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« rj with mysteries of nature which but lately have been unfolded , after having been for centuries laid up in the arcana of Providence ?
Might not Carthage and Egypt have been acquainted with many things , which we venture to pVume ourselves on the discovery of , and with others which have since been
buried in oblivion , and sunk in the ruins of forgetfulness ? There are many things li ^ ttil and ornamental which we kftbw have been forgotten , and which the continued search of the most
penetrating cannot again develope . The purple dye of Tyre , the mechanic powers of Egypt , and even of Britain , the impenetrable walls of Roman architecture , and the permanent colouring of glass , existed once , and may by some
accident , in the revolution of ten thousand causes , be thrown up again to the light . And if we consider that man has always been urged by his necessities , by his vanity , and by his ambition , to exercise all his mental and bodily
faculties * and has- in everv enfaculties , and has ^ , in every enlightened age of the world , enjoyed the same advantages that he now enjoys , it is but a fair presumption , that , in the lapse of a number of centuries , the same
progress has been often made , which we behold in our days . But the murderous hand of time , that knows no distinctions , and the fierce rage of barbarism , which is destitute of all sentiment and feel
ing , have crushed alike , and repeatedly destroyed all the fair Works of the human intellect , and the useful arts and improvements in the life of man—but to give them the opportunity again to revive . ' < JMr ^ Parkes ha * well observed ,
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that nothing dies * This may be true of intellectual as well as vegetable matter . It vanishes from the active scene ; it disappears for a season ; but it resuscitates as soon as the fostering sun of
science is permitted to direct towards it its germinating beams ; again it appears amongst the works-of God , perhaps in a similar form , perhaps
after having undergone so rate chan - ges , to vary once more as every object on earth , changes , and to pass through the successive periods of youth , of vigour , and of decay .
I have been lately led to these reflections by a very extraordinary fact , which , I believe , is not generally known , and which convinces me the ancients were more conversant with the laws of nature than many are aware of .
It is known to anatomists , that a man in full health has a pulse , which beats with a perfect accuracy at the rate of sixty strokes to the minute , but they are not so well informed , that this pulse beats with the same accuracy the hours as well as the minutes of
our ordinary time . It has often been a question of speculation ^ why our day has been divided into twice twelve hours , rather than into twenty-four ; and these hours
again divided into sixty minutes . The fact I refer to explains the reason , and evinces to us that the pulse is the regulator of the hours , as well as of the minutes * and
gives an intimation of them by beating audibly the hours and the minutes , when placed in a prope ? position , and supplied with the requisite auxiliaries . The pulse beats one after the hour of one is
arrived ; an hour afterwards it beats two ; in another hour , three ; and so it proceeds till it has struck
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On the Revival of . Knowledge long lost * 4 Z 9
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1810, page 439, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2408/page/15/
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