health and peace, contentment and tran quillity, in perfection. You are the more ftriking, when fuch fpectacles as my coufin Richmond (pointing to the dying gentleman in the room) and I are in contraft before you. I will tell you our ftories Sir, in return for your charming fong, and hope what I am going to fay may be of fervice to you, as you are coming on, and we go off from this world.

The picture of beau Richmond.

My kinfman there, the dying Richmond, in that chair, was once a Sampson, and the handsomeft man of his time, tho the remains of beauty or ftrength cannot now be traced. By drinking and whoring he brought himself to what you fee; to a ftate that eludes all the arts of medicine. He has an aggravated cough, which pro duces a filthy, pus of an afh-colour, streaked with blood, and mixed with filaments torn. from his lungs and membranes, and with the utmost difficulty he refpires. He has a perpetual violent pain in his breast, a pricking forenefs in his paps when he coughs, and defects in all his functions. He has that flux of the belly, which is called a lientery, and the fluids of his body are wafted in colliquative fweats. A ftretching pain racks him if he lies on ei

ther fide, by reason of some adhesion of the lungs to the pleura. His hair is fallen off, and his nails you fee are dead-coloured, and hooked. His countenance, you obferve, is Hippocratical, the very image of death: his face a dead pale, his eyes funk, his nofe fharp, his cheeks hollow, his temples fallen, and his whole body thin like a skeleton. What a figure now is this once curled darling of the ladies: It was done, good Sir, by the hand of Intemperance.

The picture of a temperate man, born with a confumption.

§. 3. As to myself, (Ribble continued,) I brought a confumption into the world with me, and by art have fupported under it. I was born with the sharp fhoulders you fee, which are called pterogoides, or wing-like, and had a contracted thorax, and long cheft, a thin and long neck, a fraccid tone of all the parts about the breaft, and a very flabby contexture of the muscles all over my body: but nevertheless, by a strict temperance all my life, and by following the directions of Dr. Bennet in his Theatrum tabidorum, I have not only made life tolera-. ble, but fo removed the burden of stagnant phlegm from the thorax, by throwing it down by stool, and up by expectoration,exhaling it fometimes through the fkin,

and

and at other times digesting it with fafting, that I contrive more ufeful hours to myself than the strong and young can enjoy in their continued fcenes of diffipation and riot. In me is feen the wonderful effect of rule and fobriety. I am now paft fifty feveral years, nothwithstanding my very weak and miferable conftitution, and by attending to nature, and never indulging in gratification or excefs, am not only able to live without pain, but to divert life by experimental philofophy. (Ribble went on) I came down to this pleasant place, chiefly for the benefit of poor Richmond, my kinfman, (whom you fee with his eyes fhut be'fore you, the very picture of death,) and alfo, with a view to do fome good to myfelf, as it is the fineft air in the world. I took a houfe in the village to live the more eafily, as the lodging-houses are all crouded here, and refolved to amuse the days I have left in cultivating the science of chemistry; not in order to finish what nature has begun, do you fee me, (as the alchymifts talk,) and procure to the imperfect metals the much defired coction; but, to examine fubftances, and by the examination, obtain ideas of the bodies capable of the three degrees of fermentation, fpiritous, acctous, and putrid; and of the products of those fermentations, to wit, ardent fpirits, acids

ana

analogous to thofe of vegetables and animals, and volatile alkalis.

To this purpose, I made for myself a laboratory, and about a year ago, began to employ my veffels and furnaces in various proceffes. A vaft variety of entertaining things have fince occured, and my life is thereby made greeable and pleasing; the to look at my poor frame, one would think me incapable of any fatisfactions. I will give you an inftance or two of my amusements, and do you judge, if they may not afford a mind more delight, than the tumultuous joys of love and wine, horseracing, cock-fighting, hunting, and other violent pleasures can yield.

A hiftory of me

tals.

:

§. 4. You know, good Sir, I fuppofe, that there are fix metals, two perfect, and four imperfect. Gold and filver, perfect the others, copper, tin, lead, and iron. Quickfilver is by fome called a feventh metal: but that I think cannot be, as it is not malleable. Yet it is not to be confounded with the femi-metals, as it differs from the metals no otherwise than by being constantly in fufion, which is occafioned by its aptnefs to flow with such a fmall degree of heat, that be there ever

fo

fo little warmth on earth, there is still more than enough to keep mercury in fufion. It must be called then, in my opinion, a metallic body of a particular kind: And the more fo, let me add, as art has not yet. found out a way of depriving it wholly of its Phlogiston.

I muft obferve to you, good Sir, in order to be intelligent in what I am fay

What Phlegifton

is.

ing, that the Phlogifton in metals is the matter of fire as a conftituent principle in bodies. It is the element of fire combined with fome other fubftance, which ferves it. as a basis for conftituting a kind of fecondary principle; and it differs from pure fixed fire in these particulars, that it communicates neither heat nor light,— it causes no change, but only renders body apt to fufe by the force of a culinary fire,—and it can be conveyed from body to body, with this circumstance, that the body deprived of the phlogifton is greatly altered, as is the body that receives it.

And as to the femi-metals, What femi-me(which I mentioned) you tals are. will be pleased to obferve,

that they are regulus of antimony, bismuth, zinc, and regulus of arfenic. They are not

malle