it is said.

This innovation excited universal enthusiasm. The king was so well
pleased with it, that he caused a medal to be struck bearing the
inscription: "_Urbis securitas et nitor_ [security and lighting of the
city]." In a passage in _Saint-Evremoniana_, we find: "The invention of
lighting Paris during the night by an infinity of lamps is worthy of
attracting the most distant peoples to come and contemplate that which
the Greeks and the Romans never imagined for the policing of their
republics. The lights, enclosed in glass lanterns suspended in the air
at an equal distance from each other, are arranged in an admirable order
and give light all the night; this spectacle is so handsome and so well
planned, that Archimedes himself, if he were still living, could add
nothing more agreeable and more useful."

As late as the end of the eighteenth century, the vegetable and animal
oils and fats furnished the only means of artificial illumination. The
tallow-candle dates from the eleventh century, and was an humble partner
for the much more aristocratic wax taper. In 1791, Philippe Lebon
commenced a series of experiments upon the extraction from wood of a gas
for illuminating purposes; and in the following year, Murdoch, in
England, succeeded in extracting it from pit-coal. A manufactory of gas,
constructed by the Comte de Chabrol, served to light the Hopital
Saint-Louis, in 1818; and, two years later, another furnished
illumination for the Palais du Luxembourg and the Odeon. Chevreul's
experiments in the saponification of fatty substances and the extraction
of oleic, stearic, and margaric acids, undertaken in 1823, led to the
manufacture and general use of stearic candles by 1831. In the previous
year, the introduction of mineral oils and petroleums had begun; the
very extensive importation of the coal-oil of Pennsylvania commenced in
1859, and has been supplemented of recent years by that of the produce
of the oil-wells of the Caucasus. Both these are largely imported in the
crude state, and are distilled and refined in France. The _huile de
colza_, extracted from the colewort, is still very largely used, and is
an excellent oil for lamps; and acetylene is beginning to take the place
of coal-gas as an illuminator.

When the permanent street-lamps, burning oil, replaced the ancient
lanterns and candles in the streets of Paris, they excited as much
admiration as the latter had done. "The very great amount of light whic