2) ***
[Illustration:
_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.
Page
The Steam-Engine, and Discoveries of James Watt v
Lending and Pawnbroking 1
Chemical Names of Metals 23
Zinc 32
Carp 46
Camp-mills 55
Mirrors 56
Glass-cutting. Etching on Glass 84
Soap 92
Madder 108
Jugglers, Rope-dancers, Automata, etc. 115
Artificial Ice. Cooling Liquors 142
Hydrometer 161
Lighting of Streets 172
Night-watch 185
Plant-skeletons 195
Bills of Exchange 203
Tin. Tinning 206
Sowing-machines 230
Manganese 235
Prince Rupert’s Drops. Lacrymæ Vitreæ 241
Fire-engines 245
Indigo 258
Vanes. Weathercocks 281
Gilding 290
Fur Dresses 296
Steel 324
Stamping-works 333
Kitchen Vegetables 336
Knitting Nets and Stockings. Stocking-Loom 355
Hops 376
Black Lead 388
Sal-Ammoniac 396
Forks 407
Lottery. Tontine 414
Bologna Stone 429
Foundling Hospitals 434
Orphan Houses 449
Infirmaries. Hospitals for Invalids. Field Lazarettos 454
Cock-fighting 473
Saltpetre. Gunpowder. Aquafortis 482
Book-censors 512
Exclusive Privilege for Printing Books 518
Catalogues of Books 522
Ribbon-Loom 527
Guns. Gun-Locks 533
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 2_s._ 6_d._
one halfpenny; 5_s._ one penny; 7_s._ 6_d._ three halfpence; 10_s._
twopence; 12_s._ 6_d._ twopence halfpenny; 15_s._ threepence; 17_s._
6_d._ threepence halfpenny; £1 fourpence; and so on progressively and
in proportion for any sum not exceeding 40_s._ For every sum exceeding
40_s._ and not exceeding 42_s._ eightpence; and for every sum exceeding
42_s._ 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 2_s._ 6_d._ and does not exceed 40_s._, 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 10_s._ in other parts. No license
is required in Ireland. A second license, which costs £5 15_s._, 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 5_s._ 6_d._ 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.;
4_d._, annual interest 3900 per cent., or 650 p. c. weekly;
12_d._, 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 2_s._ 2_d._; on five
shillings they gain 10_s._ 4_d._; on ten shillings, 22_s._ 3¼_d._; 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:--
1. Gold ☉
2. Silver ☽
3. Iron ♂
4. Copper ♀
5. Mercury ☿
6. Lead ♄
7. Tin ♃
8. Antimony Basil Valentine 1490.
9. Bismuth Agricola 1530.
10. Zinc (Paracelsus?) 1530.
11. Arsenic } Brandt 1733.
12. Cobalt }
13. Platinum Wood 1741.
14. Nickel Cronstedt 1751.
15. Manganese Gahn 1774.
16. Tungsten D’Elhujart 1781.
17. Tellurium Müller 1782.
18. Molybdenum Hjelm 1782.
19. Uranium Klaproth 1789.
20. Titanium Gregor 1791.
21. Chromium Vauquelin 1797.
22. Columbium Hatchett 1802.
23. Palladium } Wollaston 1803.
24. Rhodium }
25. Iridium } Tennant 1803.
26. Osmium }
27. Cerium Hisinger 1804.
28. Potassium }
29. Sodium }
30. Barium } Davy 1807.
31. Strontium }
32. Calcium }
33. Cadmium Stromeyer 1818.
34. Lithium Arfwedson 1818.
35. Silicium } Berzelius 1824.
36. Zirconium }
37. Aluminum }
38. Glucinum } Wöhler 1828.
39. Yttrium }
40. Thorium Berzelius 1829.
41. Magnesium Bussy 1829.
42. Vanadium Sefström 1830.
43. Didymium } Mosander 1842.
44. Lanthanium }
45. Erbium } Mosander 1843.
46. Terbium }
47. Pelopium } H. Rose 1845.
48. Niobium }
49. Ruthenium Claus 1845.
50. Norium Svanberg 1845.]
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].
