Page:Omniana 2.djvu/110

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100
OMNIANA.

adorer la grandeur de Dieu, à raisonner sur cette exactitude, cette emulation, ce penchant que la matiere se conserve pour s'aranger, autant qu'elle peut, selon la figure que lui avoit d'abord imprimée l'Auteur de la Nature."

So firmly indeed was the Palingenesia believed by men of learning, that it was frequently insisted on by divines as a proof of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. Some trick must have been practised by the chemical wonder-workers which duped the spectators. Perhaps the glass was painted with the solutions of cobalt, such as are used to make sympathetic inks. "Fire screens have thus been painted, which in the cold have shown only the trunk and branches of a dead tree and sandy hills, but on their approach to the fire have put forth green leaves and red flowers, and grass upon the mountains." (Botanic Garden Vol. I. p. 56.) What a melancholy thing it is to