ancient. By this art, the Rabbi Bar-Cocheba, in the reign of the emperor Hadrian, made the credulous Jews believe that he was the hoped-for Messiah; and, two centuries after, the emperor Constantius was thrown into great terror, when Valentinian informed him that he had seen one of the body guards breathing out fire and flame in the evening." History of In

ventions.

I could give great numbers of instances from the ancients, as well as from the English, at very early periods, which differ but little from the present time, all of which only serve to show that " man is ever the same."

"Pleased with this bauble still, as that before,

"Till tir'd, he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er." POPE.

The town jugglers, during the reign of the Stuarts, were fellows who practised feats of strength, or dexterity; these seem always to have excited the most lively interest; but other jugglers were plentiful; the mass of the people were living under easy circumstances. And this was among the other voluntary ways of entertaining that numerous class, which serve to fill up the measure of society, who have but few cares, and have more money than wit.

One popular character of this sort, Florian Marchaud, a foreigner, he drank common water, but would return it back as wine or sweet waters. I wonder the excise fellows did not gauge him, and make him pay a tax. If one of them was to exhibit himself now, Master Peel, who is so much in want of money, would do it. I would advise the Chartists and the Repealers to be careful what they are about, and be admonished by the following couplet :

"If we do not be quiet, and cease all our jars,

They will charge us a farthing a-piece for the stars."

"The posture master is frequently mentioned by the writers of the last two centuries. The most extraordinary of this kind that ever existed, was Joseph Clark, who, although a well made man, and rather gross than thin, exhibited nearly every specie of deformity and dislocation, and could make all sorts of wry faces. He is alluded to in the Guardian, 1713, and described as a sad annoyancer of the tailors. He would send for one to take his measure, but would so contrive it, as to have a most immoderate rising on one of his shoulders; when his clothes were brought home, he would transform this deformity to the contrary side, upon which the poor tailor begged pardon for the mistake, and remedied the defect as fast as he could; but on another trial, he found him a straight shouldered man, but now

was become, unfortunately, hump-backed.

In short, this wandering tumour puzzled all the workmen about town, who found a fit impossible to be accomplished.

He also

There was a Turkish rope-dancer walked bare footed up a rope, holding only by gripping it tight with his toes. danced blind-folded on a tight rope, with a boy twelve years old, dangling to his feet below. A man would raise a cannon of four hundred pounds, by the hair of his head; and these exhibitions were visited by throngs in sedan chairs, chariots, and on foot.

I will mention two curious ways, by which several have raised a little temporary relief, when put to it on journeys; my information is derived from a diary never published.

A stranger, coming to a tavern, not known perhaps to a soul in it, would give out to the company, that for a small subscription, he would explain to them a problem, the result of which, he said, he did not know, they did not know, nor nobody knew! The amount he left to the company; each might give what he pleased. All this seemed so harmless, and yet so interesting, and so easily to be acquired, that it never failed, except any of the party had been previously informed. When the amount was collected, he asked some gentleman to furnish him with a garter, which, being soon obtained, he pulled off his own, and measured them together; it was soon found they were not both of a length. He then announced to the company, that the gentleman's garter was longer or shorter than his, as the case might be; which, until then, he did not know, nor they did not know, nor nobody knew!

The other incident afforded more money to the exhibitor, and some useful information to the audience. It is a very common custom now, and a very old one, to have a very large and fat boiled or baked round of beef at the market dinners, on market days, some of which would not be eaten. After the dinner, some placards would be distributed, stating that a gentleman was in town, who would teach the art of carving without the possibility of the operator cutting himself. The country people would flock to the tavern, pay their shilling, and when a sufficient number had arrived, the remains of the large round of beef would be set in state, upon a clean dish, and table cloth; the operator amusing them, perhaps, with a song, or jokes, wetting his large carving knife to a keen edge. As soon as the company began to express impatience, he began, in a peculiar pompous phraseology, to explain to his auditors, that to perform the noble and agreeable art of carving, in a genteel manner, and without the possibility of cutting themselves, consisted merely in their always cutting from them; for if the

knife suddenly flew out, it could not possibly do them any harm; he putting his art in operation, as long as any of the wondering people would stay to see him.

Many jugglers have succeeded in raising considerable sums of money by enduring heat; but from experiments detailed in the "Philosophical Transactions," these exploits are of easy solution. In the year 1774, Dr. Blagdon received an invitation from Dr. Fordyce, to observe the effects of air heated to a much higher degree than it was formerly thought any living creature could bear. Dr. Fordyce had proved the mistake of Dr. Boerhaave and most other authors, by supporting many times very high degrees of heat. Dr. Cullen had long before suggested many arguments to show that life itself had a power of generating heat, independent of any common, chemical, or mechanical means. Governor Ellis had observed, 1758, that a man could live in an air of a greater heat than that of his body; and that the body in this situation continues its own cold; and the abbe Chappe d'Auteroche had written, that the Russians used their baths heated to 60o of Reaumur, or about 160o of Fahrenheit. With a view to add farther evidence to these facts, and to ascertain the real effects of such great degrees of heat on the human body, Dr. Fordyce tried various experiments in heated chambers, and from whence the external air was excluded.

