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��Invento7's as Martyrs to Science.
��PALISSY.
"Who is it in the suburbs here, Tliis potter, working with such cheer, In this mean liouse, this mean attire, His manly features bronzed with fire, Whose figu lines and rustic wares Scarce lind him bread from day to day? This madman, as the people say, Who breaks his tables and his chairs To feed his furnace tires, nor cares Who goes unfed if they aie fed. Nor who may live if they are dead? This alchemist with hollow cheeks, And sunken, searching eyes, who seeks, By mingled earths and ores combined With potency of fire, to find Some new enamel hard and briglit. His dream, liis passion, his delight?
OPalissy! within thy breast Burned the hot fever of unrest; Thine was the prophet's vision, thine The exultation, the divine Insanity of noble minds. That never falters nor abates, But labors and endures and waits. Till all that it foresees, it finds. Or what it cannot find, creates!
One of the most interesting facts conifected with his dogmatic career is, that in at last producing his white enamel, sought so long, he was only practising an art which he could have learned from almost any potter on the opposite side of the Alps ; for at this time the Italian Majolica manu- facture was at its highest point of excellence.
Palissy was far in advance of his times in scientific knowledge, and his views were considered so heretical that he was taken to the Bastile. The king visited him, and urged him to recant, saying that if he did not he would be compelled to leave him to his enemies. Palissy replied, — "Those who compel you, a king, have no power over me, for I know how to die." And so the sad story repeats itself.
Daguerre was considered mad be- cause the idea possessed his mind tliat he could fix the images of the
��camera. Niepee, who really first dis- covered the process, died poor and unknown. In fact, the claimants for this honor are as many as the authors of "Beautiful Snow." You recall how the photographer always retires rapidly to a dark closet with his neg- ative for a chemical bath to fix the picture. This part of the invention Daguerre hit upon by a happy chance. Working with plates of silver which had been submitted to the power of iodine, he strove to obtain an image on the camera which should be yisibie and permanent. Heart-sick with dis- appointment, he put away in a cup- board, which contains a heterogeneous assemblage of chemicals, his broken spells and fruitless charms, the tab- lets which bore no record of the image to which they had been submit- ted on the camera. Taking up one of these tablets one day in order to clean it and recommence experiments, to his surprise he found a perfectly delineated picture thereon. The cir- cumstance was incomprehensible ; no picture had been there when the plate was put away ; but here in its minut- est detail was the image to which the plate had been submitted. A few hours in the magic cupboard produced a picture on the iodized tablet, which showed no trace of anything of the kind before. After long and puz- zling search a vessel containing mer- cwy, a substance which slowly va- porizes at the ordinary temperature of the atmosphere, was found to be the cause. Light had iiripressed a latent image on the surface, and the vapors of the mercury had brought out and developed the picture.
The last man of whom I shall speak in this superficial treatment of
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