Johann Beckmann

“ We have here a new proof how much people may be deceived, when they suppose that objects must be of great antiquity because they tend to common convenience and because they appear even so indispensably necessary and easy to have been invented, that one can scarcely conceive how they could at any time have been wanting. I cannot, however, deprive our ancestors of the merit of ingenuity and invention ”

“ This question some have pretended to determine without much labour or research. How can we suppose, say they, that the Romans, our masters in the art of building, should not have devised and invented some means to keep free from smoke their elegant habitations, which were furnished and ornamented in a splendid and costly manner? How is it possible that a people who purchased ease and convenience at the greatest expense, should suffer their apartments to be filled with smoke, which must have allowed them to enjoy scarcely a moment of pleasure? ”

“ You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,—with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. ”

“ Those who are acquainted with the Italian method of book-keeping must allow that it is an ingenious invention, of great utility to men in business, and that it has contributed to extend commerce and to facilitate its operations. It requires no less attention, care, and accuracy, than many works which are styled learned: but it is undoubtedly true, that most mercantile people, without knowing the foundation of the rules on which they proceed, conduct their books in as mechanical a manner as many of the literati do their writings. ”

“ It was not till modern times that artists conceived the idea of overlaying with silver, or some cheaper white metal, such things as they wished to have the appearance of gold, and then daubing them over with a yellow transparent varnish, in order to give to the white metal the colour of gold, and to the colour the splendour of metal. “When we cover our houses with gold,” says Seneca, “do we not show that we delight in deception? ”

“ I wish those who adulterate wine were punished with greater severity; for this execrable fraud, as well as many more deceptions, has been invented in the present age; and a villany by which the colour, taste, smell and substance of wine are so changed as to resemble that of another country, has been spread not only through Germany, but also through France, Hungary and other kingdoms. It was invented, they say, by a monk named Martin Bayr, of Schwarzen-Eychen in Franconia. ”

“ Notwithstanding the magnificence of the Grecian and Roman architecture, which we still admire in those ruins that remain as monuments of the talents and genius of the ancient builders, it is very doubtful whether their common dwelling-houses had chimneys, that is, passages or funnels formed in the walls for conveying away the smoke from the fire-place or stoves through the different stories to the summit of the edifice; conveniences which are not wanting in the meanest of our houses at present, and in the smallest of our villages. ”

“ As we passed, we saw everywhere abundance of flowers, such as the narcissus, hyacinth, and those called by the Turks tulipan, not without great astonishment, on account of the time of the year, as it was then the middle of winter, a season unfriendly to flowers. Greece abounds with narcissuses and hyacinths, which have a remarkably fragrant smell: it is, indeed, so strong as to hurt those who are not accustomed to it. The tulipan, however, have little or no smell, but are admired for their beauty and variety of their colour. The Turks pay great attention to the cultivation of flowers ”

“ Would not the arsenic, which is so often combined with cobalt, have given occasion to many reports respecting the dangerous properties of these minerals? And would not arsenic and bismuth have been sooner known, had preparations of cobalt been made at so early a period? It is a circumstance of great weight also, that in the places where the ancients had mines, and where antiquities painted or tinged blue, and resembling in colour that produced by cobalt, have been dug up, cobalt has not been discovered, or has been discovered only in modern times. ”

“ This poison we have been obliged to purchase for our friends, wives, children and selves, at a high price; as wine has been scarce for several years past; and it would seem that Nature had denied this liquor so long out of revenge against her enemies and the destroyers of the whole human race. You ought, therefore, most prudent fathers, not only to empty their vessels, by throwing this poison into your river; but to cast alive into the flames the sellers of this wine, and thus to punish poisoning as well as robbery.”—Pirkheimeri Opera, Franck. ”

“ How ridiculous would it have been to purchase useless roots with their weight of gold, if the possession of the flower had been the only object! Great is the folly of mankind; but they are not fools without a cause, as they would have been under such circumstances. ”

“ Some of his workmen went privately to the Netherlands and Germany, where they sold their art; and the French, therefore, with great confidence maintain, without knowing our artists and their works, that foreigners in this branch of manufacture are still far behind them. In most works of the kind my countrymen indeed are only imitators, not through want of talents to invent or to improve, but because our great people, for whom they must labour, consider nothing as fashionable or beautiful, except what has been first made by the French or the English. ”

“ Three hundred thousand people have taste enough to be in die-away ecstasies at the singing of Madame Pasta, or the dancing of Taglioni, and have not taste enough to appreciate or feel the want of a supply of water in their kitchens, sculleries, drains, sewers, and water-closets. The civilization of an English village is, after all, more real civilization than that of Paris or Berlin. ”

“ Should it be said that the scolymus must be our artichoke because no other plant of the thistle kind is known the bottom of the calyx of which is eatable, I would in answer observe:—First, other species may have been known in ancient times, which perhaps have been disused and forgotten since the more pleasant and delicious artichoke became known. It is certain that many old plants have in this manner been banished from our gardens by the introduction of new ones. ”

