compounds, or meteors, to some extent resemble elements. They are
fiery, as the rainbow, or watery, as dew. Our extract on the rainbow
is somewhat typical of the faults of ancient science. A note is taken
of a rare occurrence--a lunar rainbow; but in describing the common
one, an error of the most palpable kind is made. The placing of blue
as the middle and green as the lowest colour is obviously wrong, and
is inexplicable if we did not know how facts were cut square with
theories in old days.

In the next extract Bartholomew's account of the spirits animating man
is quoted at length. It gives us the mediaeval theory as to the means
by which life, motion, and knowledge were shown in the body. Every
reader of Shakespeare or Chaucer becomes familiar with the vital,
animal, and natural spirits. They were supposed to communicate with
all parts of the body by means of the arteries or wosen, "the nimble
spirits in their arteries," and the sinews or nerves. The word sinew,
by the way, is exactly equal to our word nerve, and ayenward, as our
author would say. Hamlet, when he bursts from his friends, explains
his vigour by the rush of the spirit into the arteries, which makes

"Each petty artery of this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve."

The natural spirit is generated in the liver, the seat of digestion,
"there where our nourishment is administered"; it then passes to the
heart, and manifests itself as the spirit of life; from thence it
passes to the brain, where it is the animal spirit--"spirit animate"
Rossetti calls it--dwelling in the brain.

In the brain there are three ventricles or chambers, the