I come now to the question in what century were invented our glass
mirrors, which consist of a glass plate covered at the back with
a thin leaf of metal. This question has been answered by some with
so much confidence, that one might almost consider the point to be
determined; but instead of real proofs, we find only conjectures or
probabilities; and I must here remark, that I cannot help thinking
that they are older than has hitherto been supposed, however desirous
I may be to separate historical truth from conjecture. When I have
brought together everything which I know on the subject, I would say,
that attempts were even made at Sidon to form mirrors of glass; but
that they must have been inferior to those of metal, because they did
not banish the use of the latter. The first glass mirrors appear to me
to have been of black-coloured glass, or an imitation of the obsidian
stone; and to have been formed afterwards of a glass plate with some
black foil placed behind it[172]. At a much later period, blown glass,
while hot, was covered in the inside with lead or some metallic
mixture; and still later, and, as appears, first at Murano, artists
began to cover plates of glass with an amalgam of tin and quicksilver.
The newest improvements are, the casting of glass-plates, and the art
of making plates equally large by blowing and stretching, without the
expensive and uncertain process which is required for casting.
That glass mirrors were made at the celebrated glass-houses of Sidon,
is mentioned so clearly by Pliny that it cannot be doubted[173].
When I read the passage, however, without prejudice, without taking
into consideration what others have said on it, and compare it with
what certain information the ancients, in my opinion, give on the
same subject, I can understand it no otherwise than as if the author
said, that the art of manufacturing glass various ways was invented,
principally, at Sidon, where attempts had been made to form mirrors
of it. He appears therefore to allude to experiments which had not
completely succeeded; and to say that such attempts, at the time when
he wrote, had been entirely abandoned and were almost forgotten.
Had this circumstance formed an epoch in the art, Pliny, in another
place, where he describes the various improvements of it so fully,
would not have omitted it; but of those experiments he makes no
further mention[174]. All the inventions which he speaks of, evidently
relate to metal mirrors only, of which the silver, at that time,
were the newest. Had the Sidonian mirrors consisted of glass plates
covered at the back, those of metal, the making of which was, at any
rate, attended with no less trouble, which were more inconvenient
for use on account of their aptness to break, their requiring to
be frequently cleaned and preserved in a case, and which were more
unpleasant on account of the faint, dull image which they reflected,
could not possibly have continued so long in use as they really did;
and circumstances and expressions relative to glass mirrors must
certainly have occurred. Though glass continued long to be held in high
estimation, particularly at Rome; and though many kinds of glass-ware
are mentioned in ancient authors, among costly pieces of furniture,
mirrors are mentioned only among articles of silver plate. I am
acquainted with no certain trace of glass mirrors from the time of
Pliny to the thirteenth century; but after that period, at which they
are spoken of in the clearest manner, we find them often mentioned in
every century; and mirrors of metal at length entirely disappear.
How the Sidonian mirrors were made, is not known; but if I may
be allowed a conjecture, I am of opinion that they consisted of
dark-coloured glass, which had a resemblance to the obsidian stone.
Such is the usual progress of inventions. At those periods one had no
other representation of glass mirrors than that afforded by natural
glass or vitreous stones. When artists wished to make mirrors of
glass, they would try to imitate the latter. After the invention
of printing, people endeavoured to render printed books as like as
possible to manuscripts; because they imagined that this invention
was to be approved only so far as it enabled them to imitate these,
without observing that it could far excel the art of writing. But the
Sidonian glass mirrors were so much surpassed by the silver or brass
ones, which perhaps were invented about the same time, that on this
account they were never brought into use. Glass mirrors, perhaps, would
have been invented sooner, had mankind employed at an earlier period
glass-windows, which often, when they are shut on the outside so
that no light can pass through them, reflect images in a much better
manner than the best mirrors of metal. This observation, which may be
made daily, would then, in all probability, have been sooner turned to
advantage.
No one has employed a greater profusion of words to maintain an opinion
opposite to mine, than Abat; but when his proofs are divested of their
ornaments, they appear so weak that one has very little inclination
to agree with him. “The observation,” says he, “that a plate of
glass is the best mirror, when all other rays of light, except those
reflected back from the glass, are prevented, by a metallic covering
placed behind it, from falling on the eye, is so easy, that it must
have been made immediately after the invention of glass.” Who does
not think here of Columbus and his egg? Instances occur in history of
many having approached so near an invention, that we are astonished
how they could have missed it; so that we may exclaim with a certain
emperor, “Taurum toties non ferire difficile est[175].” “The Sidonian
invention,” continues he, “would not have been worth mentioning, had it
not produced better mirrors than those which the ancients had before
of the obsidian stone. But these even are mentioned only once, in so
short and abrupt a manner, and as it were out of ridicule, that one may
easily perceive they were not much esteemed.” “If the Sidonians,” adds
he, “were not the inventors, let some other inventor be mentioned;”
and he assures us that he had sought information on this subject, in
Neri, Kunkel, and Merret, but without success. That I believe; but Abat
does not remark that by the same manner of reasoning we may ascribe to
the Sidonians the invention of watches, and many other articles, the
inventors of which are not to be found in books where they ought as
much to be expected as the inventor of glass in Neri. The grounds on
which many old commentators of the Bible, Nicholas de Lyra and others,
have supposed that glass mirrors were known so early as the time of
Moses, are still weaker. If quoting the names of writers who entertain
a like opinion be of any weight, I could produce a much greater number
of learned men, who, after an express examination of the question, deny
altogether that glass mirrors were used by the ancients.
