the marvelous elasticity of the tools of ancient Damascus, are familiar
by repute to every reader and have been celebrated for thousands of
years. The swords and daggers made in central Asia two thousand years
ago were more remarkable than any similar product of the present for
elaborate and beautiful finish as well as for a cutting quality and a
tenacity of edge unknown to modern days. All the tests and experiments
of a modern government arsenal, with all the technical knowledge of
modern times, do not produce such tool-steel. It is also alleged that
the ancient weapons did not rust as ours do, and that the oldest are
bright to this day. The steel tools and arms that are made in the
strange country of India do not rust there, while in the same climate
ours are eaten away. Besides the secret of tempering bronze, it would
seem that among the lost arts [Footnote: Modern science dates from three
discoveries. That of Copernicus, the effect of which was to separate
scientific astronomy, the astronomy of natural law and defined cause,
from astrology, or the astronomy of assertion and tradition. That of
Torricelli and Paschal of the actual and measurable weight of the
atmosphere, which was the beginning for us of the science of physics,
and that of Lavoisier who suspected, and Priestly who demonstrated,
oxygen and destroyed the last vestiges of the theory of alchemy. Stahl
was the last of these, and Lavoisier the first of the new school in that
which I have stated is the highest development of modern science,
chemistry. In all these departments we have no adequate reason to assert
that we are not ourselves mere students. Some of the functions of
oxygen, and the simplest, were unknown within five years before the date
of these chapters.]--a subject that it is easy to make too much
of--there was a chemical ingredient or proportion in steel that we now
know nothing of. The old lands of sameness and slumber have kept their
secrets.