stals, may better be described as 'limited in fixed directions'
than as 'of fixed forms.' But I can tell you nothing clear about
ultimate atoms: you will find the idea of little bricks, or, perhaps, of
little spheres, available for all the uses you will have to put it to.

MARY. Well, it's very provoking; one seems always to be stopped just
when one is coming to the very thing one wants to know.

L. No, Mary, for we should not wish to know anything but what is easily
and assuredly knowable. There's no end to it If I could show you, or
myself, a group of ultimate atoms, quite clearly, in this magnifying
glass, we should both be presently vexed because we could not break them
in two pieces, and see their insides.

MARY. Well then, next, what do you mean by the flying of the bricks?
What is it the atoms do, that is like flying?

L. When they are dissolved, or uncrystallised, they are really separated
from each other, like a swarm of gnats in the air, or like a shoal of
fish in the sea;--generally at about equal distances. In currents of
solutions, or at different depths of them, one part may be more full of
the dissolved atoms than another; but on the whole, you may think of
them as equidistant, like the spots in the print of your gown. If they
are separated by force of heat only, the substance is said to be melted;
if they are separated by any other substance, as particles of sugar by
water, they are said to be 'dissolved.' Note this distinction carefully,
all of you.

DORA. I will be very particular. When next you tell me there isn't sugar
enough in your tea, I will say, 'It is not yet dissolved, sir.'

L. I tell you what shall be dissolved, Miss Dora; and that's the present
parliament, if the members get too saucy.

(DORA _folds her hands and casts down her eyes._)

L. (_proceeds in state_). Now, Miss Mary, you know already, I believe,
that nearly everything will melt, under a sufficient heat, like wax.
Limestone melts (under pressure); sand melts; granite melts; the lava of
a volcano is a mixed mass of many kinds of rocks, melted: and any melted
substance nearly always, if not always, crystallises as it cools; the
more slowly the more perfectly. Water melts at what we call the
freezing, but might just as wisely, though not as conveniently, call the
melting, point; and radiates as it cools into the most beautiful of all
known crystals. Glass melts at a greater heat, and will crystallise, if
you let it cool