Dr. Watson[176] also has endeavoured to support the opinion of Abat,
but with less confidence and with more critical acumen. His grounds,
I think, I have weakened already; but one observation here deserves
not to be overlooked, because it suggests an idea that may serve to
illustrate a passage of Pliny, which, as I before remarked, has never
yet been explained. “If we admit,” says he, “that Pliny was acquainted
with glass mirrors, we may thus understand what he says respecting
an invention, which was then new, of applying gold behind a mirror.”
Instead of an amalgam of tin, some one had proposed to cover the back
of the mirror with an amalgam of gold, with which the ancients were
certainly acquainted, and which they employed in gilding[177]. He
mentions, also, on this occasion, that a thought had once occurred to
Buffon, that an amalgam of gold might be much better for mirrors than
that used at present[178]. This conjecture appears, at any rate, to be
ingenious; but when I read the passage again, without prejudice, I can
hardly believe that Pliny alludes to a plate of glass in a place where
he speaks only of metallic mirrors; and the overlaying with amalgam
requires too much art to allow me to ascribe it to such a period
without sufficient proof. I consider it more probable that some person
had tried, by means of a polished plate of gold, to collect the rays of
light, and to throw them either on the mirror or the object, in order
to render the image brighter.
Professor Heeren showed me a passage in the Ecloga of Stobæus, which,
on the first view, seems to allude to a glass mirror[179]. It is
there said, Philolaus the Pythagorean believed that the sun was a
vitreous body, which only received the rays of the æthereal fire and
reflected them to us like a mirror. When we compare, however, the words
of Stobæus with those by which Plutarch[180], Achilles Tatius[181],
Eusebius[182], and others, express the same thing, that meaning
cannot be drawn from them. It appears, at first, as if Philolaus had
considered the sun to be transparent, and supposed that the rays
passed through it, and came condensed to our earth, in the same manner
as they are brought to a focus by a glass globe. Some commentators have
explained the passage in this manner; and on account of the affinity of
the Greek words have thought also of a funnel. In that case, however,
the comparison of the sun with a mirror would not have been just; and
if it be admitted that Philolaus considered the sun as a bright body
endowed with the property of reflection, what he says of rays passing
or transmitted through it, and of the pores of the sun’s body, will
become unintelligible. But even if we adopt the last explanation, that
Philolaus imagined the sun to be a mirror, it does not follow that he
had any idea of a glass one[183]; and besides, he only speaks of a body
capable of reflecting a strong light; and that glass, under certain
circumstances, is fit for that purpose, may have been remarked as soon
as it was invented, though men might not find out the art of forming
it into proper mirrors by placing some opake substance behind it[184].
Empedocles also said, that the sun was a mirror, and that the light
received by our earth was the reflection of the æthereal fire, which
Eusebius compares to the reflection made by water[185].
In the problems ascribed to Alexander of Aphrodisias, glass mirrors,
covered on the back with tin, are clearly mentioned; but this
information does not lead us one step further in the history of the
art; as it is proved that the above Alexander, who lived in the
beginning of the third century, could not have written that work. The
author, who must have been a physician, maintains the immortality of
the soul, which Alexander of Aphrodisias, with Aristotle, denies. Some
therefore have ascribed these problems to Alexander Trallianus, who
practised physic in the middle of the sixth century; but this is only
a conjecture which no one has as yet rendered probable, especially as
there have been many physicians of the name of Alexander. The problem
to which I allude is not to be found in every manuscript and edition;
so that it is doubtful whether it may not be the production of a later
author than that of the rest of the book, particularly as it is certain
that many who had it in their possession added problems of various
kinds according to their pleasure. However this may be, it is evident
that the author of this problem was acquainted with mirrors covered at
the back; and the expression which he uses does not merely imply that
a leaf of tin was placed behind the glass plate, but that the tin in
a liquid state was rubbed over it. The old French translator thinks
that the author speaks of windows; but that opinion is undoubtedly
false[186].
