AN EXPERIMENT

AMONG the more familiar phenomena of the Machina Boyliana, as they now call it, none leaves so much scruple in the minds of some sorts of men as this, that when one's finger is laid close upon the orifice of the little pipe by which the air is wont to pass from the receiver into the exhausted cylinder, the pulp of the finger is made to enter a good way into the cavity of the pipe, which doth not happen without a considerable sense of pain in the lower part of the finger. For most of those that are strangers to hydrostatics, especially if they be prepossessed with the opinions generally received both in the peripatetic and other schools, persuade themselves that they feel the newly mentioned and painful protuberance of the pulp of the finger to be effected, not by pressure, as we would have it, but distinctly by attraction.

To this we are wont to answer that, common air being a body not devoid of weight, the phenomenon is clearly explicable by the pressure of it; for, when the finger is first laid upon the orifice of the pipe, no pain nor swelling is produced, because the air which is in the pipe presses as well against that part of the finger which covereth the orifice, as the ambient air doth against the other parts of the same finger. But when, by pumping, the air in the pipe, or the most part of it, is made to pass out of the pipe into the exhausted cylinder, then there is nothing left in the pipe whose pressure can anything near countervail the undiminished pressure of the external air on the other parts of the finger; and consequently, that air thrusts the most yielding and fleshy part of the finger, which is the pulp, into that place where its pressure is unresisted, that is, into the cavity of the pipe, where this forcible intrusion causeth a pain in those tender parts of the finger.

(From The Cause of Attraction by Suction.)

THE WRITING OF A ROMANCE

BUT, upon further thoughts, I soon foresaw that this task was not more worthy to be undertaken than it would prove difficult

to be well performed; for the martyrologist being allowed scarce one whole page to a relation that perhaps merited a volume, had left so many chasms, and so many necessary things unmentioned, that I plainly perceived I wanted a far greater number of circumstances than that he had supplied me with, to make up so maimed a story tolerably complete. And as the relation denied me matter enough to work upon, so the nature of the subject refused most of those embellishments, which in other themes, where young gallants and fair ladies are the chief actors, are wont to supply the deficiencies of the matter. Besides, my task was not near so easy, as it would have been, if I had been only to recite the intrigues of an amour, with the liberty to feign surprising adventures to adorn the historical part of the account, and to make a lover speak as passionately as I could, and his mistress as kindly as the indulgentest laws of decency would permit. But I was to introduce a Christian and a pious lover, who was to contain the expressions of his flame within the narrow bounds of his religion; and a virgin, who, being as modest and discreet as handsome, and as devout as either, was to own an high esteem for an excellent lover, and an uncommon gratitude to a transcendent benefactor, without entrenching either upon her virtue, or her reservedness, And I perceived the difficulty of my task would be increased, by that of reconciling Theodora's scrupulousness to the humours of some young persons of quality of either sex, who were earnest to engage my pen on this occasion, and would expect, that I should make Theodora more kind, than I thought her great piety and strict modesty would permit. But for all this, the esteem that I had for the fair martyr's excellences, and the compliance I had for those, that desired to receive an account of so rare a person's actions and sufferings, made me resolve to try what I could do; which I adventured upon with the less reluctancy, because, though I esteemed it a kind of profaneness to transform a piece of martyrology into a romance, yet I thought it allowable enough, where a narrative was written so concisely, and left so imperfect, as that I had to descant upon, to make such supplements of circumstances, as were not improbable in the nature of the thing, and were little less than necessary to the clearness and entireness of the story, and the decent connection of the parts it should consist of. I supposed too, that I need not scruple to lend speeches to the persons I brought upon the stage, provided they

were suitable to the speakers, and occasions; since I was warranted by the examples of Livy, Plutarch, and other grave and judicious historians, who make no scruple to give us set orations of their own framing, and sometimes put them into the mouths of generals at the head of their armies, just going to give battle; though at such times the hurry and distraction that both they and their auditors must be in, must make it very unlikely, either that they should make elaborate speeches, or their hearers mind and remember them well enough to repeat them to the historians,

(From The Martyrdom of Theodora.)

JOHN BUNYAN

[John Bunyan was born, the son of a tinker, at Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628. In his seventeenth year he enlisted, but whether on the side of King or Parliament is undetermined; the fact is noteworthy because of the use he made of his military experiences in the Holy War. He married early a wife who brought him for dowry The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, and The Practice of Piety, books which first attracted him to godliness and literature. His earliest writings were against the Quakers (1656). He was arrested in 1660 for preaching, and imprisoned for twelve years, during which time he wrote various tracts, and notably Grace Abounding, the history of his conversion. He was a licensed preacher from 1672-75, but when the Declaration of Indulgence was cancelled, was again arrested. In the six months of imprisonment that followed he wrote the first part of the Pilgrim's Progress (1677), several of the best passages being added in the second edition of the next year. Other works followed, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), The Holy War (1682), the second part of the Pilgrim's Progress (1684). For the next sixteen years he was pastor of a church in Bedford, writing in all some sixty volumes; none of which retain vitality but those mentioned. He died 31st August 1688.]

"HE had a sharp quick eye, accomplished with an excellent discerning of persons, being of good judgment and quick wit." So writes Bunyan's first biographer. "I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato, but was brought up in my father's house in a very mean condition among a company of poor countrymen." So writes Bunyan in his religious autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. And these two sentences give us more than half the explanation of the charm of Bunyan's writing; for that charm lies, first of all, in the excellent discerning of persons, the quick comprehension of the various mixtures of simple and radical virtues and vices, of which his "poor countrymen" were composed, and then in the vivid homely phrases in which the sketches were made. It is more especially the first of these great qualities, the discernment of spirits, which gives permanence to the permanent residue of Bunyan's vast literary production; for while in all his