Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/404

 388 Inventors as Martyrs to Science.

of an elephant that can pick up a pin stantly tooli possession of his mind

or rend an oak is as nothing to it. that he would make enamels, and the

It can draw out without breaking a idea became a passion. To be the

thread as fine as gossamer," and lift only man in the land who could pro-

a ship of war like a bauble in the air. duce tliese beautiful vases would

Palissy, the potter, a French Huge- not only be to secure an abundant not, was doubly a martyr, enduring supi)ly for the wants of his family, for sixteen weary years the sneers of but it would be a triumphant art, a his neighbors and the reproaches of riddle of the deepest interest to solve. his wife before he attained his object. He began to search for enamels with- and towards the close of his life, out knowing of what materials they when rewarded with wealth and hou- were composed. He set about mak- ers, he was imprisoned for his religion, ing earthen vessels without ever hav- and died in a dungeon of the Bastile ing learned the manufacture. He after four years of close confinement, built a furnace for his ware, although He had a good paying business, that he had never seen one fired, and soon of glass-painting for the windows spent all his savings in useless at- of churches, and was happy with his tempts. The recital of his labors young wife and child, and for several and disappointments should be read years they lived most comfortably, in his own pages. He bought a quau- but all the time he was longing to do tity of earthen pots, and, having something which should make his liroken them into fragments, covered name immortal. There is often a them with various chemical corn- long period during which a man of pounds, which he had pounded and genius is occupied in gathering to- ground, and which lie proposed to gether materials, unconscious what melt at furnace heat. His hope was, use they shall eventually serve, and that of all these mixtures, some one suddenly, perhaps, through a passing or other might run over the pottery in and merely accidental circumstance, such a way as to afford him at least a he receives an impetus which directs hint towards the composition of white him on to the fulfilment of his career, enamel, which he had lieen told was

The turning point in Paliss3''s life, the basis of all others. His first ex- which caused liim so much anxiety periment was but the beginning of an and yet gave him the wished for endless series of failures. His fur- fame, w^as an accidental visit to the nace and shed were built at the end castle of a nobleman, who, knowing of the garden with no sheltering wall his interest in pottery, went to a cabi- near, and when the storms came net where he had some choice speci- nothing could be more bleak and com- raens, and showed him a beautiful fortless. He has drawn a doleful enamelled cu|). At the sight of it picture of this: "I was every night he was stiuck witii ndmiration. He at the mercy of the rains and winds, knew nothing of pottery, had no without help or companionship ex- knowledge of clays, and he was sure cejit from the owls that screeched on that there was no man in France who one side and the dogs that howled on could make enamels. The idea in- the other; and oftentimes I had noth-

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