Of as little importance as the above passage of Alexander, is another
of Isidore, often quoted in support of the antiquity of glass mirrors.
On the first view it appears to be a testimony of great weight; but
when closely examined it becomes reduced to very little. “Nothing,”
says he, “is so fit for mirrors as glass[187].” Abat and others, who
have considered these words as decisive, make less hesitation to
ascribe to the sixth century, in which Isidore lived, a knowledge
of mirrors covered on the back with tin and quicksilver, as the same
writer, in another place, observes, that quicksilver can be kept in no
vessel but one of glass[188]. It is very true that a glass filled with
that metal will form a very good mirror; but I am of opinion that this
may have been long known, before people thought of making an amalgam of
tin and quicksilver in order to cover the backs of mirrors. The first
passage, which is properly the one of any consequence, loses its force
when we see that it is taken from Pliny and copied incorrectly. The
latter says, that one can give to glass every kind of shape and colour,
and that no substance is more ductile, or fitter to be moulded into any
form[189]. Isidore, as is usual, says the same thing, and in the same
words, except, that instead of _sequacior_ he substitutes _speculis
aptior_; so that the mention of a mirror is altogether unexpected, and
so little suited to what goes before and what follows, that one must
believe that this alteration, occasioned perhaps by the similitude of
the words, or by an abbreviation, was not made by Isidore, but by some
transcriber. But even if we believe that Isidore himself spoke of glass
being used at that period for mirrors, we are not able to comprehend,
from what he says, how glass mirrors were made in the sixth century.
I have met with no information respecting this subject in the whole
period between the age of Isidore and the eleventh century. About the
year 1100, at least as is supposed not without probability, Alhazen the
Arabian wrote his well-known treatise on Optics, in which I conjectured
that I should find mention made of glass mirrors; but I searched that
work in vain, though I must confess I did not read it through entirely.
Where he begins his catoptrical lessons, he however often speaks of
iron mirrors, by which we may understand mirrors of the best steel. In
explaining a certain phænomenon, he says, that the cause of it cannot
be in the darkness of the iron mirror, because if a mirror of silver be
used, the same effects will be produced. Would he not on this occasion
have introduced glass mirrors, had he been as well-acquainted with them
as with those already mentioned? At first, he never speaks of mirrors
without adding of iron, of silver; but he mentions them afterwards
without any epithet of the kind.
All these mirrors I find also in the Optics of Vitello, who wrote
in the middle of the thirteenth century, in Italy, a country which
was at that time almost the only one where the arts flourished[190].
That author has, indeed, borrowed a great deal from Alhazen, though
there are many things of his own, and he gives an account of some
experiments on the refracting power of glass; but he never, as far as
I have observed, mentions glass mirrors. Whether Jordanus Nemorarius,
or Nemoratius, who also wrote, in the thirteenth century, a book _De
Speculorum Natura_, makes mention of them, I do not know, because I
have never had an opportunity of seeing that work. I am of opinion it
was never printed.
It is in the thirteenth century, that I find the first undoubted
mention of glass mirrors covered at the back with tin or lead. Johannes
Peckham, or Peccam, an English Franciscan monk, who taught at Oxford,
Paris, and Rome, and who died in 1292, wrote about the year 1279 a
treatise of optics, which was once printed, with the title of Johannis
Pisani Perspectiva Communis[191]. In this work, besides mirrors made of
iron, steel, and polished marble, the author not only speaks often of
glass mirrors, but says also that they were covered on the back with
lead, and that no image was reflected when the lead was scraped off.
Vincentius Bellovacensis[192] speaks in a manner still clearer, for
he tells us that lead was poured over the glass plate while hot. To
the same century also belong the concurrent testimonies of Raimundus
Lullius[193], Roger Bacon[194], Antonius di Padua[195], and Nicephorus
Gregoras[196], who died after the year 1360[197].