Dr. Blagdon states, that the Hon. Captain Phipps, Mr. Banks, Dr. Solander, and myself, attended the doctor to the heated chamber, which had served for many of his experiments; we went in without taking off any of our clothes. When we first entered the room, the quicksilver in a thermometer indicated 150°; we continued in the room about 20 minutes, in which the heat had risen about 12o, chiefly during the first part of our stay. Within an hour afterward, we went into this room again, without feeling any material difference, though the heat had considerably increased; upon entering the room a third time, we observed the quicksilver indicated 1980-this was the only thermometer which remained perfect-the great heat had so warped the ivory frames of several others that every one was broken. We now staid in the room about 10 minutes, but finding that the thermometer sunk very fast, it was agreed that only one person should for the future go in at a time, and orders were given to raise the fire as much as possible. Soon afterwards Dr. Solander entered the room alone, and saw the thermometer at 210°, but during three minutes which he staid there it sunk to 196°; another time he found it almost five minutes before the heat was lessened to 1960. Mr. Banks closed the whole by going in when the thermome

ter stood about 211o, he remained in seven minutes, in which time the quicksilver had sunk to 1960; but cold air had been let in by a person who went in and came out again during Mr. Banks' stay. The air, heated to these high degrees, felt unpleasantly hot, but was very bearable; our most uneasy feelings was a sense of scorching on the face and legs; our legs suffered very much by being exposed more fully than any other part, to the body of the stove, heated red hot. Our respiration was not at all effected, it became neither quick nor laborious, the only difference was a want of that refreshing sensation which accompanies a full inspiration of cold air. Our time was so taken up with other observations, that we did not count our pulses by the watch; mine, to the best of my judgment, by feeling it beat at the rate of 100 pulsations in a minute, and Dr. Solander's made 92 pulsations: soon after we got out of the room, Mr. Banks sweated profusely, but no one else, my shirt was only damp at the end of the first experiment. But the most striking effects proceeded from our power of preserving our natural temperament. Being now in a situation in which our bodies bore a very different relation to the surrounding atmosphere, from that to which we had been accustomed, every moment presented a new phenomena; whenever we breathed on a thermometer, the silver sunk several degrees, every expiration, particularly if made with any degree of violence, gave a very pleasant impression to our nostrils, scorched just before by the hot air rushing against them when we inspired. In the same manner, our cold breath agreably cooled our fingers when it reached them. Upon touching my side, it felt cold like a corpse, and yet the actual heat of my body, tried under my tongue and by applying closely the thermometer to my skin, was 980; when the heated air began to approach the highest degree which the heating apparatus was capable of producing, our bodies in the room prevented it from rising any higher, and when it had been previously raised above that point inevitably sunk it.

These experiments, therefore, prove that the body has a power of destroying heat. To speak justly upon this subject, we must call it a power of destroying a certain degree of heat, communicated with certain quickness; therefore, in estimating heat which we are capable of resisting, it is necessary to take into consideration not only what degree of heat would be communicated to our bodies, if they possessed no resisting power by the heated body before the equilibrium of heat was effected, but also what time that heat would take in passing from the heated body into our bodies. In consequence of this compound limitation of our resisting power, we bear very different

degrees of heat in different mediums. The same person who felt no inconvenience from an heated air of 211o, would not bear quicksilver at 120o, and could just bear rectified spirit of wine at 1300; that is, quicksilver heated to 120°, furnished, in a given time, more heat for the living power to destroy than spirits heated to 130° or air to 211°; and we had in the heated room where our experiments were made a striking, though familiar, instance of the same. All the pieces of metal there, (our watch chains) felt so hot that we could scarcely bear to touch them for a moment, while the air, from which the metal had derived all its heat, was only unpleasant. The slowness with which air communicates its heat was farther shown, in a remarkable manner, by the thermometers we brought with us into the room, none of which, at the end of twenty minutes in the first experiment, had acquired the real heat of the air by several degrees. It might be supposed, that by an action so very different from that to which we are accustomed, as destroying a large quantity of heat, instead of generating it; we must have been greatly disordered, and indeed we experienced some inconvenience; our hands shook very much, and we felt a considerable degree of languor and debility; I had also a noise and giddiness in my head. But it was only a small part of our bodies that excited the power of destroying heat with such a violent effect as seems necessary at first sight. Our clothes, which contrived to guard us from cold, also guarded us from the heat on the same principles. Underneath we were surrounded with an atmosphere of air, cooled on one side to 98°, by being in contact with our bodies, and on the other side heated very slowly, because woollen is such a bad conductor of heat. Accordingly, I found, toward the end of the first experiment, that a thermometer put under my clothes, but not in contact with my skin, sunk down to 110°. On this principle it was that the animals, subjected by M. Tillet, to the interesting experiments related in the "Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences," 1764, bore the oven so much better when they were clothed than when they were put in bare: the heat actually applied to the greater part of their bodies, was considerably less in the first case than in the last. As animals can destroy only a certain quantity of heat in a given time, so the time they can continue the full exertion of this destroying power, seems to be also limited, which may be one reason why we can bear for a certain time, and much longer than can be necessary to fully heat the cuticle, a degree of heat which will at length prove intolerable; probably both the power of destroying heat and the time for which it can be exerted, may be increased, like all other faculties of the body, by frequent exercise. It might be