PYROTE CIINY.
Tuts art is properly divisible into two branches, name ly, that for military purposes, and that intended solely i for show or amusement. The former division is very limited in its objects; the latter is, on the contrary, very extensive. It is to give an account of each, reducing the innumerable varieties of authors under as few simple principles as possible. Like many other arts, the present has been chiefly confined to the workshops of artisans, and has perhaps never been fairly treated of by any one who, to general principles, united practical know ledge. Hence almost all the treatises on this subject are deficient either in know ledge of the details, or in the arrangement: most com monly, however, in both. Hence also it happens that many of the directions are given in such a manner that it is impossible to understand or execute them ; and very often they do not produce the promised effects. It is also from this cause that the books of pyrotechny are encumbered with superfluous receipts ; compositions adopted without any principle, containing articles that are pernicious or useless : sometimes containing the same substance under different names, or substances utterly incapable of producing the intended results. When we read in such authors of saltpetre and nitre as differ ent substances, or examine a receipt to make a black flame, it may easily be understood that these censures are not misapplied.
Antiquity of Pyrotechny.
The antiquity and origin of this art are lost in the abyss of past ages. Yet we have little doubt that, like printing, the loadstone, and much more of our know ledge that is little suspected, its cradle was in the east. In China, the use of fireworks for amusement has been known from a period beyond all record ; and, in In dia, that of rockets for military purposes is of an anti quity equally obscure. As all pyrotechny depends on the property whicf nitre possesses of accelerating the combustion of inflammable substances, even when ex cluded from the air, and as all the used in this art bear an analogy to gunpowder, it is plain that the antiquity of gunpowder is implied in that of pyrotechny. Yet, as far as the details go, there is little
reason to doubt that the art of making various fire works, by the aid of nitre and inflammable substances, is of more ancient date than that of producing gun powder, as we now know it. The one, in fact, can be done in a certain way, by almost any mixture of com bustibles into which nitre enters in a sufficient propor tion ; whereas, duly to allot the parts, to mix, and to granulate them, requires a degree of foresight, atten tion, and practice, which was not likely to have occur red for a long time after. To this compound we owe the invention, as well as the use of ordnance ; an inven tion not difficult to derive from some kinds of fire works, and infinitely more likely to have been pro duced in this way, than by the often repeated fable of Barthold Schwartz's mortar, whose claims to the in vention we shall presently show are absolutely un founded.
Without thinking it necessary to examine the ques tion respecting gunpowder particularly, which, proper ly speaking, is itself but a branch of pyrotechny, we shall here attempt to tract backwards to the oldest re cords which have reached us respecting any composi tions of this nature. Here again we are led back to India; and if any doubt is felt in allowing to the Orientals, from a time so remote, an art which only reached us long after, we must recollect that astrono my and algebra were known in India equally long be fore they were understood in Europe; and that the latter, in particular, is of very recent introduction. Iif the same manner were the mariner's compass and print ing known to the Chinese ; and if we are desirous of wondering why the messengers of Justinian, who brought silk from that remote empire into the west, did not also bring gunpowder and fireworks, we must explain why they did not bring that art which was far more likely to have excited the attention of a literary people.