ds, must realize the utter dependence of our kind upon the light.
How great is the blessing of that sublime and beautiful fact which the
blind Milton apostrophizes in the beginning of the Third Book of
_Paradise Lost_:

"Hail, holy Light! offspring of heaven first-born!
Or of Eternal coeternal beam,
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear'st thou rather, pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun,
Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite."

How then shall man overcome the darkness? It is one of the problems of
his existence. He is obliged with each recurring sunset of his life to
enter the tunnel of inky darkness and make his way through as best he
may to the morning. What kind of lantern shall he carry as he gropes?

The evolution of artificial light and of the means of producing it
constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in the history of our
race. Primeval man knew fire. He learned in some way how to kindle
fire. The lowest barbarian may be defined as a fire-producing animal.
The cave men of ancient Europe kindled fires in their dark caverns.
The lake dwellers had fires, both on shore and in their huts over the
water. Wherever there was a fire there was artificial light. The
primitive barbarian walked around the embers of his fire and saw his
shadow stretching out into the gloom of the surrounding night.

With the slow oncoming of a better estate, the early philosophers of
mankind invented lamps. Very rude indeed were the first products in
this kind of art. Note the character of the lamps that have survived
to us from the age of stone. Still they are capable of holding oil and
retaining a wick. Further on we have lamps from the age of bronze, and
at last from the age of iron. Polite antiquity had its silver lamps,
its copper lamps, and in a few instances its lamps of gold. The
palaces of kings were sometimes lighted from golden reservoirs of oil.
Such may be seen among the relics preserved to us from the
civilizations of Western Asia. The palace of Priam, if we mistake not,
had lamps of gold.

The Great Greeks were the makers of beautiful lamps. In the age of the
Gre