“ Our real sapphire does not form veins in other fossils, but is found among sand in small crystals, shaped like diamonds; though they sometimes have rather the figure of columns. Like other precious stones, they are always transparent; they have never gold points in them; their blue colour resembles more or less that of blue velvet, and it is often very pale, and approaches seldom, or very little, to purple. Powder of sapphire appears like fine pounded glass, exhibits no traces of copper, and can in no manner produce a blue pigment, or be confounded with mountain-blue. ”

“ So little indeed has hitherto been done towards a history of inventions and discoveries, that the rise and progress of part of those even of modern times is involved in considerable darkness and obscurity: of some the names of the inventors are not so much as known, and the honour of others is disputed by different nations; while the evidences on both sides are so imperfect, that it is almost impossible to determine to which the palm is due. To Professor Beckmann, therefore, those fond of such researches are much indebted for the pains he has been at to collect information on this subject ”

“ I cannot, however, deny that I have often lamented this loss when I saw the excellent blue in the painted windows at Gouda, Goslar, and other places; though its beauty is much heightened by the transparency of the glass, and the strong light that falls upon it from without.
I shall now proceed to the invention of the colour prepared from cobalt. About the end of the fifteenth century, cobalt appears to have been dug up in great quantity in the mines on the borders of Saxony and Bohemia, discovered not long before that period. ”

“ Those who are accustomed to value things used in common life only according to the price for which they can be purchased, will perhaps imagine that my subject must be nearly exhausted when I think it worth my while to entertain my readers with a matter so inconsiderable. Cork, however, is a substance of such a singular property, that no other has yet been found which can be so generally employed with the same advantage ”

“ Milk, the most natural and the commonest food of man, is a mixture of three component parts, whey, butter, and cheese. The caseous part is viscous; the butter is the fat, oily, and inflammable part, and properly speaking, is not perfectly dissolved in the serum or whey, but rather only diffused through it like an emulsion, so that it may be separated by rest alone, without any artificial preparation. ”

“ Artists possess the talent of giving them such a resemblance to striped and flowered silks and cottons, that one is apt to be deceived by them on the first view. Among the most elegant hangings of this kind, may be reckoned those which imitate so exactly every variety of marble, porphyry, and other species of stones, that when the walls of an apartment are neatly covered with them, the best connoisseur may not without close examination be able to discover the deception. ”

“ Size or cement (I use the word in the most extensive sense) is of such a nature that either in drying or glazing it becomes hard, and binds the colours. To this method belongs not only gilding, imitating bronze and making velvet-paper-hangings, but also painting on glass and in enamel. By the third method the colours are applied to the ground without any binding substance: they are therefore more liable to decay, as is the case in painting with crayons; but they will however adhere better when the pigments consist of very fine particles like ceruse, or black-lead. ”

“ It appears to me, however, if I may be allowed to judge from probabilities, that the poison known in the East Indies under the name of powst is also water which has stood a night over the juice of poppies. It is given in the morning fasting to those persons, and particularly princes, whom people wish to despatch privately, and without much violence. It consumes them slowly, so that they at length lose all their strength and understanding, and in the end die torpid and insensible139. ”

“ The public entry of great lords into any place, or their departure from it, was never in a carriage, but on horseback; and in all the works which speak of the papal ceremonies there is no mention of a state coach or body coachmen, but of state horses or state mules. It was necessary that a horse for his holiness should be of a gray colour; not mettlesome however, but a quiet, tractable nag; that a stool with three steps should be brought to assist him to mount, and the emperor and kings, if present, were obliged to hold his stirrup and to lead the horse155, &c. ”

“ Those whose self-conceit would never allow them to be sensible of this truth, and who reject as useless all ore in which they do not observe pure gold, as they display very little acuteness, must be often duped by the tinsel glare of false metal; and they give me as little uneasiness as those who have no desire to know the origin of inventions, or how they were brought to their present utility. ”

“ It is a singular fact, that the art of glass-painting, practised with such success during the former ages from one end of Europe to the other, should gradually have fallen into such disuse, that in the beginning of the last century it came to be generally considered as a lost art. ”

“ The Christians all considered the plague as a divine punishment, or predestinated event, which it was as impossible to avoid as an earthquake; and the physicians ascribed the spreading of it to corrupted air, which could not be purified by human art. The Christians therefore gave themselves up, like the Turks at present, to an inactive and obstinate resignation in the will of God, and hoped by fasting and prayer to hasten the end of their misfortune. ”

“ Among the improvements of recent date there are perhaps none of greater importance than those of electro-gilding and gilding by immersion, which have almost entirely superseded the process of gilding by an amalgam of mercury and gold, so fatal to the workmen exposed to the deleterious effects of the mercurial vapours. It is not our intention to enter at present into a history of the invention of these processes; they will more properly be reserved for a future volume, in which the discoveries of the present century will be treated of. ”