390 Snatch'd the raised lightning from the arm of JOVE;
Quick o'er his knee the triple bolt He bent,
The cluster'd darts and forky arrows rent,
Snapp'd with illumin'd hands each flaming shaft,
His tingling fingers shook, and stamp'd, and laugh'd;
395 Bright o'er the floor the scatter'd fragments blaz'd,
And Gods retreating trembled as they gaz'd;
The immortal Sire, indulgent to his child,
Bow'd his ambrosial locks, and Heaven relenting smiled.


[_You led your Franklin_. l. 383. Dr. Franklin was the first that
discovered that lightening consisted of electric matter, he elevated a
tall rod with a wire wrapped round it, and fixing the bottom of a rod
into a glass bottle, and preserving it from falling by means of silk-
strings, he found it electrified whenever a cloud parted over it,
receiving sparks by his finger from it, and charging coated phials. This
great discovery taught us to defend houses and ships and temples from
lightning, and also to understand, _that people are always perfectly
safe in a room during a thunder storm if they keep themselves at three
or four feet distance from the walls_; for the matter of lightning in
passing from the clouds to the earth, or from the earth to the clouds,
runs through the walls of a house, the trunk of a tree, or other
elevated object; except there be some moister body, as an animal in
contact with them, or nearly so; and in that case the lightning leaves
the wall or tree, and passes through the animal; but as it can pass
through metals with still greater facility, it will leave animal bodies
to pass through metallic ones.

If a person in the open air be surprized by a thunderstorm, he will know