That this invention cannot be much older we have reason to conclude,
because glass mirrors were extremely scarce in France even in the
fourteenth century, while mirrors of metal were in common use; and
we are told that the mirror of Anne de Bretagne, consort of Louis
XII., was of the latter kind[198]. Metal mirrors also were made and
employed in Persia and the East, where indeed ancient usages continued
longest, and glass mirrors were not known there till the commencement
of the European trade with these remote regions. The former are still
preferred in those countries, because they are not so liable to break,
and can be preserved better in a dry hot climate than the amalgam of
the latter.
Respecting the progress of this art, I know nothing more than what
follows:--At first, melted lead, or perhaps tin, was poured over the
glass plate while yet hot as it came from the furnace. This process
agrees with that which, since very early periods, has been employed
in or around Nuremberg for making convex mirrors by blowing with the
pipe into the glass-bubble whilst still hot a metallic mixture, with a
little resin or salt of tartar, which prevents oxidation and assists
the fusion. When the bubble is covered all over in the inside, and
after it has cooled, it is cut into small round mirrors. This art is
an old German invention, for it is described by Porta and Garzoni, who
both lived in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and who both
expressly say, that it was then common in Germany. Curious foreigners
often attempted to learn it, and imagined that the Germans kept it
a secret. Boyle made various experiments in order to discover the
process; and the secretary of the Royal Society endeavoured, by means
of the ambassador from Charles II., who, perhaps about 1670, resided
at Frankfort, to obtain a knowledge of it; but did not succeed, as we
are told by Leibnitz[199]. It was called the art of preparing mirrors
without foil; and it was highly esteemed, because it was supposed that
it might be useful to those fond of catoptrics, by enabling them to
form convex and concave mirrors themselves. This account of Leibnitz
seems to have led Von Murr into a slight error, and induced him to
believe that the art of making convex mirrors without foil was first
found out at Nuremberg in 1670. I introduce this remark because I
flatter myself he will not be displeased that I make the above service,
rendered by his native city, to be a century and a half older. These
small convex mirrors, which reflect a diminished, but a clearer image
than our usual mirrors, are perhaps made still, though they are not
now carried round so frequently for sale in Germany as they were
thirty years ago, at which time, if I remember right, they were called
(_Ochsen-augen_) ox-eyes. They were set in a round painted board, and
had a very broad border or margin. One of them, in my possession,
is two inches and a half in diameter. It is probable that the low
price of plane mirrors, when glass-houses began to be more numerous,
occasioned these convex ones to be little sought after. The mixture
employed in making them was, according to Porta, antimony, lead, and
colophonium; but according to Garzoni, it was _una mistura di piombo,
stagno, marchesita d’argento, e tartaro_, which in the German edition
is translated very badly, “lead, tin, flint, silver, and tartar.” The
following observation perhaps is not altogether useless: Colophonium,
which is employed on many other occasions for soldering, was formerly
called mirror-resin, and was sold under that name even in the beginning
of the present century. Frisch assigns no reason for this appellation,
and Jacobson gives a wrong one, viz. its having a bright shining
surface when broken. The true reason was the above-mentioned use; and
as that is now very little known, it is called from that to which it is
principally applied, violin-resin.
It appears that, instead of pouring melted metal over plates of glass,
artists for some time applied to them the before-mentioned amalgam
of tin, or covered them in some other manner, perhaps in the same way
as Boyle covered concave glasses in the inside. Porta however saw
almost the same process employed at Murano as that which is still
followed at present. The tin, hammered to thin leaves, was spread
out very smoothly; and quicksilver was poured over it, and rubbed
into it, either with the hand or a hare’s foot; and when the tin was
saturated it was covered with paper. The glass, wiped exceedingly
clean, was then laid above it; and while the workman pressed it down
with his left hand, he drew out very carefully with his right the
paper that lay between the tin and the glass, over which weights were
afterwards placed. This much at any rate is certain, that the method of
covering with tin foil was known at Murano so early as the sixteenth
century[200], and therefore it is much older than J. M. Hoffmann
supposes. To conclude, whether this ingenious invention belongs to the
Venetians, as several later, and particularly Italian, writers assert,
I can neither prove nor contradict; but it is well known that till
about the end of the seventeenth century their mirrors were sold all
over Europe and in both the Indies. After that period the glass-houses
in other countries were improved, and new ones established; and the
discovery made in France, that glass, like metal, could be cast into
much larger plates than had been before prepared by blowing and
rolling, was in more than one respect prejudicial to the sale of those
made at Venice.
So early as the year 1634, attempts were made i
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/48152