When I was about
fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we
witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from
behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with
frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained,
while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and
delight. As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire
issue from an old and beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from
our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had
disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. When we visited
it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner.
It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin
ribbons of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed.
Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of
electricity. On this occasion a man of great research in natural
philosophy was with us, and excited by this catastrophe, he entered on
the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of
electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to
me. All that he said threw greatly into the shade Cornelius Agrippa,
Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords of my imagination; but by
some fatality the overthrow of these men disinclined me to pursue my
accustomed studies.
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